#bikelife vs #vanlife

Last year, researching my latest book, I cycled 6,000 miles from southern Spain to Nagorno-Karabakh, the war-ravaged and disputed region of the Caucasus. Despite government warnings not to go anywhere near the place, you should have a look at Nagorno-Karabakh if you get a chance. It's truly gorgeous. But conflict zones are not what this post is about, unless we're talking about the one that was inside my head.

During the majority of my five months on the road, I suffered truly awful weather. I would've been better off on a jetski. During yet another abandoned day on a sodden French campsite I downloaded an e-book about #vanlife, y'know, the concept of converting a van into something habitable and then living on the road. The idea suddenly appealed, having all the freedom of cycling but with the ability to remain dry even in the worst of weathers. In the weeks that followed, every time I sheltered drippily in a shop doorway, which is to say several times each and every day, a van would pass by as if to mock me. "Ditch the bike, son," its engine seemed to purr. "Get yourself a nice, dry van."

So this year I did, a Transit. I used plastic storage boxes and sheets of wood to create a very modular bed and seat arrangement, and I covered the whole lot with cushions. It was very comfortable. I even hung a photo of my girlfriend's dog on the wall to make it feel like home.

I decided to tour around Britain in my new mobile home. Things started well. The first time it rained, I smiled to myself. Ah-ha! This was better than cycling. The raindrops bounced off my windscreen rather than my forehead. The ends of my fingers remained entirely unwrinkled. Van 1, Bicycle 0.

But over the coming weeks, I learnt some other stuff.

Somewhere in England's south-west, I came to the top of a steep hill. I slowed and looked down the slope. Something was missing from this situation, I thought. Ah, yes. The exhilaration! When you reach the top of a hill on a bicycle, there's a sense of achievement but also the expectation of a fast and joyous descent. On this occasion, however, I drove down the hill feeling dead inside.

Of course, I might have been glad of the engine at the bottom of the next hill, but over time I realised the van robbed my journey of its highs and lows. Yes, I could drive sixty miles in a single hour whereas on my bike the same distance would take me all day, but it would be a day full of challenging ups and delicious downs, of country smells, of feeling the wind in my ever-thinning hair, of rain showers and sunshine but mostly rain showers and, importantly, of being able to guiltlessly fill my face with pizza, cake and beer at the end of it all. In short, on a bike, it would have been a day full of adventure. The most adventurous thing I did in my van was attempt to listen to Radio One.

To be honest, in my van I still guiltlessly filled my face with pizza, cake and beer but without the expended calories I just got fat.

But that wasn't all. Often in end-of-tour blog posts, cyclists write about what they learned on their voyages. One typical conclusion is that the world is full of kind and wonderful people. I wrote the same thing after my 22,000-mile European capital tour six years ago. When you're on a bicycle, the other people you meet show their best side. Perhaps because they see you as adventurous or eccentric or penniless or, at the very least, unthreatening - after all, cycle-by shootings are rare - they open up to you with smiles, warmth and generosity. Well, let me tell you, that's not what they bloody well do if you travel in a van in the UK. In a van, they look at you suspiciously, ask why you parked near their house and are thirty seconds from calling the Paedo Hotline. After some of the looks I received, I wondered if my new, fuller beard had them mistaking me for Charles Manson. I started to get worried. Maybe I was a monster. Perhaps my mind had blacked out that time I'd shanked a pensioner or kicked a puppy to death.

Maybe it doesn't matter what other people think of you. Still, I'd rather someone see me as an eccentric, unthreatening peasant than a highly punchable pariah. Life is better from a bicycle seat. This is just a roundabout way of saying my van is back on the market and next year I'll return to touring slowly and damply on a bicycle. It's only water after all. Lots and lots of water. #rainlife

No, I'm Sorry, You Can't Cycle-Tour for Free

I've read a couple of blog posts recently whose titles have suggested it's possible to cycle-tour entirely for free. When you read the blog's content, however, you realise it isn't actually possible, or you can only get close to free by behaving like a selfish arse, taking advantage of people, sometimes people with a lot less than you have. I don't want to be a selfish arse.

That said, you can cycle-tour for very, very little. Last summer three complete strangers and I tried an experiment. We wanted to see whether, on an extremely small budget, it was possible to cycle a long distance: approximately 3,500 miles along Europe's western coast from Liverpool in the UK to Gibraltar on the Mediterranean. Our budget had to cover everything except travel tickets (in our case, one ferry ticket) and major repairs to bikes, and so our minimal funds had to include all food, fuel to cook the food, drinks, accommodation, bike consumables like inner tubes and spokes, and anything else we might need along the way. It would also have to cover bottles of single malt whisky, diamond tiaras and trips to the opera, but you won't be surprised to learn that we didn't spend money on any of those.

