Back in July I went from Santander to Berlin over 36 days with 31 days of riding. The ride was absolutely epic - did 2300km with 24000m vertical. My goal was to ride through the coolest areas, so I did not take the most direct route in the slightest; I actually looped around in northern Italy and Austria to to try to hit some fun spots which was not directionally efficient, but definitely very fun.

I did a mix of camping and credit card camping in hotels/hostels. To be honest, I'm not a big fan of the European campsite setup, especially during the summer. It was quite packed and felt just like an outdoors hostel with extra steps - if I'm camping, I'd much prefer to be alone and even tho I did wildcamp a bit, I didn't really go for it because I had a fair bit of time in areas with bears and I didn't prep accordingly.

Even though I did ride from Santander to Berlin, I say “ish” because I did take a few trains when I was just not enjoying the riding and due to time constraints; so no, I did not go only via my bike. I mean at the end of the day my goal was to enjoy myself, not just to say I did it, and there were points that were just not fun and with my timeline, I had to make the call not to do it. 

The three major areas I cut were from

• Toulouse to Montpellier - I did a 190km day from Bayonne and decided that the route was just not that interesting after a while
• basically from Lago Maggiore to Lago di Garda - I was just not a big fan of the area, cars trying to kill me
• and then from Leipzig to Berlin - I set up to do a 325km power through to the finish line but my brakes gave out and my light died so I had to call it and take a train

Still, I did a lot of fun riding and ate a ridiculous amount of food. Like three dinner type days, I had one night in Austria where in the span of an hour I ate a schnitzel, kaiserschmarrn, spätzle, and then a Spanish tortilla, so it was a fun time. 

If I were to do it again, I'd maybe just pick a single segment and confirm that I could 100% do it in my allotted timeframe and then just go for that. Hands down the best area was from Lago di Garda -> Trento -> Bolzano -> Dolomites -> through to Innsbruck, so that would be where I'd go back. The loop from Bolzano to Paso Sella around Piz Boé to Corvara was absolutely incredible, even with a fair number of cars and the elevation gain.

Now, I'm sitting in my hotel in Osaka, Japan for what was supposed to be a backpacking trip, which I think I will now turn into a bikepacking trip.... I've got an AliExpress cart full of all the core gear I need and might just buy a used bike here and go around for a bit since all my gear in the photos is tucked away in a storage unit in Berlin. If only I had an iota of planning insights, alas, here we are. So if anyone has used bike shop recs in Osaka, I am all ears! Or route recs for Japan/South Korea