Could you ditch comfy B&B stops whilst cycle touring? And carry everything you need on a bike? First-time bikepacker Deepti took on the challenge to travel light and cycled 750 miles from Yorkshire to Orkney. In this blog she shares everything she learned, so you can create your own bikepacking adventure.

Have you ever wished that you could really see a country?

Experiencing the beauty of the flora and fauna, watching the landscapes shift and change. Finding hidden paths so pretty, you wonder how they can possibly be deserted.

Whiling away hours in cafés and pubs, indulging in treats and getting fit along the way.

Simplifying your day so your only decisions are:

• where you’ll go
• what you’ll eat
• and where you’ll sleep.

If you’re nodding along with me, you should definitely consider bikepacking. And in this blog, I’m going to do my very best to convince you to plan your own adventure.

Starting out in bikepacking

Choosing bikepacking over cycle touring was a conscious decision. You can split hairs about the difference between the two, but to me bikepacking is a lightweight business.

With a much lighter bike, I found the need to have any prior fitness level pretty low. Prior to the trip, I could only describe myself as a low-key hobby cyclist of about three years.

I’d get out for a two or three hour ride every other weekend in the summer, with long periods out of the saddle over winter.

Speed-focused cycling has never been my thing, and I also fervently dislike the pressure to keep up on group rides.

Planning my bikepacking adventure

It was summer 2018 and my husband and I had 750 miles of cycling to plan from Yorkshire to Orkney. I decided I could comfortably cover 40 to 60 miles a day in two weeks.

To start planning our route, we immediately turned to the National Cycle Network (the Network).

I unreservedly celebrate Sustrans at this point because the Network is a fantastic and reliable source of safe, traffic-free and low-traffic long distance routes. (Find a route on the National Cycle Network).

I took my gravel bike with its slightly chunkier tyres on this bikepacking trip, but I have done a lot of cycling on the Network on road tyres.

I used a mapping website called Ride with GPS to link different routes on the Network and put this overall route into my entry-level cycle computer. The Network is lovingly signed by Sustrans though. So if you don’t have a cycle computer, you can follow the little red signs, stopping just occasionally to check your map.

Fueling up 

On a trip like this your days become orientated to all the delicious food your body needs and deserves. What's more, every slice of cake and flake of pastry is guilt-free.

We never really found it a challenge to find a supermarket, café or pub. Only in the upper Highlands did this require a little planning.

And whenever you do see a large supermarket, remember that’s a great loo stop. A highlight was the breakfast pastries, toasted each morning on our homemade beer can stove. Followed by a fry-up just five or 10 miles later.

Sunsets, stars, and sunrises

I’d planned the trip to really see and experience more of the UK. When cycling, the scenery doesn’t whip by like it does in a car or train. The lazy, ambling pace of life offers you a more intimate connection with the countryside.

At the same time, you see much more than you could by foot. It’s hard to explain the freedom and sheer joy of meandering through our beautiful countryside on a sunny day. This was added to by the knowledge that ahead of us lay a well-deserved dinner and the thrill of sleeping under the stars.

Bikepacking made me feel as though I didn’t have a care in the world. Honestly, give it a go, no matter how short the time or modest the distance. As Dr Pepper would say, "what’s the worst that could happen?"