How far is a long way to ride your bike?

What is a distance that seems impossible at the time but after you've ridden it seems not so far any more?

Can I make it to that point and back again, simply by pedalling?

It's these type of questions that have fuelled my cycling adventures from the beginning, and that begins in Oxford with me aged 7:

I remember riding with my dad and brother to a place called Sandford which is just along the Thames towpath from the city of Oxford. We made pâte sandwiches and I distinctly remember having a can of Quattro, which was a popular fizzy drink in the 80s. I don't recall all that much of the day except the feeling of accomplishment from getting to a seemingly far off place by pedal power alone. It was a great track alongside the river, we stopped for our picnic in a field en-route and it probably took us all day to ride the 20km there and back. It was my first taste of an adventurous ride. The first of many.

There then followed many years of just being a kid, and then a teenager on a bike; having fun in the woods with my friends, pulling skids, building jumps, falling off and getting back on again, but always exploring my local area more and more. The freedom to ride to a friend's house without the need to rely on my parents for a lift there, to push the boundaries of how far seems a long way to ride. In short, I was becoming an adventurous cyclist. I'm not a competitive type of guy, so I never joined any bicycle clubs or wanted to race, so pushing my limits was always a gradual process. It was always fuelled by wanting to explore more, to see what's over the next ridge, to see the view from the top of that hill.

I remember my first 50 mile ride and running out of energy only half way. Then my first 100 miler and being in pieces at the end. Then in my thirties finally riding 200 miles in one day on an audax in south Wales. Looking back on that now it still seems quite extraordinary that you can travel so far on a bike even if my remberance of the suffering that I went through that day has mellowed with time. I always had feeling of being amazed though, that I could actually cover such a distance just by the simple act of turning the pedals over and over until I finally returned home.

Fast forward to today and I'm almost 40,000 kilometres into a two year bikepacking adventure. Riding around Europe, looking for a new place to live seemed like an obvious way to change a life that I was getting bored of. I've reached turning points on this journey where I've got to a place and thought to myself 'Where to next?'. I've then decided on a place on a map and just started riding there, even though that place is usually in another country that could be thousands of kilometres away. These seemingly huge distances have compressed into just a certain number of days of traveling; across a mountain range, following a river valley from its source to the coast, international borders blurring from one into the next.

I was in south west Spain last autumn and had some time to wait until flights to Los Angeles were cheap enough for me to want to fly there for the winter. Rather than just ride in circles around there, I did a quick distance check from Plasencia to Oxford, and it being approximately 1800km, decided to ride home. It took two and a half weeks, of which it seemed like two of those weeks were into a headwind, but I got there through the simple act of just turning the pedals, one after the other.

So in reality the distance from A to B is just hours, or days of pedaling. If you have the time and determination then almost any distance is achievable. You don't need to be a superhero, a racing cyclist, or even even a gnarled world tourer to cross a continent on a bike. Just an idea, a sense of adventure and being inspired by what's over the next hill.....