Bicycle Touring in One Hour

Let the Bicycle Touring Pro be your guide and learn the basics of bicycle touring in one hour with this free 67-minute video and PDF starter guide. Download the PDF here!

The truth is, you probably can’t really learn everything there is to know about bicycle touring in just one hour (that’s just marketing mumbo-jumbo). But with this free video entitled “Bicycle Touring in One Hour” and the free Bicycle Touring Pro starter guide that you can download on this page, you’ll get all the information you need to start conducting your own bike tours anywhere in the world.

Bicycle Touring Is A Roller-Coaster Ride

Watch the “Bicycle Touring in One Hour” video above and you will hear how Darren Alff, the Bicycle Touring Pro, while traveling across the eastern United States, was taken in by a kind, handicapped woman, only to be thrown out into the dark, cold and rain a few minutes later by the woman’s fearful husband.

With the last of his energy, Darren cycles more than 10 miles across the state and races toward a nearby campground – hoping to find shelter from the rain before it really starts to pour. During his dark, nighttime bike ride toward the campground, Darren stops to talk to a woman who is out checking the mailbox in her front yard. He surreptitiously asks the woman if it might be possible for him to spend the night camping in her spacious yard, but the woman doesn’t get the hint and, instead, directs Darren toward the campground he was already headed toward – still at least 5 to 7 miles down the road.

After finally reaching the campsite, Darren is greeted by a friendly camp ranger who takes some of his money and then allows him to pick out his favorite campsite. The campground is entirely empty after-all. There isn’t a soul in sight!

Darren picks a nice, flat camping spot with a picnic table and a nearby tree, and then goes about setting up his tent. As soon as the tent is assembled, he jumps inside the tent and quickly changes out of his wet clothing and into something warm and dry.

Moments later, a car pulls up and parks just a few feet away from Darren’s tent. “Is it the Park Ranger?” Darren wonders. “Or is it someone coming to rob me?”

Turns out, it was the old woman Darren had spoken to just a few moments earlier – the woman who had been out checking her mail. After sending Darren to the campsite down the road, she realized that it would have been nice to have offered him a free place to sleep in her yard. So now, feeling somewhat guilty, the woman had driven to the campsite in the pouring rain, found Darren in his tent, brought him a big paper plate full of hot home-cooked food, and even gave him $20 USD to help him cover the cost of the campground for the night!

The point of the story is that bicycle touring is a roller coast rider. It’s not always easy. One moment you feel fantastic. The next moment you feel like you want to quit and go home. Then you hit a downhill or meet a new person and you can’t imagine quitting. You want to keep going… forever!

It’s the difficult, unplanned parts of bike touring that make it so memorable and rewarding in the end.

Why You Should Try Bicycle Touring For Yourself

When people ask me why I keep bicycle touring after 16+ years and after riding my bike through more than 50 different countries all around the world, I start by first telling them about the many benefits of bicycle touring. But I also tell them how, when I look back on the last 16+ years of my life, it’s my bike tours that I remember more than anything else.

In 2005, for example, I graduated from university and got my first official job working in Hollywood, California, but I remember my bike tour down the Pacific Coast of the United States that year more than anything else!

In other words, I find my experiences by bike to be more memorable and more rewarding than many of the other things that so many people aim to achieve in their lives. Graduating from university, getting a new job, buying a house, etc. When I look back on my experiences doing all those various things, it is the experiences I’ve had while traveling by bike that I remember most. And because I want to do as many big, memorable, exciting things in my life as I possibly can, I continue to go bicycle touring. It’s really that simple!

I like bicycle touring so much, I’ve not only spent the last 16 years of my life traveling across dozens of countries all around the world, but I’ve written four popular books about the subject, and have helped thousands of people conduct their own incredible bicycle touring adventures.

Remember: No Two Bike Tours Are The Same

That’s right! No two bike tours are the same. A lot of the information you find scattered across the Internet on the subject of bike touring is about one particular type of bicycle touring – or about cycling in a particular part of the world. But please remember this: the bike you ride, the gear you use, the items you choose to pack, the way you pack those things on your bicycle, and a whole host of other factors depends on the type of bike tour that you are conducting.

Day touring
Overnight touring
Credit card touring
Light touring
Ultra-light touring
Supported touring
Bikepacking
Mixed-Terrain Touring
Expedition Touring
Fully-Loaded Touring
Bicycle Travel

All of these terms are used to describe various types (or sub-types) of bicycle touring.

You Can’t Really Learn To Go Bicycle Touring In One Hour

There are people out there that say you don’t need to know anything about bicycle touring before you hit the road… or that you can learn everything there is to know about bicycle touring in one hour. But I don’t think that’s really true!

It takes more than 1 hour to learn to bike tour successfully. Bicycle touring is something you learn by first watching what others are doing, trying some of those strategies out out for yourself, and then adapting what you’ve learned for your own future purposes. Learning to bike tour is an experience!

