My Introduction to bikepacking (part 5) - The ride begins

We were ready, at least we thought we were ready. Rebecca and I did a few long day rides on the weekends, enjoying some local gravel routes without carrying any extra gear. Our legs were strong and we felt ready for the big adventure. We were both extremely excited and nervous at the same time. Excited to embark on this adventure, with so much to discover, both about the people and places we would encounter, but also about ourselves and our capabilities. We were also nervous as to how it would all turn out. There were the unknowns such as traveling through several countries during the covid restricted period, the unknowns of our physical abilities, and the unknowns of how we would all handle being together for a month straight. Only time would tell.

The route

During the spring, the original endpoint of this route, a wedding in Serbia, was changed due to the situation with Covid. This allowed us to pivot and change our route a bit, and instead of ending in Serbia we would end on the beaches in Croatia. "To the beach" was our rallying cry and it would stick with us for the full journey. This also allowed us to include a long route through Slovenia which we had read about on bikepacking.com, allowing us a full nine days to explore most of the route before finally veering south towards Croatia where we envisioned we would be welcomed by rocky beaches and warm clear water.

And so it begins - July 12th 2021

We were fortunate to start the first day of trip with beautiful weather, a good indication of what our trip would be like over the next month. Rebecca and I left our house at our usual late start time at 8AM and after meeting Emil for a few pictures at his place, we headed south towards the final destination for our first day, which was a ship that would bring us to to Poland. Why a ship you might ask? Why not cycle all the way through Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Austria? Well, our plan for this trip was to see as much of Southern Europe as possible (.e. Slovenia) and while it would have been nice to bike all the way there, our objective was to get south quickly, and do so in a sustainable way. We believe that utilizing boats and trains is a good way to support a bikepacking trip, so much so that we talk about it in our book, and for this trip, both modes of transportation would support our objective.

Swedish countryside in the summer

We rolled south enjoying the beautiful Swedish summer day, occasionally going off route (Something my companions would have to get used to with me navigating) but smiling the whole way as heading south somehow felt like pedaling downhill. Maybe it was all the rest, maybe it was the flat terrain or perhaps just the anticipation of what was to come, but no matter, we were bursting with energy and excitement as we pedaled on.

There would only be one small Fika break on this day, where we filled our stomachs with cake and coffee and topped our water bottles before the easy ride to a dinner break near the boat terminal. We arrived in Nynashamn, which is the embarkment point for the popular summer attraction of the island of Gotland (I have another video on that here ) as well as boats to Poland and Germany. We found a local pizza joint knowing the food on the boat would be sub-optimal (is pizza optimal?), and biked to the boat terminal where we waited to enter the boat.

The drunken Baltic boat torture

When mentioning cruise ships I always go back to my days as a kid(dating myself) watching "The love boat". This was NOTHING like the experience you have on a Baltic cruise ship that is meant for 1-2 day journeys. Instead, it is a large number of drunken tourists, looking for cheap travel, where the spaces are quite crammed, the food not so good, and the accommodations sparse. We were OK with this and knew about the experience coming in. What we didn't expect was that the "Airplane" style seating would be so terrible. I can generally sleep just fine on a plane so I thought this would have been much better. Unfortunately, the seating area was in a sunny and hot part of the boat, with very tight seating. Since it was summer, the sun never really truly sets and it is mostly dim throughout the night. The seating area was also directly outside the lounge which also hindered the ability to sleep. We resorted to lying on the carpet using whatever we could for a pillow, leading to an suboptimal night's sleep. In the morning we found a "secret area" which had a bit better seating and even some showers that we could use. This would be our savior for the trip home as we would bring our air mattresses up from the bikes and get a good night's sleep on the return a month later.

Nonetheless the first few hours on the boat were not so bad as we cruised through the beautiful baltic and experienced a beautiful sunset. It would be a short overnight trip to Gdansk where we would start day 2 of our epic adventure as we focused on our mantra "To the beach"!

More about Day 1

I will try and share some video of each day of our trip as well as the Relive summary of the day's ride. Please support us by liking the videos(if you enjoy them) and following the channel on YouTube to stay up date with our latest videos.