Cycle Touring

As our first proper foray into unsupported cycle touring, Vietnam has been a bit of a crash course, which will hopefully serve us well for longer trips.  

We’ve learnt some of the touring basics (the level of planning that we feel comfortable with; a finely drilled routine for packing the panniers; how much water to carry; that route planning is fun, but also boring!) and the Vietnam specific ones (what makes the best breakfast - bahn mi op la of course!; what sort of mileage feels doable given the heat; when a toot-toot is a motorbike speeding by and when a HOOOONK-HOOOONK is a massive lorry, so brace yourself).

Initial Route Planning

Subsequent Route Planning

But we also confirmed, and were confronted by, some of our expectations.  Most importantly that touring is as much about the body as the mind.  We both suffer from niggles, and at times downright agony, from various parts of our bodies.  We’ve been working in unison with them for enough years to listen hard, play nice and sometimes beg when we are asking a lot from them.  The mind is a different, and a delightfully/infuriatingly changeable beast.  It is where our minds might take us, and frankly how to handle them, that this trip has provided a taster for!

We’ve been working for a while now on the understanding that life is about the journey, not just the destination, but my goodness that can be hard when you’re tired, a bit bored and you are counting down the miles in front of you as you edge towards the one thing that is certain - the destination. Remind me, why we are doing this?

A helpful mile marker

The counter to that is that happiness exists right here, in this moment, as I give my all to grind up this hill, as I watch the sun climbing into its morning pose, as I catch the eye of an inquisitive motorbike rider peering at me as they chug past, or better still, the squeal as I free wheel past on a long smooth, blissful down hill.  It’s the deep satisfaction as we pull into town, the sheer pleasure of observing the passing landscape as my legs work happily away beneath me and I know that we made this happen, we made a plan to get on our bikes and cycle in Vietnam and here we are, with everything we need, bloody doing it!  And then the next moment is has gone.  How many more miles?

Lovely View 1

Lovely View 2

We know those ups and downs, and that on our cycle journeys they will both be with us often.  

We’ve embedded a link to Ali’s Strava profile so that you can see our route.