I left my Czech home town Opava on 2nd of September and returned on 13th of October 2016. I am very thankful to my friends and relatives in Opava for their help and support. About half way through the tour I took a 6 day break in Croatia in Vodice and vacationed with my Czech friends. I rode about 2500km on my approximately 50kg Surley Long Haul Tracker bike. I used a combination of ferry and bus to return to Opava from Patras, Greece.
I visited 8 countries – Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece and Italy. I didn’t need a passport the whole trip, my Czech identification card was sufficient in hotels and the border crossings which were checking people.
Weather was mostly good. I had rain showers one day in Austria and I took 2 rain days – one in September in Austria and one in October in Greece. I biked south to follow the warm weather.
People were nice to me and I also tried to be nice to everyone. This was my first bike tour. I was thinking about it and planned it for quite some time. Overall it didn’t differ to much from my expectations.
I was very happy with my equipment, nothing broke. I had my chain replaced in a shop in Croatia. I cleaned and lubed the chain as needed. I cleaned the rims every other day and I checked all the bolts and tightened them occasionally. On couple occasions my breaks overheated. I was expecting it given the terrain. I stopped immediately to let the breaks cool down and to avoid further problems. I had 3 spare tubes, a spare tire, spare spokes, break pads, cables, housing, nuts and bolts … I also had all the tools to take the whole bike apart. I was happy I didn’t need most of this.
Navigation was very important. I mostly used the iPhone app mapy.cz. Most of the time it worked well but few times the road was just gone or was in really bad shape. I occasionally looked at Outdooractive, Bikemap or Google maps. I used offline maps when possible but I still needed internet for calculating directions or finding places. My US T-Mobile cell phone plan includes the Simple Global feature. It worked perfectly and it provides free data, text and 20c/min calling in all the countries I visited. In general the data is only at 2G speeds but thanks to some promotions I also received higher speeds at times. I tried to avoid high traffic areas even at high cost of added miles or climbing hills. I have a Topeaks phone case that I could mount on my handlebars. This case was very practical when I was in large towns and needed to make a lot of turns. The case totally enclosed the phone and protected the phone screen but sometimes there was glare or the phone overheated in the sun. I should have also brought a phone mount without the screen protector to avoid the glare and overheating.
I also had an iPad Mini which I used when I was not biking. The phone was very critical for me. I was very careful with it. Perhaps I could have brought a backup phone with me. It would be hard to continue the tour if I broke or lost the phone.
In general I was following Eurovelo routes 9 and 8, but I diverged significantly at a few places. I took the ferries to couple Croatian islands and rode south on the islands to avoid the high traffic on the coastal Adriatic Highway. I usually spent 1-2 hours every evening preparing my route and exploring lodging options for the next day.
I camped only 3 times. Most of the Adriatic areas have lot of rooms for rent and hotels everywhere along the coast and there are not so many camp sites. Also the price difference is not very large and of course a bed is more comfortable after a hard day of biking. With a few exceptions I was allowed to take my bike in the room. I asked about lodging at restaurants and at houses with posted signs – rooms for rent. I also used booking.com or hotels.com apps to look for lodging. Most of the time I didn’t have any problem to find lodging, only couple times it took a little longer or I had to move on to another place.
As far as adventures I had a few, most are described in my blogs from the trip. The hardest stage physically was over the mountains in south Albania. Some of the pitches were so steep and long that I could barely bike them on my heavy bike. The hardest stages mentally were in central Albania where I biked through some areas with a lot of garbage, odor, defunct factory and bad roads.
My credit and debit cards and Apple pay worked perfectly everywhere. Thank you my wonderful financial institutions. I spent about $3000 from leaving Opava till returning to Opava, this is approximately $70 per day. It does not include travel insurance and medical insurance costs. It includes the ferry and bus for the return portion of the trip.
