Planning Your Trip
Whether you’re planning a cycle touring or bikepacking trip, planning is a lot easier than you may imagine. While all you really need is your bike, your gear, and your undeterred spirit of adventure, creating a plan for your cycleventure sure does help. Dwight D. Eisenhower famously said that once the plan “meets the enemy” it becomes worthless. Nevertheless, he appreciated the indispensable value in the exercise of planning. The point here is that planning is important, but don’t get too rigid about it. Although advance planning will help prepare you for whatever may happen on your trip, let your cycleventure unfold naturally, go with the flow, and be willing (and able) to adjust along the way. A good plan for your cycling trip will help you determine everything you need, from gear requirements to your daily and overall budget.
Some of the key questions you’ll need to ask yourself are: What type of cycling trip do I want to go on? How long do I want to go? Where do I want to go (and when)? What route do I want to take? How much is this gonna cost me? These questions impact each other. Once you get started asking the right questions, you’ll find yourself not only asking further questions but revisiting questions you’ve already asked. For example, you might initially plan for a two-week trip, but when planning your trip determine that all you can handle physically or all you can afford financially is one week or maybe 10 days.
There are many ways to go about creating and planning your cycleventure and there are lots excellent resources and tons of information out there to help you, including websites, apps, and crowd-sourced rides that enable you map out exactly where you want to go and provide important route details such as elevation, traffic, accommodations, and medical facilities. Here are a few easy planning steps to help get you started.
What type of cycling trip do I want to go on?
Obviously, the first thing you want to consider is what type of cycling adventure you want to do. Are you looking to do a traditional type of cycle tour, where you’ll stick to the hardtop roads. Or are you looking for a mix of asphalt and soft surfaces. Are you open to mixing in a few trails? Or are you looking to blast off into the wild on a full-fledged, off-road, cross-country bikepacking adventure? These questions will help frame the type of trip you’re planning and the kind of gear, and even the bike, you’re going to need.
How long will I go for?
How long you want to go and how long you can go are kinda different and kinda inseparable. You may have your heart set on a month-long cycleventure, but how long you actually can go may well depend upon a range of pragmatic factors, like how much time off work you can wrangle! Determining how long you’re going and where you’re going (see below) are also usually interconnected considerations. We’re starting with how long you want to/can go before delving into where you want to go, because having an idea of how long you want to go will help determine how much money you’ll need, which will help determine where (and even when) you’re going. Also, in considering how long you will go, you will be asking yourself how far you want to go, both over the course of the entire trip but also each day. These questions involve not only considerations of time off work or away from home and related budget considerations, but also endurance considerations about how long you want to or are able to ride each day, and over the course of each week, on your cycling trip. Also, the terrain through which you will be riding and the weather conditions you will face will impact your trip. You could plan everything to a tee, but if you find yourself faced with strong seasonal headwinds or rainstorms, your average speed could be slowed down considerably and you may have difficulty in completing your daily or even your overall distance estimates.
Where do I want to go (and when)?
Deciding where you want to go is the fun part! Whether you have a very sure idea of where you want to go or whether you’re literally throwing darts at a map of the world, deciding where you want to go and when you want to go there will impact every part of your plan, from the type of clothing and gear to how much money you’ll need. Some regions are more expensive than others - you’ll probably need a larger budget for a one week trip through Italy than a two week trip through Thailand. As noted above, the decision of where to go will also impact on the length of time you’ll need for your trip. You may decide that you want to go for a week, but if you determine you want to go riding through the Swiss Alps, those hills may require an extra day or two. Or if you decide that you want to cycle down the Gold Coast of Australia. Those beaches may lure you for a few side trips and days off. Think about where you want to go based upon a range of factors and considerations, such as your must-see places and the choices you may need to make in order to make those happen based on your budget. You’ll also need to consider the likely weather conditions that you’ll face based on the time of year you’re planning to go - wether it will be raining, windy, or super hot could have a significant impact on your trip. In addition, there may be less glamourous considerations, such as visa restrictions and delays between destinations based on those restrictions that may impact your trip planning and that may require some adjustments. These types of considerations and the resulting prioritizations and re-prioritizations will help structure your plan. Once you’ve made your choice on your destination, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and explore the region with maps and online mapping tools.
What route will I take?
Once you’ve pulled all but one of the darts out of the map on the wall, the next and most important step in preparing your trip plan is to map out your route - planning your days, nights, accommodations, attractions you must see, and side trips you want to take. You should consider your daily goals and the assumptions that support them. Be sure to take into account the terrain you’ll be riding in, especially elevation, as well as traffic and road and/or trail conditions when planning distances and daily goals. Is the road busy? Does it have bike lanes or adequate shoulders? Is it on a designated bike route? Is it heavily used by trucks? Also, you will want to take note of certain essential ammenities, such as rest stations, water refill stations, hospitals, and other important services along your route. Ideally, you’ll want to get first-hand accounts from someone who has ridden that particular route and who can provide you with essential details that may change some of your assumptions. Be sure to check out online forums for route advice. You may need to identify detours depending on advice you get and on road and weather conditions. The process of preparing your route will expose any impracticalities about your trip and provide an opportunity for adjustments. One of the best ways to do this is to prepare a spread sheet using data, such as daily distance goals and average speeds based on elevation and other conditions, to determine how much riding time is required. Also, be sure not to overdo your daily distance goals and factor in approrpiate downtime and rest days - where you can take in an attraction or two or maybe just sleep in!
Plan and navigate using maps as well as the various helpful websites and apps out there designed for this purpose. Technology is great (when it works), but we kinda lean toward analogue when it comes to maps. Maps are indispensable tools for both planning and executing cycling trips. We recommend that you get yourself one or more maps of the region through which you’re riding and study the territory in advance. You’ll have a better overall awareness of what lay on and off your route (especially when bikepacking in remote areas) by using maps than with a website or an app, and a map doesn’t need a charged battery to do the job. Also, the size and scale of maps will provide you with a much better idea of the bigger picture than a GPS map on your handheld device, which also may not have any service in the region you’re in. Also, there’s no better way to flex about your cycleventure than by casually bringing out a big old fold-out map with your route all highlighted in red showing the kms you cycled, etched on paper, to corroborate and emphasize the story of your awesome cycling trip for your awe-struck friends. That being said, we fully admit that the technology available today for route planning and navigating cycling trips is amazing. Route planning apps vary based on region and can be incomplete, missing important details. Some apps may not include current road conditions or trails or paths. Some may not have downloadable data for the route you planned, making them useless for navigating. We recommend using a combination of paper maps and websites/apps to plan your trip and guide you when riding. In addition to maps (physical or GPS), regional guides and other resources are also helpful, including traditional guidebooks as well as webistes. Books are great for planning and can also be useful on a bicycle trip, but they take up valuable storage space and can add weight to your bike, so we recommend that if you’re hell-bent on bringing guide books on your trip, try to restrict them to the mini ones.
How much money will I need?
Ok, so now that you know what type of trip you want to go on, where you want to go, when you want to go there, and how long you want to go for, how much money will you need? This is the most subjective question of all, because it has everything to do with your own personal expectations. What are you expecting out of your trip? Are you looking for a luxurious ramble or a hard-core adventure or something inbetween? There are those who will swear up and down that you can manage a cycling trip on 10 bucks a day. That’s cool if your scene is sleeping rough, avoiding showers and forraging (or begging) for food. And then there are others who will be expecting to stay at the Ritz every night, begging the question, why are you biking, there’s a perfectly good Bentley in your garage? All judgment aside, it all depends on your jam. Have it your way. We’ll leave the budgeting up to you.