I recently spent two weeks in Denmark, and since I usually ride a road bike, I wanted to take the opportunity to try my very first bikepacking trip in the west of this beautiful country. I faced two main problems:
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I don't own a bike other than my road bike
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Carrying just panniers for the rest of my trip wouldn’t have been practical
So, a very natural solution came to mind: I’d take a backpack, throw my gear inside along with my folded panniers, and once in Aarhus, rent a bike for my loop.
Renting a bike for seven days turned out to be trickier than I expected, and I ended up with what you can see in the pictures. The guy at Swapfiets assured me that this glorious machine could handle the 560 km I had planned and, for the sake of the challenge, off I went on my loop… with a city bike.
The trip went relatively well. I rode from Aarhus to Bulbjerg, then to Skagen to see the meeting of the north and baltic seas, then back to Aarhus (560km/2800m of elevation) in 7 days, the landscapes were stunning, I had sunshine most of the time, but every stretch with headwind or rain could be summed up with one word: PAIN. Four days after finishing, my butt still hasn’t forgiven me.
That being said, I loved the bikepacking experience, and I’m definitely doing it again next year (yeah i'll get another bike and more bags)
by arborak