While learning to bike tour in one hour may not be possible, it doesn’t take long to learn the basics of bike travel and then quickly get out on the road to try bicycle touring for yourself. Especially when you have the Bicycle Touring Pro at your side to help you along the way!

Download My Free Bicycle Touring Starter Guide

If you’re interested in learning to bike tour for yourself – whether it be close to where you live or in a country on the other side of the world – be sure to download my free bicycle touring starter guide. It’s a great way to learn the bike touring basics you’ll find so many others on the Internet charging money for.

Then, if you’re really serious about learning to bike tour, be sure to grab a copy of “The Bicycle Touring Blueprint” and discover my secrets for bicycle touring success – based on my 16+ years of bicycle touring all around the world in dozens of different countries.

Whether you want to go bicycle touring in deserts, forests, cities or jungles… you can go anywhere you want with “The Bicycle Touring Blueprint,” your step-by-step guide to bicycle touring success – handed to you on a silver platter, so that you have the best bicycle touring experience possible!

Get the book here & start bike touring today: www.bicycletouringbook.com
eBook & Paperback versions available + Worldwide Shipping

Question & Answer Time With The Bicycle Touring Pro

Watch the “Bicycle Touring in One Hour” video at the top of this page and stick around to the 17 minute mark and you’ll pick up some of my best bike touring secrets inside the Bicycle Touring Pro Q&A session – where I take your questions about bike touring and world travel, and give you an instant, immediate answers.

One of the questions I address during this ~~live~~ recorded bicycle touring webinar comes from a 17-year-old reader named Alex.

In June want to travel 1,050km + with a bicycle. Departure country is Ljubljana, Slovenia and destination is Berlin, Germany. What i should mention is i am only 17 years old, but i don’t see how this could in any scenario slow me down on my goal. I’ve set up my route and it should take me 5 days to arrive in Berlin if it goes by plan. So i’ve got couple of questions: How is it with Hotels/Motels? Should i plan it straight ahead or sleep in a tent? How should i carry all the bags? Should i pack small and carry it easily? Another thing worries me is Bicycle fixing – How do i prepare on possible bicycle fixing? – Alex

Alex should, at first, be congratulated for wanting to partake in a bike tour of any kind – let alone one that is so long and will take him across multiple European countries.

However, Alex is making one of the biggest mistakes I see so many first-time bicycle tourists making… and that is, he’s trying to cycle too far in the short time period he has created for himself.

Most bicycle tourists travel anywhere from 30-60 miles (50-100 kilometers) per day. But Alex would have to cycle nearly three times that distance each day if he plans to reach his destination 1,050+ kilometers away in time. For most beginner bicycle tourists, this is totally unrealistic.

It’s understandable for someone who is new to bicycle touring to want to pack as much distance into their bike tours is possible. After-all, most people only have a short amount of time off from work or school. So it’s okay to want to see as much of the world as possible during the short amount of time that you have free.

But the problem that occurs with most people trying to cover such long distances on their bike tours is that most people, given just a day or two on the bike, will quickly realize that there is no way they can sustain that sort of pace for days (and weeks) on end. You’d have to be a pretty fit, experienced athlete to cycle 210+ kilometers every single day, like Alex said he was planning to do.

It’s not impossible, I should note, but it’s probably not a good idea – especially for someone who has never conducted a bike tour before.

Every week at BicycleTouringPro.com I hear from people like Alex who have learned the hard way that traveling long distance on a bicycle is not as easy as it initially sounds. Far too many people hit the road and are unprepared for the obstacles they encounter. Far too many people plan to cover distances that are simply outside of their capabilities. And far too many people quit their bike tours prematurely due to poor planning or bad advice.

My goal as the Bicycle Touring Pro is to stop people like Alex from making the same mistakes that so many other people have made before him. It’s why I wrote “The Bicycle Touring Blueprint” and “The Essential Guide to Touring Bicycles.” It’s why I’ve written more than 1,000 free articles about bike travel here on the BicycleTouringPro.com website and hundreds of additional articles for other publications all around the world. And it’s why I create videos like this one – Bicycle Touring in One Hour.

I do it to help people, so they know what they are getting into when they hit the road. So they don’t make the same mistakes that so many others have made before them. And so they can return home safely from their bicycle touring adventures with amazing, beautiful memories they will remember for the rest of their lives.

Thank you for watching the free Bicycle Touring in One Hour webinar – brought to you by Bicycle Touring Pro. If this video, the free starter guide, The Bicycle Touring Blueprint, or any of the information here on the Bicycle Touring Pro website has helped or inspired you, please leave a comment below. I’d love to hear from you. And, of course, if you have any questions you think I might be able to help you with, feel free to ask.

Thanks so much for being a part of the Bicycle Touring Pro community… and I hope to see you out on the road sometime soon!