Guest Bloggers Stefanie & Niels from Roads to Movement wrote a guest blog for us about their adventures while slow traveling by bike.
It had been our years-long dream to go on a world trip. We share the same passion and curiosity when it comes to traveling. We want to explore the world, get to know people, love to go on adventures, and we can spend hours outside surrounded by beautiful landscapes. Our best teacher is getting to know new cultures. These reasons resulted in us setting aside bits of our savings over the period of a few years. All to realize that dream and embark on our slow travel. Slow travel you might wonder? We will dive deeper into that in a bit!
How did it all start?
Each slow travel for us starts with brainstorming and after hourlong research, we both individually listed the five elements that mattered most to us for this trip. This could be a certain place, the way we would travel, or a specific activity. We were really surprised when we learned that four out of the five elements matched! One of them was to learn Spanish in Central America. The other three elements concerned our way of traveling, which taught us something really valuable: it wasn’t the destination that mattered most, it was the way we traveled that mattered most. We wanted to embark on slow travel, without a return date, and we wanted a physical challenge. By knowing all of this, the topic of sustainability came to mind. How amazing would it be if we could start our slow travel at our doorstep?! That’s the moment we decided to embark on a bike journey, a perfect example of slow travel.
Our reasons to choose slow travel
The slow travel aspect was important to us for different reasons. Each day we are confronted with a faster-developing society. We all struggle to not give in to the newest gadgets, packed calendars, or spending money on things we actually don’t need. We felt the urge to press ‘pause’, to take our time to learn what was actually important to us. We started to gradually implement this on a daily basis. We stopped spending money on new clothes, we spontaneously took the day off to do something fun, and we asked ourselves if we really felt like doing something. Besides a chunk of extra savings, this way of living also gave us a calmer headspace. Experiencing this change was an incredible lesson for both of us.
Another important reason for us to go all-in on slow travel was the fact we didn’t feel like monthly jumping on a plane. Or rent a car on a weekly basis, or the need to take a bus from place to place. At that time, we hadn’t decided on our way of transportation just yet, but we knew we couldn’t visit three continents within three months. In that way, your CO2 emission is a lot less and it gives you the opportunity to fully experience one place. You make deeper connections with the locals, you buy yourself more time to avoid tourist traps, and you can really find your rest. Slow travel starts to sound better and better, right?
We also wanted to travel for any length of time to gain the full feeling of freedom. Traveling for any length of time could be established while traveling slow. Resigning our job and our house in Gent was, therefore, a necessary consequence, but we enjoyed doing that. Much often you hear people say they travel solely for a certain period of time, which is totally fine. We just didn’t want to be bound by a necessary return and travel at our own pace. If our slow travel turned out to be for a length of six months that would be great, but three years just as much. You honor yourself with more time, which we consider to be connected with sustainability as well. Your senses gain full freedom to think about everything and nothing. How many people embark on a long journey and come to the realization they are trapped in a rat race, and that they don’t miss any material things? Or even more, people who turn their lives around and find their passion from which they create their job (just as Carmen and Marijn did).
Society’s thoughts and slow travel
People often ask us how we afford slow travel of any length of time. It’s a fair question, but one that mainly raises out of society’s point of view that ‘traveling is expensive’. We were able to experience what it was like to fully look forward to something. You can compare this to the monthly payments people want to spend on their mortgage, in the same way traveling matters to us. We were shocked to see how easy it was to spend money with more awareness when you truly want something. In our opinion it’s about having a job that makes a lot of money, it’s about dealing with money in the right way. We also apply this during our slow travel, when we work with a daily budget of around € 30,00 for the two of us. For a bike journey, this is an average amount, we have learned after biking for months.
This brings us to the next topic: the physical challenge. Slow traveling can be done in different ways, such as by train or with a campervan. We personally have thought about buying and renovating a campervan. We did two fun road trips during earlier travels and loved it, but our most memorable moments took place while being one with nature. Humans are made to move, not to daily sit still on a chair. Niels brought up the idea to embark on the bike journey first, which Stefanie at first thought was too extreme. This idea did get Stefanie to research it, which resulted in her being sold to the idea! We read blogs about other bike journeys and felt this would be a perfect fit for us. We got on the train to Brugge and bought two bikes. These bikes took us 2.700 kilometers further into Spain! For a bike journey, you don’t have to be trained or very sportive. You train as you go, we believe it’s a matter of the right attitude.
Your travel expenses are close to nothing during a bike journey, and you barely add up to any CO2 emissions. Often you will sleep in a tent during such slow travel which makes your impact on the climate is very small. Of course, there’s always the possibility to sleep in a hotel if needed. When the self-evidence of a nice hot shower is taken away, there is nothing more soothing than taking one in a hotel. Despite all this, our why of transportation method is something else. Slow travel by bike keeps challenging you which gives great satisfaction. You will always do this while being outside. You become one with nature and everything that felt ordinary before turns out to be special. We are extremely grateful for the beautiful nature around us and gain a lot of energy by spending time outside. The pace while being on a bike journey is perfect to take it all in. The feeling of wind, the smells, the sounds.. the experience is amazing and healthy! And that is just THE BEST!
Final thoughts on slow travel
Our final train of thought on the matter of slow travel by bike is the following. The human impact on the environment and climate (let’s not even get into animal welfare), is incredibly big. Unfortunately, usually in a negative way. Also, we play a part in this, but we think that all small efforts add up to a big result. This could be by eating plant-based once a week, stop giving useless gifts (or receiving them), go on a bike journey instead of going by plane. For more tips about a sustainable lifestyle, make sure to click here. We try to combine it all, but this isn’t necessary. Everything in life starts by taking small steps. Ask yourself along the way how far you can and want to go. Thinking you won’t make any difference, or that it’s too hard to make a difference is too simple. We see that differently.
Do you have more questions about slow traveling by bike? Or do you have questions about how you can implement sustainability into your daily life? Make sure to reach out:
Written by: Stephanie and Niels – Roads to movement
