Impro Bikepacking with the "poor man's Leica"
A couple of weeks ago we had planned a short cycling trip with my parents but the day before we were supposed to leave, my mom tested positive for Covid. The weather was great and the time in our agendas was blocked out so we quickly got to work and put a little alternative cycling adventure together. We took our bikes on the train to the coast and cycled back home in a couple of days.
DAY 1: LEUVEN -BLANKENBERGE - MALDEGEM
Our goal was to find an easy to reach destination by train that was about 150km from home so we could ride back in the two days we had available. Blankenberge, at the Belgian coast turned out to be the winner.
By the time we arrived in Blankenberge it was already well in the afternoon. Our AirBnB for the night was only about 25km from the train station but we still decided to take a longer route (43km) in order to soak up some sea air and have a short flirt with the border.
Although we love the Belgian coast, it wasn’t exactly a smooth ride along the coastline. Traffic, horrible cycling paths and too many tourists made us happy to leave the coast behind us.
Long time followers will already know that I’ve been working on a project about the Belgian border. Every time we can, we can squeeze in a couple of kilometers of exploring the border in our schedule. We’ve even revisited some previously visited spots on this trip.
Before we gave our legs a bit of rest, we just had to get some Belgian fries. The good thing about days on the bike is that you can eat pretty much anything you want without growing out of your cycling jersey.
DAY 2: MALDEGEM - STEKENE
On Day 2, our first full day on the bike, we took it easy. We flirted with the Dutch/Belgian border again but I didn’t take many pictures. We just enjoyed the 65 kilometers along mostly quiet roads. The slight headwind made progress a bit slower than expected but didn’t bother us too much.
DAY 3: STEKENE - LEUVEN
This was our biggest day on the bike together so far. 85 kilometers with the wind not in our favour and a laden bike proved to be a good workout. But with enough stops, food and drinks it went smoother than expected.
Despite very little preparation, the trip went completely smooth. The gear performed without a flaw, the weather was amazing, our AirBNBs had an excellent price/quality and we had a blast. As we are getting more bikepacking experience we can get away with less planning and I must admit that I really like this more improvised way of traveling.
THE ROUTE
Part of the quick improvised nature of this trip is that I didn’t get to spend much time on figuring out the route. I love building routes, it’s part of the trip for me. This time I let the excellent planning app Komoot do most of the work. I’ve been using it for close to two years now and really love how simple it is to build great routes for cycling touring, gravel biking, hiking, … If you want to check out our route, go check the Komoot Collection I made.
THE POOR MAN’S LEICA
Usually the Fujifilm X100V is my camera companion on the bike but at the last minute, I decided to switch things up a little bit. This years marks the 10th anniversary of the Fujifilm X-mount camera system, that means that about a decade ago I bought my X-Pro1. That camera is still going strong and I just felt like taking it on this trip. I paired it with a cheap but super fast manual focus 7Artisans 35mm F0.95 lens for an even more back-to-basics setup.
The X-Pro1 performed perfectly well but it was a bit of a challenge to focus with such a fast lens. I use focus peaking pretty often on my X-Pro3 and GFX50R but those cameras have viewfinders with a much higher resolution and the option to choose different colours for focus peaking (I usually chose red). On the X-Pro1 you only have white which can be hard to see. But in the end I enjoyed to experience and the images turned out pretty well too I think.
Let me know in the comments if you would like me to expand a little on my “poor man’s Leica”.