The Ride Back: Bikepacking 714 km in less than 48 hours

One day, I found an old map with a 700 kilometer long cycle route from my home in Oslo to Copenhagen. I remembered making the route as a young teenager, 30 years ago, dreaming about doing the ride in less than 48 hours.

I never did it.

I’m no stranger to the joys of bikepacking: The campsites, the sunsets, the wind in your face, the sound of the sea, the shifting seasons, the campfires.

Still, 30 years after I made the route on the map, I felt there was something missing.

I had somehow lost sight of the young teenager still living deep inside me. I needed to reconnect with my younger self, searching for the youthful joy of diving in at the deep end, not quite knowing what would happen, or if I even would make it.

And I knew that the best way of doing that, was simply to grab the map, pack my gear, jump on the bike … and go!

…

You might already have guessed it, this movie is about bikepacking, or maybe you would rather call it bike touring. We can still be friends. Let’s call it bikepacking just for the record. It’s a movie about realizing that adventure isn’t necessarily about traveling to far away places, adventure is here, right at our doorstep, we only need to open our eyes.

It’s a movie about bikepacking in Scandinavia, through Norway, Sweden and Denmark, but truth is, it could have been more or less anywhere.

It’s a movie about traveling light, and if you want to perceive that as a metaphor for a way of life, I’m perfectly happy with that. Isn’t the act of bikepacking just that? A metaphor for how many of us would like to live our lives? In other words, it’s a movie about simple living, searching for all the little things that outdoor life, or friluftsliv, as we call it in Norway, really is about. And maybe above all, it’s a movie about love.


The movie was first shown during the Norwegian outdoor movie tour Utefilm (https://www.utefilm.no) autumn 2022.



Filmed with Fujifilm XT-3 (equipped with XF35 f1.4 and XC15–45 f3.5-5.6) and the GoPro Hero 9.

Music supplied by Artlist.

Bike used for cycling to Denmark in less than 48 hours: A custom built Surly Cross Check.

#bikepacking #biketouring #cycling