Surprisingly few people know how to climb hills on a (loaded) bicycle. Some rarely suffer when doing it whatever way, some resort to walking their bikes. This solution generally works, although it has downsides. It is good nevertheless to understand a few things about the specific nature of the challenge and overcome it with less effort and in less time. This short guide should not scare you off. We don’t love to torture ourselves. The point is not to pull one’s veins out, but to avoid having to pull veins out. If you are afraid of not handling the rides,…

Continue reading

The Childish Weeks are over and I think they were a huge success! 1 toddler, 10 children and 1 teenager participated, along with around 20 adults. While everything went well, there were some challenges and some things that should be improved next time. The weeks were prepared well, but not necessarily prepared right. In this blog post I want to reflect how I experienced the weeks as a parent with a toddler, but also as an organizer, and what we could do better next time. I hope that some other participants with different perspectives will publish their reflections as well.…

Continue reading

The paved part of the former railway ended exactly at our sleeping place in Sjövik. Afterwards, the cycle route would turn north to find its way back into the valley of the Göta älv river towards Trollhättan. This national cycle route was now following a very busy road. We did not know this in advance, as we had simply assumed a national cycle route would follow child-friendly bike paths, but we had not checked it outselves. Somewhat luckily, one family had left us this morning, and now only one toddler on a child’s seat and one child with their own…

Continue reading

We woke up to a really windy and cold day on the lake in Göteborg. Our communal space was on a rocky peninsula reaching into the lake and completely exposed to the winds. Things kept flying away, and it felt like the wind was stressing us to leave. During the route planning it became clear that with our new daily distance of 15 km and still one rest day per two cycling days, we wouldn’t be able to make it to Trollhättan on time. This did not seem like a big issue, as few people are joining in this last part…

Continue reading

Our sleeping place in Göteborg was about 5 km outside the city limits on the shore of Lilla Desjön lake. It was the perfect mix of being close to the city but not having that many people around. There were picnic benches, a fireplace and a toilet. In the day, some people came around by bike, by walk or by boat, but at night we were alone. The only downside of the place was the long uphill to get there when returning from the city, but at least that kept us fit on the rest days. We decided to have two…

Continue reading

From Östra Nedsjön lake, some people decided to change our original route along the train line Borås–Göteborg and instead divert north via Floda and then Gråbo. It had turned out that for the children cycling themselves, any amount of car traffic was making the ride harder. Staying motivated the whole way was already a struggle, and when the route was not so beautiful and adventurous, when they had to cycle in a straight line, when they couldn’t spontaneously stop to pick some berries that they had spotted on the side of the road, motivation was even lower. The rural roads…

Continue reading