Final thoughts
There you go, finally, we’ve sat down and finished our blog on this trip, this (small) part of our life: All in all, this is exactly what we needed: cycle, eat, sleep, plan tomorrow’s trip, eat, sleep, cycle…
Yes, we would recommend it to anyone. Not fit enough? We don’t think this is a real issue. You adapt distances and speeds to your capabilities, just don’t be too ambitious about the distances you’ll want to cover; certainly not with kids: a short pee stop will easily take up to half an hour before you take off again.
We’ve often been asked about the kids, how did they cope: being tired, hungry, sleeping in a new place everyday, not knowing where the next stop will be…. Well, honestly, we have fantastic children: rarely squabbling, complaining even less and being absolutely wonderful for each other. What else would you hope for? And, no, being 24/7 with them wasn’t tiresome at all. We seemed to just get in a kind of flow where each one of us knew his/her place and role. Fan-tas-tic!
Anyone trying to get on a diet should try this to (okay, it’s a little radical…). Almost immediately after leaving we shifted to a new schedule
- Wake up: 8-9 am
- Breakfast: 9-10.30
- Pack:10.30-11.30
- Cycle:11.30-15
- Lunch: Between 15-17.00
- Dinner: Sometimes
- Good night, Sleep tight: 21.30-22.30
Combine this with 2 to 3 hours cycling, and you’re guaranteed to loose some excess weight. Don’t believe us? Look at the clock:
Another thing is we can remember each and every of those 93 days on the road, having at least pictures or memories of each day. Every day was a remarkable in its own way.
The blog was originally intended to keep in touch with family & friends during the trip. If you’ve stumbled upon it and have any questions about the trip, we would be happy to help you out.
Thank you very much to: Alistair & Laurence, our mothers, Juf Judit (Miro’s absolutely wonderful teacher), Juf Ann (Smilla’s delightfully dedicated teacher), Peter & Helle, Lars, Hanne, Bo (Lilla Edet), Morten (Oslo), Line&Lasse, Esben &Family (Tanumshede ICA supermarket), the American couple from Oslo (Frederikstad, we’ve lost your emails), John Perdersen, Ingela, everybody @ warmshowers.org, Gaard&Kenneth (Store-Vaktor), Peter Loeskow for all the stalking and tips 😉 (Stenungsund), Roel @ fietslab.be assistance by email during the trip, Sara-Bart-Lutgard-June-Mori-Frank-Anaïs-Ziggy-Peggie for the first 15-30 km, Marianne&Wolfgang, Lieve&Michel…and many more wonderful people.
According to a poll held by the American association Adventure Cycling, more than 90% of bicycle travellers put “meeting people” as number 1 of most memorable moments of their trips; we don’t (please don’t be offended, it just meant so much more to us), but it comes at least as second.
As a parting quote:
“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
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