Reaching Abla from an unintended and quite uninteresting angle might not have been so stunning, yet I find all the groceries that I wanted in the only shop open on a Sunday morning. Very satisfied pulling the trailer stuffed to its maximum capacity I enter a café to eat scrambled eggs and coffee, the two things I can’t prepare myself.
The tapestry of being self sufficient becomes complex. There, lilac flowers hanging to dry turning deeper purple against the wooden structure that once held corn to dry, I notice a beauty I would have admired while travelling past: now it’s where I am.
Seeing, sitting from an old barn, birds accidentally flying in while buzzing overhead from insects nestling in the wooden ceiling, I know there’s no turning back into a style that I once, and still, longed for.
This Snowpeak pot is a stainless steel tea kettle and was bought for the sole purpose of having it a spout. Using the plain rimmed MSR Alpine StowAway pot to pour chai was always a mess, with quite some amount of chai lost.
Suddenly I am less than a meter away from other people. Hordes of them are flowing past me and I am among a melange of holiday makers, culture seekers and youngsters going for adventure in Zagreb. Glad that I washed myself properly at the warm water basin before I mingled. Glad as well that I was born in 1972 where countries were still very much distinguished when I traveled through them.
This post starts with part I
Like all seasoned cyclists, nervous about setting up my tent somewhere is not an issue anymore. We have done this so often that I look at every spot in nature as a potential place to camp, even when I do not need to camp.
Days roll into weeks and being absorbed into our own little bulb where silence, peace and no-nonsense makes for a supporting base to create, grow and admire, I find it difficult to leave. Yet I know that out in nature all that I don’t have in my own quiet green cocoon is present. I call it the magic of plant life; a strange realization for the traveler I was.
What is the thing with winter camping? I was never into it but when I had to cross Patagonia I could not avoid cold temperatures, snow and frost. Heat reaching to a 50 degrees is not pleasant either but cold starts to sit in the bones and makes stiff. Cold has the easiness to disable pleasure and make the whole trip a grim nonsense ongoing rather than a pleasurable challenge.
Plan: 2 nights camping, 70 kilometer in 2.5 days. Done: 1 night camping, 60 kilometer in 2 days. Average speed: 9 (much pushing through mud). Level of happiness and satisfaction: high.
Have you decided to explore the world on a bicycle, then camping is part of it. As the outside seems so much more spooky than a house, the first thing that comes to mind is: ‘Is it not dangerous?’ On the contrary, in fact, it is not so much about danger. Much more camping is about management of daily changing circumstances and how to deal with them. Rather exciting and never dull indeed!
Cycling Cindy