Full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCrbwmHHTAU&list=PLXRsfI32KhWw801tJV8srZhTwmJTrHMMV&index=5
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Thank you So you told me earlier that you’ve done quite a lot of incredible bike races or just um not necessarily a race but bike travels yeah so tell us about it where have you been so um I just this is like also stereotypical of like the covets era and
I think one good thing about the covet area was that I think it’s it it’s it inspired a lot of people to actually look into sports and different things of sports so when covet hit that was Singapore we lasted a while my Visa expired I could extend by one month but
I couldn’t do the Visa Run to Malaysia because like Malaysia was also in a lockdown right so then I run out of options to stay longer in Singapore so actually then I had to go back to Netherlands then also I was back in Netherlands and then I was still like
Some kind of lockdown and this whole period lasted for almost two years right so I I started to look into different sports I actually started mountain biking with some friends and mountain biking is is quite nice in the Netherlands because we don’t have a lot of mountains but usually at like the
Close to the seaside there’s some Dunes that’s actually really good for like especially if you’re beginning because it’s not that dangerous yeah not much can go wrong so I started to get into Mount back and really loving that and for mountain biking you start to get
More into cycling as well I was always used to cycling because I grew up in a small village and when I had to go to school I had to take one hour to get there and then one hour to get back so every day at the cycle for two hours so
Cycling was always like a thing that I I was very used to do not I was enjoying it but then kind of this mountain biking opened my eyes to also like road racing and all the types of biking and I’ve always had this plan to do like a long
Distance cycling trip so I asked my best friend but he was up for some cycling and actually another of my best friend was living in Portugal so actually we wanted to to go see and buy bike to Portugal from the Netherlands from the Netherlands yeah so we felt like okay we
Because we just had an excuse right to cycle summer so yeah I was happy that his friends was living in Portugal because he gave us the excuse to the cycle to Portugal annoying things as while we were planning the trip then the second waiver too whichever wave of Corona hits again so
Actually France started to close down its borders so we couldn’t really go to France anymore so then I was thinking okay we can go through the rain and then we go alongside Germany so as soon as we decide on that planet actually Germany also started to close down in foreign and then
I thought like why don’t we just kind of reverse the trip so we start in Portugal and then we cycle back to the Amsterdam so that’s why we did because of the covet okay um so then that and actually really well so we we loaded the bikes on the on the
Plane we flew over there then we spent a weekend with my friends in Portugal on the next to be set up and we cycled back to Amsterdam how long did it take you that’s like so it’s like 3 000 K and it took us like four weeks okay so on
Average you can do like 100 120 per day yeah yeah and how did you do it did you uh also do like some sighting or something on the way or did you really just bike eat sleep that’s it yeah it was kind of like the the second thing
Yeah I think both of my friends we were like too excited about the cycling thing that actually one day I I don’t remember which city it was anymore but we had one day off in Spain where we said okay we’re gonna take a break and actually
That was that was the most boring day to experience so so like a class just continue from there because we I don’t know once you get into that cycling mode you just want to keep on going because it’s it’s actually so much fun it’s actually stopping down you feel like
That’s it’s slowing you down you know it’s not necessarily the the advice I would give to everyone because I think it’s a lot of fun to to stop by but we were just crazy enough to um any other weird kind of tight time frame as well
Yes my friend said to go back to work okay I’m sorry only had four four weeks that he could take off so um yeah we had to be back and then a challenge that was quite a challenge and also the funny thing was that taxi so I mentioned that
France was in a lockdown back then um but we were cycling quite fast so when we were just about to leave Spain and we were about to enter France France was still locked up so that was that was a bit tricky as well for us so we decided
To ignore that and pretend like we we didn’t know because France had a crazy regulation that you could only like leave 10 kilometers away from your hometown like you could just vary you couldn’t move forward and then you have like two guys cycling with fully packed
Bikes like how office do you want to make it that you’re not that you’re not sticking to the 10K rule yeah um but we kind of like states with low and we took like a detour in appearance so we we went through a really small like road yeah through the Pyrenees so
To make sure that there were no like Customs waiting for us within an unpleasant surprise everything worked out really well and um I think after three or four days they kind of loosened the lockdown they canceled it so yeah we could cycle again without any fear okay
But by then we were really quite far in France anyway did you do any other major distances Yes actually I did so before that was like I would say the main trip but actually before I checked in Vietnam as well by my own okay that was uh that that’s a
Completely different experience but you cycling alone with your friends with a friend it’s more more nice and you can do things like wild camping if I would be entirely by my own in Vietnam I don’t know how comfortable I am with that ID it was already quite adventurous enough
Just to cycle by myself and kind of like dealing with rural villages in Vietnam some some interesting things definitely there along the way um I lost um last year cycle from Amsterdam to Como Lake Como in Italy nice and it passed by Switzerland as well yeah yeah Thank you