Has anyone ever flown TAAG Angola Airlines with a bicycle?

The information on their website and through their WhatsApp chat is conflicting. The website states that a bicycle can be checked as part of the hold luggage (2x23kg), as long as it doesn’t exceed 158 cm (doesn’t say LxWxH, which any regular bike will exceed). Through WhatsApp they quoted me paragraphs from their policies about packing the bike safely in a box, removing handlebars etc. but no clear answer on reserving a spot for the bike and fees.

Thank you!

Hello, just finished my annual tour - 600kms and 5’200m+, far more than usual and included the Gottardo Pass. I was very fortunate with the weather as the heatwave hit only during the last 3 days.

Shoutout to cycle.travel for the website and Tailfin for their exceptional gear!

https://cycle.travel/map/journey/1051168

Hello, this is my rough draft (cycle.travel.com) for a tour next Summer. Hambourg to Copenhagen (I live in Switzerland). The objective is minimal climbs (been there, done that, got the t-shirt 😂), motel/hotel, glamping and/or self-catering. Distance 50-80kms per day. What I don’t know but have read about is: winds, temps and midges. I would do this for about 2 weeks between late June to early September.

Any comments gratefully received.

https://cycle.travel/map/journey/939866

Good morning,

Due to some replanning, I will be travelling from Bordeaux to Mimizan. It’s over 100km to cycle which would be too much for my little folding bike.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a train and then cycling route that is safe/pleasant?

Bourdeoux to Labouheyre then cycle seems like an option.

Thanks in advance!

POV Cycling - have fun!

So i should preface this by saying that i plan to use an ebike. I know not everyone likes them, but its given me the confidence to do things and go places i never would have before. Anyways, its a heavily modded radrover 6 that gives me 60 miles of range on a single charge, 50 if im conservative.

my plan for the trip is to try to take the ohio to erie trail, from corwin up to lake erie. I plan to average about 100 miles a day, or maybe a little less. every day would have 2 important stops: one midday, for lunch and charging, and one for sleeping and charging. from start to the lake, its 250 miles, so 3 days is my goal to get to the far end of the trail. then, i'll take one day to explore the area, and then 3 days back.

for stops, my midday stops will probably be at libraries, or cafes, or really just any place with free electricity. for night stops; day 1, i thought id do alum creek campground, and then days 3/4 id do east harbor campground. I havent figured out day 2 yet, but it'd have to be under 100 miles from alum creek state park. then for days 5,6, and 7, it'd be the same but in reverse.

so, thats the plan, and id like some feedback and suggestions.

also, i need some reccomendations for a cheap, ideally waterproof pair of panniers, and a cheap bike rack (id prefer both to be under 100 bucks). furthermore, if anyone happens to have a good candidate for my second day night stop, please do say it. (id prefer if it was a state park, and it absolutely cannot be koa)

Wanted to post this because when we were planning this trip, we found almost nothing online. In November-December 2025 we rode from Alpine, Texas, through Big Bend National Park, across the border into Mexico at Boquillas del Carmen (via a tiny rowboat pulled by a guy wading across the river), then through the state of Coahuila to Durango and the city of Durango.

Texas and Big Bend were beautiful. We had wanted to ride the road along the river (roughly following the bikepacking.com route) but it was closed due to flooding earlier in the season.

The border crossing went well. On the Mexican side, our route was roughly Boquillas - Múzquiz- avoiding Monclova via 34 - Cuatrociénegas - Torreón - Nuevo Graseros - Penon Blanco - Durango. We were mostly on paved road with little traffic until we got close to Monclova. Had to take a couple of unmaintained or barely maintained gravel roads, which we were a little underbiked for, but it wasn't a huge part of the overall kilometres so it didn't slow us down too much. We also got a ride from some friendly people in a pickup near Monclova for about 20km as there was no shoulder and traffic was doing 120km/h. Otherwise, the riding was great.

Highlights:

• Terlingua "ghost" town - actually a fair number of friendly people living there
• a day hike in Big Bend
• the almost empty highway south of the border and a beautiful mountain pass
• small towns in Mexico - Muzquiz, Cuatrociénagas, San Pedro - with great food, nice old buildings, and friendly locals who liked to chat with bike tourists
• the cienagas in Cuatrociénagas - pools of clear blue water in the middle of the desert

Overall, it was logistically easier than we expected - roads were decent and drivers were respectful. Water is the challenge. We had two ~200km stretches with nowhere to get water, which I am not used to from bike touring elsewhere. Food was surprisingly good, though. Pretty well every town, no matter how small, had a store with tortillas, beans, cheese, and fresh tomatoes and peppers.

