crazy cheste

Hello I have been doing some day dreaming lately and have been thinking of places I want to visit. A tour idea that I've had for months would be a 1+ year trip. I would start out in Costa Rica in the late winter like February then cycle down to Columbia. The end of may I would fly to Dublin and tour Ireland and the U.K. for a month. next I would fly to Oslo and tour Norway and Head up to a city called Umea Sweden. Next I would Go south to Stockholm and the rest is all up for grabs. I know I would go to Hungary and Budapest but everything else is up for grabs and spend five or six months there.
Take note I'm only 16 so these are just day dreams until I get older. It's just fun to make up trips using maps. My question is how far could I travel over Europe. Six months is 180 days and if I plan to ride 140 of those days at 60 miles it comes out to be over 8000 miles. That's a lot of ground being covered.
Here's a layout I created in five minutes. Would that be possible in 6 months?
https://www.runningmap.com/?id=532894

imi

60 miles a day, every day for six months in a row is a lot.
You may want rest days, meet people and hang out at different places for a while etc.
Try planning for 500 km/week. You can always ride more if you want to

crazy cheste

I understand the rest days. I stated that six months is 180 days I then went on to say 140 days at 60 miles is over 8000. I would not want to do 60 everyday and there would be days that I did more so it all averages out.
I want to stress I'm not making any plans I'm just day dreaming. But this trip is the foundation of future trips later in life.

Cyclebum

Day dreaming is good. Having goals is good. 60 miles/day is only 5-6 hours of pedalling, less for a young fellow. Will leave lots of time to kill off bike.

jamawani 

Cover with what?

imi

Ah sorry, misread. 60 miles/day on riding days is a good average.

Are you already making weekend trips? Testing gear and so on?
p.s daydreaming is good!

Jseis 

10,000 miles easy. I did just under 4000 in 60 days. Circumnavigate the lower 48.

Machka 

Meanwhile ...

What kind of distances are you cycling now?
Are you cycling to interesting places in the area where you live?
Have you done some weekend tours yet?


You can start your travels now in your local area.

chasm54

Yes, this is perfectly practicable. My longest tour lasted only two months rather than six, but of the 60 available days I rode for 48 - plenty of time to pause and look around some interesting places - and covered 2500 miles very easily indeed, heavily loaded (about 40lbs of gear on the bike). I wouldn't hesitate to add 20% to those distances and still be comfortable, so 8000-10000 miles in six months would be no problem.

contango 

I did two consecutive days of 83 miles then 65 miles based on being able to do 30-40 miles over the course of an afternoon (coupled with breaks to look at views, check maps, catch breath etc). Now my fitness is better I suspect multiple days of 60+ miles is doable. You're a lot younger than I am and probably lighter than I am.

If you're planning a tour like this the chances are the distances you're planning on covering wouldn't be a problem for you, especially when you've got some 20% of the time allocated as non-cycling time. That gives you chance to rest a day, fix your bike if needs be, stick around a place you like, whatever you want.

Things are are more likely to be a problem for you are costs - costs of food, accommodation (you probably won't want to camp every single night you're gone) and costs of doing stuff on your rest days. You'll also need to consider visa issues - the last thing you want to do is overstay a visa because your bike broke and you couldn't get to the airport in time. If you arrive in Europe wanting to stay six months you may also be asked what means you have to support yourself for six months, so make sure you can demonstrate access to enough funding to sensibly last six months.

Daydreaming is a good thing, setting goals is a good thing, even if sometimes the brutal practicalities of life pour cold water on the original idea you can always scale things down a little. Just consider, at least in outline, a Plan B just in case something goes catastrophically wrong (e.g. your bike gets stolen).

staehpj1

Maybe, but...
Even if the OP was planning to ride 60 miles every day that would be far from impossible assuming mostly decent roads. Everyone has different ideas of how to spend their time on a bike tour. Some of us figure that we are on tour to ride so we ride every day on most tours. Averaging 60 miles per day isn't usually all that hard. Doing some 80 and 100 mile days would allow some 30 miles half days.

Then again I do not know how the roads are where he will be. Bad roads could make this tougher. Twenty miles of rutted mud could well be harder than 120 miles of nice paved road.

Given that he is planning to average 60 miles per day on his riding days and has some rest days planned as well it sounds like a relatively low daily mileage for road touring. I am too lazy to check the math but it sounds like 45 miles per day or so when you count the full 180 days. Some folks like to do less, but that is a fairly low daily mileage tour by most standards.

That said he may find 6 months is a long time to be on the road. Personally I find I am ready to go home for a while after 2 or 3 months. Everyone is different though.

Machka 

Very good point about the visa ... there's also the Schengan (spelling?) Agreement that says you can only be in certain countries for a limit of 90 days. You can be in Europe as a whole for longer, but you've got to get out of certain countries for a little while, and then you can go back in.


And you don't have to limit yourself to daydreaming ... as I mentioned earlier, start small, start more locally. Many people don't explore their own "backyards". They'll travel to other countries, but won't go see tourist attractions 100 km away. It's a great experience to see what you've got in your own area ... and to try to see it with the eyes of someone new to the area.

bikenh

ABSOLUTELY!!! You would be amazed even on day rides what you can find in your local area that will shock you. Places you have no reason for going in a car you can give yourself a reason for going to on a bike...it won't eat up gas money or car repair expenses. I found myself doing that over the past two years now. The worst/wildest experience was being 20 miles from my house and wandering where the heck I was at. I felt like I was lost. I was in a place, 20 miles from my house, that I hadn't been to before even though I had lived in the area for 12 years. Yes, I was still riding on state highways. It was simply someplace I never had a reason for going to so I didn't. It kinda helped me forge the idea of trying to ride all the state highway miles in New Hampshire west of I-93 in the first six months of last year. I hit all of them except up in the north 1/3 of the state and I managed to even hit quite a few of them. Talk about seeing a lot of state I hadn't seen before.

To the OP I would suggest the same thing quite few others have mentioned, get out and ride locally where you normally never go. You say your from NE Ohio. Give 303 between Streetsboro and Brunswick a shot...LOL As I rode from NH to NW Ohio last year I went through there and found myself screaming. I was surprised at how much climbing there was. I lived my first 27 years in NW Ohio and never would have expected that kind of climbing in NE Ohio. SE Ohio is another story though.

axolotl

Several points:

You can't bike to Colombia (note the spelling) because there is no road through the Darien Gap in Panama.

An American tourist can no longer remain in Europe's Schengen zone for more than 90 days without a visa. The Schengen zone is not the same as the European Union. Some EU countries are not in the Schengen zone, and other countries are in it.

https://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_p.../cis_4361.html

Be careful that you don't fall into a trap of simply trying to rack up kilmometers/miles for their own sake.

10 Wheels

Op, Dream of heading out from your front door and enjoy Touring The USA.

contango 

This is good advice here. A bit of wanderlust isn't necessarily a bad thing but it's very easy to look for beauty in exotic locations and totally overlook the beauty that's right on your doorstep.

Burton

So is the idea to cover ground or to have fun? Just within Canada I could spend the whole summer in PEI or Nova Scotia. Heck - it would probably be possible to spend the summer just cycling in Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. Actually I live in Montreal and could probably take a different bike route here every day and find something tourists come from all over the world to see.

I've also thought I'd like to spend a whole summer on Vancouver Island, and in the USA, the Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smokey Mountains Parkway is another place I can't decide if I'd rather do with a bicycle again or just hike. In fact the National Parks in the USA are one of its biggest treasures.

Or - I guess you could just bicycle past all of it.