During the easter holidays in 2022, we took the twins on their first loaded cycle tour. Here’s what we did and what we learnt…
We last took our kids on a cycling holiday in 2019, towing a Weehoo and a double bike trailer buggy just under 300km over nine days around the Kent coast. It was great – we had a few challenging moments and some tough hills, but in general we all had an amazing holiday. Grown ups felt like we were doing some proper cycling and the kids enjoyed the camping and views along the road.
Nearly three years on however, our three year olds are now six, which means they are significantly heavier. They’re both fairly confident cyclists, but we’ve really only ever taken them to the local library or swimming pool. So, this mini tour was conceived as a way to gently test what they could do themselves, carrying some of their own stuff.
In the end we decided to cycle a section the almost entirely off-road Cuckoo Trail. 15km up a former, now paved, railway line between Polegate and Horam. Then a couple of nights in a campsite before returning the way we came, plus some bits to get to and from the train stations.
Overall, we were blown away by how well the kids coped with it all. The distances were about right I would say and our camping gear was just about good enough to see us through the sub-zero nights.
The kids both felt a real sense of pride in having their own panniers and sleeping bags on the back. We used our front panniers, which fit well on the Decathlon 20″ rear racks which we fitted to their Frog bikes.
Our tent is also from Decathlon and is just great. We used it back in 2019 and it’s held up really well. It weighs under 5kg, is super quick to put up, and comfortably sleeps the four of us, with a good sized porch to store our stuff in.
The distances were unknown to us, but in the end, we think we judged it about right. What could be cycled by adults in just a couple of hours, takes more or less the whole day with the kids. They never really complained of getting tired, but we stopped more or less whenever they wanted to. We also had a rule that we had to stop at every playground we passed. And the kids were in charge of their own snacks and sweets…
Getting trains in the UK can be frustrating at the best of times. Even more so with four loaded bikes. We planned the timings to try and avoid peak hours and also split up, taking a child each and getting on at different doors. This definitely helped. On the return journey, we were told no bikes were allowed when we arrived (something to do with a local marathon I think), but after some begging and pleading, were allowed on to the almost empty train… We had to get off a stop early due to engineering works, but this was fine.
In an ideal world, we’d leave our house and not have to use trains or indeed any other form of transport to get to the start of a cycle tour, but in reality, it’s always going to be a slightly not fun part of the process…
That’s probably enough rambling for now. Below is a little video of the adventure. Next up is a return to the Cuckoo Trail in August for a slightly extended tour…