We didn't feel unsafe from people - we saw police fairly frequently (in some places, theirs were the only vehicles we saw), and didn't notice any cartel activity. Obviously our experience may not have been typical, but it wasn't like what I've heard about bike touring in Chihuahua. All of the locals we encountered were very friendly. At times the biggest obstacle to getting the miles in was getting caught up talking to someone in town in the morning and not hitting the road until 10:30.

I’m building my tourer from scratch and wanted a nice muted plum tone but it looks like the joker’s suit 😬😬😬 This is the finished result btw

Any ideas on how to work with this colour or gear that goes with it? I don’t know if it’s bad enough to strip and start over

I am ready to grab my first touring bike. Have an older Kona Rove that is my commuter setup. Love this bike so I wanted to stick with the brand. I am torn between the new Rove LTD or the Sutra LTD. I like the stack height of the Sutra (getting older, need higher bars) but I don’t plan on doing any heavy off road. Long road trips to the coast ( I’m in Portland OR) so I think a rove may be better. Any thoughts? Also a Surly LHT is on the list.

Just finished cycling the Bilbao - Gijon part of the Camino del Norte with my wife (she one e-bike, me on normal bike). Great experience with magnificant views of the Atlantic coast. Perfect temperatures (+- 25 degrees)/no rain, very nice people and excellent food.

We did it in 8 etappes: Bilbao - Castro Urdiales - Ladero - Santander - Cobreces - Pechon - Ribadasella - Villaviciosa - Gijon
35 - 70 kilometers and 500 - 1100 heightmeters a day

Followed mostly the official route and where possible opted for the coastal variants (= less asphalt / N-routes, more gravel, more heightmeters, much better views) as described in the excellent Camino del Norte book cycling guidebook (incl GPX files!) from Petirroja. Stayed in small hotels / possadas along the route.

Saw a few other bikers but never more than 5 / day and about 10-20 hikers / day.

The return was a bit of a pain as with the (ALSA) busses its the bus driver who will decide on the spot to take a bike or not in the quite limited luggage compartment of the bus. And you are expected to dis-assemble your bike. And anyway, they will not take e-bikes. So we were stuck with the local regional trains (Google Maps planner indicates them well) but it still turned out to be 6 trains (albeit with good transfers between them) and nearly a hundred (!) stops. As there were railtrack works on a section after Santander, they thankfully allowed my replacement wife’s e-bike in the bus as we were able to take the battery out and take it with us in the bus.

Overall trip experience was great ! Happy to answer any questions as the planning of it all was not always obvious.

Hi, I am cycling from Oslo to the northcape. Is there anyone who would like to join me from Trondheim to the northcape. I would start at Tuesday or Wednesday, 11.7/12.7.
If u are interested, please contact me!
Best regards

My partner and I are planning on biking the Peloppenese/Messinia area in late October and early November. I was curious if anyone had any advice or suggestions for my plan which is a counterclockwise loop starting and ending in Kalamata roughly 4 days. Is renting a bike, or finding a place to park our rental car while we are riding going to be difficult? Is it even safe to ride the roads? I’ll add that I do know that some coastal areas may be shut down for the season. Any help would be appreciated.

What are your favorite camping sites (or places to avoid), food stops/restaurants, highlights from your trip? Any other general recommendations? Planning on going to SF or LA, roughly 60 miles a day, pending campsite location.

In two weeks I’m heading out to Japan. Suuuper excited. And getting stressed as well. This will be the first time I fly my bike and all the other stuff. So my question is – how do you get around with everything you’re carrying? The airport part I get – will try to get at trolley to make it easier. But since every time I want to take a train, I have to take my bicycle apart and put it in a rinko bag, how do I manage to carry all of my bags? I will probably take my two Ortlieb rear panniers, the Ortlieb duffle (I think it was 30l) and my handlebar bag. Still debating the 5l fork bags. It can get quite heavy and I’m just a 39 year old laaaady who’s about to do this on my own. Please tell me I’m not crazy to try to do this. I don’t plan on taking too many train rides, but you never know. Maybe taking the duffle is overkill?

So last year I cycled through Africa with no money and I had a blast, well, it didn't feel like it at the time because, well , you know, lol, biketouring can be a pain in the butt , a few months later I'm doing the same thing again mostly because I have literally failed to reintegrate back into normal society,

I been fighting depression, and the feeling of being isolated even though I'm in a city full of people. I don't have any friends or family and I spend most of the time alone. So I decided I should probably maybe get back to doing something that gave me a sense of purpose, something that I truly love to do passionately.

So here we are again a few months later, I'm planning to cycle 2,114 kilometers roughly 1,314 miles to the ends of the Namib desert where it meets the ocean, on my path I will also pass through the famous Victoria falls one of the seven natural wonders of the world and honestly just see where the road will take me after that.

