‘Only 12 other people have completed it’: cycling the 7,600km European Divide

21.07.2023 - 11:31 / theguardian.com / Vicente De-São

Last summer I cycled 7,600km (4,722 miles) along a route called the European Divide Trail, which runs through nine countries, all the way from Arctic Norway to the Atlantic coast in Portugal, mostly camping out along the way. The idea was sparked by an article I saw on the internet – on a website called bikepacking.com. I slowly went from thinking, “That looks cool,” to, “I’m going to do it.” It seemed a bit crazy, but somehow a few months later, in June 2022, it was happening! I was heading off for three months – and I’d even persuaded my friend Max to come along for the first three weeks.

The Norwegian border with Russia

I’d done some bikepacking trips in the past, but usually only a couple of nights. Once I did a nine-day trip, cycling from my house in Pembrokeshire to the top of Snowdon and back, but I had a really bad and lonely time on my own. Somehow that didn’t put me off … Also, it was an amazing stroke of luck that I met Anna from Sheffield, who was cycling the same route, on the first day of the European Divide trail.

Jacob (centre), with Anna and Max

I had a mountain bike and a basic bikepacking setup, and aimed to cycle an average of 100km a day. With just 90 days in Europe to do the trail – all that my post-Brexit UK passport would allow – I figured I would spend 86 days riding and have a couple to spare either end. On some days I would cycle more – 120, 130, even 140km – and on others, when we reached the mountains, far less.

Clockwise from top left: Reindeer in Finland; crossing the Muonio River from Finland into Sweden; crossing the Lainio in Sweden; camping in Hornmyr, Sweden

The route was designed by a British guy called Andy Cox in 2021 to be in a similar vein to the Great Divide mountain bike trail in the US. It begins at Grense Jakobselv, deep in the Arctic Circle in Norway and near the Russian border, then runs through Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France, Switzerland and Spain, all the way to Cabo de São Vicente in Portugal.

Hard going through forests near Paderborn in Germany

About two-thirds of it is off-road, some sections are quite rocky and technical, and it passes through many fairly remote areas in Scandinavia and the mountains of Spain. It doesn’t follow any geographical continental divide, but, as the website says, it does “cross many cultural, political, economic and environmental divides”, and is the longest predominantly off-road bikepacking route in the world.

The starting point is a bit weird, with CCTV cameras and a military checkpoint – but Max and I cycled away downhill and soon reached a beach, where we went for a dip in the sea. It was such a buzz to get going.

Anna studying the route; bike repairs; crossing forests was challenging

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