#cycletouring

One of the  reasons I love travelling by bike so much is you get to take in your surroundings at a slower pace, and notice things you might miss in a car. You can also stop with a lot less fuss. While bike touring through Spain and Portugal last year I couldn’t get enough of the crazy colours, textures, tiles and patterns on the front of the buildings there. Here are some of my favourites.

Camping, Zgornje Jezersko, Slovenia

If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home. - James Michener

Don’t be scared to walk alone. Don’t be scared to like it. - John Mayer

Our footprints always follow us on days when it’s been snowing. They always show us where we’ve been, but never where we’re going. - Winnie the Pooh

What if I fall? Oh, but my darling, what if you fly? ―Erin Hanson

Trust me, it’s paradise. This is where the hungry come to feed. For mine is a generation that circles the globe and searches for something we haven’t tried before. So never refuse an invitation, never resist the unfamiliar, never fail to be polite and never outstay the welcome. Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience. And if it hurts, you know what? It’s probably worth it. - Richard, ‘The Beach’ (Alex Garland)

The impulse to travel is one of the hopeful symptoms of life - Agnes Repplier

I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can’t reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.

I am never happier than when I am alone in a foreign city; it is as if I had become invisible. - Storm Jameson

The goal is to die with memories not dreams

As soon as I saw you, I knew an adventure was about to happen. - Winnie the Pooh

It is a big and beautiful world. Most of us live and die in the same corner where we were born and never get to see any of it. I don’t want to be most of us. - Oberyn Martell, Game of Thrones

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries. - Aldous Huxley

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. - Helen Keller

When a man is a traveller, the world is his house and the sky is his roof, where he hangs his hat is his home, and all the people are his family. - Drew Bundini Brown

To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world. - Freya Stark

Don’t call it a dream, call it a plan

With the right mindset and spirit, only the sky is the limit

As you travel solo, being totally responsible for yourself, it’s inevitable that you will discover just how capable you are! - Unknown

Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents. - Italo Calvino

It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to. - J.R.R Tolkien