I just came back home from my biggest bikepacking trip so far. Before i only did some weekenders but this time I rode for 17 days in total and did more than 1800km.
I startet at home near Koblenz and followed the Mosel up to the source. Then I went through the Vosges, where I had to carry my bike a lot and followed the Saône up to Lyon. From there I went along with the Eurovelo 6 for a bit along the Rhône, but made a turn to go into the Ardèche Region and did a 25km tour on the Ardèche by kajak.
I stayed at that place for two nights, wich was the first time on that trip and already had to go back around 50km to reach the place I wanted to rent the kajak.
After that I did another 3 nights to reach the Mediterranean sea and went along to the border of Spain.
As I met with a friend who was car camping and wanted to take me back home in that area, and the coast being really touristic I decided to end my tour before crossing the border to Spain and went back to Ardèche with my friend, where we chilled and made another kajaktour and some exploring of grottes and the area in general for the last 5 days until we had to head back home.
Until we met and went back, I only camped in the wild and didn't use any official campgrounds or hotels, except the two nights in the Ardèche.
The last days we spent on an official campground too, as the Ardèche river is in a national park and we wanted to respect that.
The trip was one of my most adventures holidays and I already know that I will do something like that again pretty soon.
The bike with all my stuff and 2 filled bottles of water was around 31kg wich wasn't as bad as I expected. I was still able to do near to 200kms a day with more than 1000 meters of height.
The only bad thing was a terrible headwind for the whole trip except one day and a lot of rain in the first and a lot of heat up to 44°C in the last week.
I also tracked the whole route on my Karoo amd synced it to komoot if anyone is interested in that.
by Odd_Cryptographer668
9 Comments
Into france only by going through belgium. Thats the classic german route.
Oh wow. What a loadout.
Looks like it was an epic trip. Thanks for posting, I really enjoyed your photos.
That looks like a pretty decent tour buddy. I’m planning something almost equal starting in Bonn. Would be nice if you have some tips for me.
1) Were you happy with the equipment and what was the best and the worst thing to take with you? What was most surprisingly useful?
2) Did you take anything to fix your bike with you? Did you have any break down?
3) Would you go through the Vogeses again or would you do skip them or take a ‚proper‘ route?
4) Which kind of electric support did you take with you?
5) How often do you go biking before?
Inspiring, thanks for sharing. The weather must have been a true challenge.
Wow, 200km per day is impressive!
We usually do around 100 on our trips.
What’s the app in the first image?
You might want to checkout our project to visualize bikepacking memories: epiclines.de
What is wrong with your map?
Love how you used the wheel to support your camp. Cool stuff!
Did Komoot send you gravel cycling through a cave?