Who we are
We’re Laura and Bruno. We met in Moldova, in 2018. Laura, then living and working in Sri Lanka as a science teacher, was summer-holidaying in eastern Europe (where else?); Bruno was cycling through it, having just pedalled his way to Azerbaijan. Sparks flew. One thing led to another. And before either of us could say “Sirimavo Bandaranaike” (erstwhile Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, and famously the world’s first female PM), we were living together on that verdant, sand-swept isle.
Fast forward five years. We’re engaged, we’re cycling around the world, and we’re hoping to combine Laura’s experience as a teacher, graphic designer and photographer with Bruno’s as a writer and digital journalist. Enter: On Our Bicycles!
What we’re trying to do
Some bicycle tours need more planning than others, but most need at least some. And even the best planned tours present dilemmas somewhere down the line. While research can be fun – no one knows better than us how easily it is to while away a Sunday (and the following Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday) flipping between Wikitravel, Caravanistan, Google Maps, travellers’ blogs and Instagram, getting lost in a reverie of living vicariously and fantasising about the future – it can also be arduous and cause headaches.
Partly this is because it’s impossible to know exactly what a place will be like, what you’ll want to get out of it or which direction you’d like to travel out of it until you’re actually there. (Therein lies the fun.) Partly it’s because there are actually very few information-based websites dedicated to bicycle touring. Caravanistan and Wikivoyage are invaluable resources, but they’re of limited use value to anyone travelling by bicycle.
And partly it’s because of the way travel bloggers tend to write. You might have noticed a lot of them look very similar. There’s a formula. Their domain names contain words like “wander”, “nomad” or “solo”; articles claiming to be informative are 90% waffle, so as to boost the word count and appease Google’s algorithm; and they offer lists of recommendations that do little more than aggregate Trip Advisor rankings and other bloggers’ lists. Basically, deference to search engine optimisation (SEO) has made many blogs nearly impossible to read.
Wherever possible, the information on this website is grounded in personal experience. Or, at the very least, it’s thoughtfully researched and filtered so as to be actually useful. The pictures are mostly our own, we won’t bombard you with links, and we won’t give you metre-by-metre instructions on how to find somewhere that’s clearly visible on Google Maps – you’re smarter than that. Equally, if we recommend somewhere, it’s because we have been there or spoken directly to someone who has. Between us, we have cycled many thousands of miles (or kilometres) in many countries, and we’ve travelled via other means (and lived) in many others. There are a small number of websites we’ve found really useful, and we hope On Our Bicycles will join their ranks.
We’re on social media!
(Clicking on one of the pictures below will automatically redirect to Instagram)
Thanks for reading!
P.S., we love you…
One last thing. If you like what we’re doing and would simply love to support us, there are four things you can do.
- The first (and easiest) is to subscribe to email updates. Having more subscribers is statistically proven to make web writers happier – it gives them (/us!) the feeling of receiving a tiny hug.
- Secondly, you could share one of our photo galleries or articles on social media. We really like the photos we’ve taken, and we love the idea that people out there in the world could be looking at them and smiling.
- Thirdly, a donation of any size, whether it be enough to pay for a fresh puncture repair kit or a full bike service, is always a welcome thing. See below.
- Finally, if somehow in this darned economic climate you’ve found yourself with a chunk of disposable income or expendable cash, we would be thrilled to bits if you could cover the cost of running this website. To do so, navigate to the top of this webpage and click the button in the black banner. Thank you!
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On Our Bicycles 