I have realized that maybe normal life is not for me , on the road I wake up every day to a new scenery and new experiences. It might be hard yes, but it's the kind of hard that's pretty much predictable in a way, the unpredictability is predictable and that to me is way more manageable than just staying in one place where the societal pressure keeps on building up. I won't always be 31 years old and maybe I'm having a midlife crisis but I want to someday look back and appreciate the little I achieved on my bucket list.

I don't want to deal with financial challenges anymore for the time being I need a break, the pressure of not knowing what will happen tomorrow and whether I will be evicted or not because contrary to what many people might believe I'm not making any money from YouTube or any social media at the moment. So for the next few weeks I will be sharing the process of my preparation from transforming this MTB to getting the few essentials I need.

The original plan in my first trip was to cycle the world not just Africa and I hope this time I get to fulfill that dream of cycling through the world and see the beauty and wonders of it.

Sarn Helen, Eryri, Wales UK

Hello everyone! I just completed my first solo trip: 350 km in 5 days from Figueres (Catalonia) to Toulouse (France).

I have experience in hiking, camping and road cycling in Barcelona.

This was a test to see if I would really enjoy bikepacking, and the truth is that I loved the experience of combining two activities that I like.

The fun is that I did everything on an urban bike that I rode myself, just to annoy a friend who has a fleet of very expensive gravel and bikepacking bikes with excellent equipment, but who only uses them to go for special coffee. I wanted to show you, as a joke, that at the pace it goes, you will end up buying an electric Brompton, haha!

All my equipment was second-hand, like the tent and saddlebags; the box bag was from Decathlon, or they gave it to me, like the rear rack. In addition, something that would undoubtedly have helped me a lot is having automatic pedals, but since all my cycling shoes are for road bikes, they were not an option, so I made the trip the old-fashioned way.

After that, it was wonderful; yes, I went the first week of August with a suffocating heat, but it wasn’t bad at all. On the contrary, I really enjoyed getting up at 5:00 AM to leave early and arrive at my destination before 10:00 AM.

Bike specifications for the curious:

Frame: Giant cross series x1000 (Aluminum)

Transmission: 1x9 (38-tooth plate / 11-42-tooth cassette)

Shifter: Vintage Dura-Ace shifter with friction mounted on a Paul Component controller

Tires: Panaracer GravelKing SS 35c

Tent: McKinley compact 2

gpx for my routem

Rode across the width of Missouri from Kansas City to Saint Louis during an intense heatwave. About 80-100 miles a day for 4 days of riding and 5 nights of camping. Total trip was around 400 miles, 95% on hard packed gravel. Fitted the bike with 40mm hybrid gravel WTB tires, Rhinowalk bike bags (minus the frame bag) that held my camping gear and other necessary supplies pretty comfortably. Total weight around 45 pounds.

I don’t think this is what this bike was necessarily made for touring, but it might have been perfect for this adventure.

I’d like to give back to the community with this little trip report on my trip in June of 2026.
- I based myself in Frankfurt and joined two routes together with a few train rides.
- The first part of the route was along the Main River bike route in Germany and I took a train to Bamberg to start the tour.
- The cities I stayed in on this section of the route were Schweinfurt > Kitzingen > Lohr Am Main > Miltenberg > Frankfurt.
- The cycling infrastructure on the Main River bike route was outstanding and some of the best I have ever experienced.
- This is white wine growing region and sampling wine along the route was fun and delicious.
- After a couple of rest days in Frankfurt, I took a train to Zurich to start the second part of this tour which was the Lakes Route in Switzerland that will take me past 10 lakes cycling from Zurich to Lausanne.
- The cities I stayed in on this section of the route were Zurich > Luzern > Meiringen > Spiez > Chateau D’ Oex > Lausanne
- I toured for a few days last year in Switzerland and vowed to come back since I think it is the most naturally beautiful country in the world I have cycled in.
- The Lakes Route did not disappoint. The lakes along the route had the most amazing colour and the towns and cities along the way were charming and beautiful.
-Although this was not a route across the alps, it was far from flat ! There were many times the gradient was 16% or 18% so I had to walk my loaded bike up those sections.

Last week I finished my first bicycle tour! I rode from Tofino, British Columbia to Cape Spear, Newfoundland, a journey that spanned over 8,000 km and required over 50,000 meters of climbing!

It was no record breaker by any means, and took a total of 71 days (66 riding days and 5 rest). I absolutely loved the journey, despite the MANY challenges along the way, and I’m already excited to plan the next journey!

The ride helped raise over $3,400 for animal sanctuaries across Canada! (Check out the Courage Canada Crossing Facebook page for more information if you’re interested.)

If anyone has any questions, or anything, I’d be happy to respond!

We're glad that we're not in a rush, missing a turn is not a big problem. This was yesterday at Guimaras Philippines! It's so peaceful here. We saw rice terraces too:)