Deriva Lenta Slowbiking

Imagine having a few days to lose yourself in a bike journey. You, the bike, and the road. Imagine moving slowly, savoring what you love most: disconnecting to reconnect through nature. Sin prisas, sin la obligación de completar el recorrido si el tiempo no alcanza. No importa: la ruta será paciente, sabrá esperar sin enfadarse. Lo importante es gozar de cada kilómetro, de cada instante.

My first journeys by bicycle weren’t exactly “bike touring”, they were challenges in self-sufficiency, seen through the lens of bikepacking.
And, curiously enough, that wasn’t really my intention, nor was I fully aware of it at the time.
What I wanted was simply to travel and discover, yet I always ended up riding as far as the sun and my legs would allow, sleeping just enough to regain strength and, at dawn, mounting again to keep on pedalling.
I enjoyed it, yes, though I didn’t yet know that the experience could expand, could become something even more complete.

With time, I discovered my illness: I didn’t know how to stop. And they say that once you recognise it, you’re already halfway to the cure. At least, that’s what I believed. It took me a long while to learn how to pause, to reach a beautiful place and simply stay there. Not to take the obligatory photo and move on, but to breathe, to observe, to listen… to merge with the place itself.

Little by little, I began to find pleasure in those pauses, and with them, a sea of possibilities opened up. I started to shift from cyclist to cycle traveller. I no longer devoured kilometres, but moments. I discovered that slowness was a gift.

And at that point in my learning, the night appeared. That territory we usually reserve for rest became an essential part of my journeys. A world of its own, full of subtleties, with different sounds, with lights and colours that seem invented for those who dare to stop.

Nothing pleases me more than finding a secluded corner away from roads and tracks, pitching the tent just as the day begins to fade and, instead of closing the day, opening it in another way. Sitting down on my little “chair of dimensioning” ¹, to watch the sky shift its tones, to feel how one part of the wildlife settles while another awakens. The sounds transform; a new soundtrack is born, softer, perhaps, yet no less magical.

In that discovery I also encountered night photography. Capturing my tent beneath a blanket of stars, with the Milky Way reminding me how small I am and how fortunate I feel to witness such a spectacle, has become one of the greatest treasures of my journeys.

That is what I invite you to in this route, and in all those yet to come. Perhaps you already are, like me, someone who enjoys travelling adrift. If so, I rejoice in sharing with you this way of understanding the road, as nourishing for the body as it is for the soul.

Make the route your own. Take it apart, rebuild it, create as many variations as you wish—the area offers hundreds of possibilities. But don’t forget to share your experience: we all enjoy travelling, too, in the drift of others.