When Can You Go Cycle Touring?
The ‘when’ of setting off on a bike trip is an easy one: as soon as you would like.
That might be next summer, when you’ve got the the equipment sorted, the route planned out, and the weather is optimal. It might be in a couple of years’ time, when you’ve saved a huge chunk of cash, quit your job, sold your house and are ready to begin your brand new life on the road. Or it might be tomorrow, because you’ve got a bike, you need to get away, and you can think of no genuine reason not to do so right now. How soon you can go on a bicycle adventure depends only on how complicated you want to make it.
Remember always that the perfect circumstances for your dream tour will never exist. “You will never simultaneously have infinite time, money, freedom and mojo,” says Alastair Humphreys. “So the best time is now.”
Approaching the question from a different angle, when would you actually want to go cycle touring?
Most long trips, particularly first long trips, generally seem to begin in the exact same manner: leave when the weather gets nice. These days, the number of long-haul riders setting off east, across Europe and towards Asia, between May and August each year probably ranks in the thousands. For these riders, it makes sense to hit the road in time for the reliably warm European summer, where some sub-standard weather here and there doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things, and they’re heading for warmer climes anyway. Some set off in more challenging seasons, either because they just can’t wait to get going, or because they’ve learned the basics on previous trips and don’t mind a little extra hardship. But the general rule is that the best time to go cycling somewhere is likely to match the best time to go there on holiday.
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