Importantly, we wanted to do this in a sustainable way. This meant not stealing stuff or raiding bins, since one day the supermarket bins might be locked for good, or – who knows? – people might stop throwing so much food away. It also meant not using sites like Warm Showers or Couchsurfing. I know that I move around too much to offer a future bed to a fellow cyclist and so it would be unfair to take advantage of this free service without returning the favour. Sheets have to be washed. Water has to be heated. That would just be passing the cost on to someone else, and we didn't want to do it like that.

We set the daily budget at just £1 for each cyclist, which at the time was approximately US$1.50 or €1.40. It's not much, but when you shop carefully and supplement your food by foraging and fishing, it's just about doable. Oddly, it's easier to get by on so little in a relatively expensive country like the UK than it is in generally cheaper places like Spain and Portugal. Britain's huge, ubiquitous supermarkets each carry a massive range of budget lines – a large sliced loaf of bread for 40p ($0.60, €0.56), a pot of strawberry jam (that's jelly for US cyclists) for 27p ($0.40, €0.38) and a tub of peanut butter for 60p ($0.90, €0.84) – whereas in Spain, the big supermarkets tended to be on cycle-unfriendly roads and their cheapest lines aren't that cheap anyway, and so we usually ended up buying from less economical, tiny village supermarkets. Luckily, Spain was abundant in free, roadside fruit, especially figs, and these are great once your digestive system has worked out how to cope with the onslaught.

Usually in France, Spain and Portugal we wild-camped. Wild-camping is fine but, for peace of mind, it's better to stay legal. For this reason, throughout England and Wales, we asked farmers if we could stick our tents in the far corner of an unloved field. Of the twenty or so people we asked, only two refused and they were tenant farmers; our staying there would have caused problems if the landowner had found out. Sleeping at the farms was great. Unlike when wild-camping, we could set up early, wake up when our bodies wanted to and get a comfortable night's sleep in a field with no nasty surprises, although we did share one with fifteen curious bullocks who looked like they wanted to kick our heads in.

Did we manage it? Yes, we did. Just. It can be done for very little and without taking advantage of anyone. That said, I can't recommend it unless it's your only option. Wild-camping and frugal dining hides you away from hotels, camp sites, restaurants, bars and all those other places where you're likely to meet people and, for me, it is finding interesting and inspiring, or wacky and weird, people that makes a bike tour special. And, for that reason alone, I won't be touring again on a budget of £1. But if my finances deteriorate in future, it's reassuring to know I can always afford a nice, long bike ride. I'll just need to get used to the figs again.

The Sweet Stink of Victory

One week left! It's just seven days until, after a victorious six months that have included sixteen glorious countries, and Liechtenstein, I can finally climb off the saddle for winter. That's if the saddle doesn't come off before then. It's falling apart. So are my handlebar grips, held together as they are with duct tape. And so are most of my clothes. Falling apart, that is, not held together with duct tape. Though that's an idea.

These last few weeks have been a lot harder than any that came before. For a start, there has been the heat, but I've already whinged about that and so I'll shut up about it. But to avoid the worst of the heat, I've been setting off at first light every day to grab at least an hour or two of cool morning air. It's been a bit like having a job. What am I talking about? Has it bollocks! This has been fun. Hard, but fun. It's nothing like having a job.

But the biggest difficult has been the lack of rest days. Because I need to get back to somewhere near Malaga airport for a flight to Majorca for the Open University's astronomy residential that kicks off in a week and a half, I need to be done by the 7th. And to finish by then, and to complete the rest of the route, it means I'll only have managed to have had two days off the bike since the 24th July. That's not enough. My legs are tired, my face is burnt and, worst of all, my trainers absolutely stink.

The Spanish road system hasn't helped, leading to extra, totally unnecessary miles. Spain has upgraded a lot of its A-roads to motorways, meaning that there is no longer a bicycle-friendly A-road between some major towns, just a motorway. I'm not supposed to go on motorways. I've sneaked on a couple when there really was no other option, ignoring the blaring horns of trucks warning me of my indiscretion. Although I've yet to be stopped, I was once beeped by the rozzers coming in the opposite direction. I'm not sure what they would have done if they'd been on my side of the road. Lucky for me, Spain abolished the death sentence in 2009.

Portugal is even more annoying. It didn't even bother to upgrade its A-roads to motorways. It just designated some bits of them with an IP number and that means faster traffic, minimal to zero hard shoulders and definitely no bikes. I tried one of those but I nearly cacked myself, and that really wouldn't have helped the trainers. I got off at the next turnoff and had a lie down.

But back to Spain. Between now and the 7th I need to get to and from Gibraltar to tick off my last capital for the year and, looking at the map, I'm really not sure how I'm going to manage that. Even the best one I can find only shows motorway access to Gibraltar. It looks like I'll be sneaking on another. Or does it still count if I arrive by hot air balloon?

So, one week from today, I will be sat drinking a large, icy beer on a deserted beach somewhere on the Costa del Sol. But, I hear you cry, there are no deserted beaches on the Costa del Sol. There will be when my trainers arrive.