You can cover a lot of ground on a bike, but too often you end up encircling the same small patch. On your regular ride you reach the point of knowing every slight alteration in road surface and where it happens; every gradient uptick; and precisely how long it takes, at what average speed, power and heart rate. You’ve been doing thousands of miles but going nowhere. It’s time to shake things up. String those miles together differently, you realise, and you could actually go somewhere and have an amazing experience.
That’s how it started for me, before building to a record-breaking round-the-world ride in 2009. Since then, I’ve regularly ridden the 3,000km between London and Istanbul (half of my family is Turkish), and I’ve spent prolonged periods touring Palestine and North Africa. Right now I’m in Latin America completing a 15,000km ride that will form the basis of my next book. Since shifting from ‘normal’ cycling to long-distance touring (or, bikepacking, if you like), I’ve never looked back – and in this feature, I want to explain how swapping power-fixation for panniers might be easier, and more satisfying, than you think.
