Why Bimbling By Bike?

The name of this site speaks to the way we get about. Not just when touring but more generally, as we live rurally and haven’t owned a car for the past three years. This means that every trip we make is considered and slow. Where others may jump in the car to run a quick errand, we work out how we can make the most of the trip to complete a few tasks and take in some scenery on the way. Or we’ll focus on one longer trip covering the whole day, like Beck riding to play with her brass band. Pretty much everyone else will rush about fitting brass band into a packed schedule, where Beck’s day will be solely about playing with her band and getting to and from the venue, by bike and train. Travelling as we do, you just have to relax into doing less. We sometimes joke that a therapist would charge good money for this kind of mindfulness training. It’s a compromise we initially tested out and have grown to love.

So, we already like bimbling by bike, but once you add a load of luggage onto the bikes we have very little choice. We are going nowhere fast, especially off road. Quite often we average about 10kph and only travel 30-40 miles in a day. The very definition of bimbling.

bimble

/ˈbɪmbl/ | informal•British | verb
walk or travel at a leisurely pace
gerund or present participle: bimbling

We choose to travel this way for a variety of reasons. Partly to reduce our environmental impact and use of resources, partly because we enjoy probing the boundaries of what we can do by bike, and partly to be seen to be doing it. No doubt everyone in the village thinks we are bonkers but if one of them also thinks they might give it a go if Sam and Beck can, that’s a win. Ultimately though, it has many more pros than cons for us. Yes, sometimes you get wet (not very often) and cold (more often) and close passed (more often still) but the positive effects on our physical and mental health, alongside the interactions with others and our environment far outweigh the convenience of jumping in a car, for us. Oh and, it’s great financially too. Yes, we spent a lot of money on our new bikes (covered in another blogpost soon) but they were easily paid for by the savings we have made through getting rid of two motor vehicles, without taking the money from the sale of those vehicles into account.

The speed and mode of transport impacts our interactions with others and the environment, we just love bimbling along and finding pleasure in the smallest things. Maybe we ride a section with an owl that takes flight as it spots us, or we smell some wild fennel in the hedgerow, or we have a chat with another cyclist, or we hear a wonky sounding frog. We can just take the time to engage with that. And when we arrive somewhere where others reside, we do so in humble, human-powered terms, looking for somewhere to eat, drink, or pitch a tent. The ultimate icebreaker.

Lastly, we love the flexibility of travelling by bike with our home onboard. We rarely make detailed plans, which allows us to adapt to what we experience. As an example, when we cycled the La Vélodyssée (EV1 section) in 2019, there was a heatwave forecast for part way through our trip, so we decided to minimise our exposure by increasing our mileage on the days either side of the one really hot day. We met a guy who was cycling ~140 miles per day, all the way to Gibraltar, with hotels and a flight back booked in advance. Let’s just say that he was very envious of our ability to adapt our plans…

As ever, we’d love to hear what you think about all this and what you love (or not) about bimbling by bike. Feel free to email us any comments...

We recently published a somewhat different / complimentary take on this on the Bike Worcester website.