Unique Cycling Tour...Riders Wanted

[smith4188]

I ate cheap in France and Spain, but as far as I can recall, 12 magdalenas cost 99 cents, not bakery ones but supermarket cheapest ones, these were great for a cycling "boost" but I looked at the packaging, it was about 1500 calories (and not much else) in total.

I've done some calculations. At current Tesco prices, flour is 12,000 calories per £1 and pasta is around 9,000. Yes, not much nutrition - that can come from the foraged foods - but the calories are there.

 

[smith4188]

Surely the better the turnout, the harder it'll be to forage for food and wild camp etc?

As long as there are not loads of us I would have thought a small team is better than an individual. If an individual finds nothing, there's nothing to eat. If in a team of five, two people find nothing, two find something and one finds a lot, the average is better. True about the wild camping but we can split up in the evening if it becomes an issue.

Regarding the booze, I've had a mess about with bread yeast and fruit juice in the past.

Cheers, I've done some home brew myself (ah, real ginger beer!), but I'd rather use this trip as a good excuse to avoid it entirely, until the end, that is. And yeah, lugging a 30 litre fermenting bin around would be a right pain.

 

[Arrowfoot]

OP - I have read your replies to comments from others and feel that you might be stretching this a bit too far or its not well planned. It seems more a foraging experience than an adventure bike ride. £1 is more tokenism than anything else.

If its a foraging challenge, why not setup camp in the wild for a couple of months and do it proper. If the inclination is an adventure bike journey to see people, place and culture and achieve considerable distance on the cheap than make it at least £10 a day. That will certainly avoid illness and create a cohesive group to enjoy the ride with.

Either one is awesome and a real challenge. But the way that you described it thus far, it best not to bring along others and put them at risk.

 

[andym]

All the nettle pasta you can eat! What's not to like?

 

[Eurostar]

I think it's doable if somebody knows how to fish and you find some berries. Just those two foods will keep you healthy for 3 months. The £1 gets you enough pasta to pedal, plus salt and tabasco. That's enough to get you to Gib without losing your sanity. Forty miles per day average leaves you loads of time for foraging and cooking. If you also get shellfish, mushrooms, seaweed and root vegetables, so much the better.

 

[smith4188]

But the way that you described it thus far, it best not to bring along others and put them at risk.

I'm not sure I understand the risk. The worst that could happen is that, after a period of time, we don't have enough to eat. In that case we'll re-assess the situation. No one who comes along is contractually obliged to do anything they don't want to do. We are all adults.

 

[vernon]

All the nettle pasta you can eat! What's not to like?

The boredom.

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

I think there is a lot of negative on here regarding the food situation.

It is easy to make flat bread over a camp fire and bread provides a lot of calories and goes with everything. Vary the type of four and you have variety. Add some butter/mag/oil to that and you have plenty of calories.

Soup and stews or casseroles are easy to make and with a touch of baking powder dumplings can be added to create variety.

Cooking eggs in the soup/stew adds variety. We are not talking about 3 meals a day made for €1 of there is more than 1 person.

Beans and pulses will add necessary protein, again not that expensive. Red lentils are great in this aspect, but baken beans are also great.

Consider splashing out on some tahini or halva as well. Both are made from sesame seed paste and very rich in nutrients and calories. Tahini can be added to most dishes and in particular mixed with something like grape molasses, date molasses (my favourite) or just and sweet sugary substance and spread on bread for breakfast. Halva is a great energy boost during the day and a good nutrient hit if running low and far better for you nutritionally than straight sugar like jelly babies. We lived off it through eastern Europe on our big tour, but it is widely available nowadays if you know where to look for it.

Nettles have already been mentioned and they are very nutritious, something people often don't realise and dismiss. And there are plenty of edible tree leaves if you know what you are doing. They may not add many calories but they do add variety, the same with flowers and petals, many of which are edible.

Oatmeal is a good choice for breakfast and any berries picked (query on time of year, I forget now) just checked and it is June, so start of the very season, berries will add the necessary vit c to the daily diet but from experience they do take a while to pick (for 2 people picking for 2 put half an hour side and remember to have a suitable container handy), but it is easily doable (I have done it and so have both my oh and I together until the season finished on us in mid September).

Eating off the land is not that hard with the right training and practice. It's the latter that is more important! Time and patience are key.

Of you want anymore nutritional advice, please come over to the CookingBites forum, the link is at the top of the page. It is another of the site owner's forums.

Edit: I would have loved to have come but sadly I doubt my back injury will have recovered enough by June for me to join you.

 

[smith4188]

Of you want anymore nutritional advice, please come over to the CookingBites forum.

Thanks for that. I think tahini might be outside the £1 budget though. The last time I lived in the UK it seemed expensive. Has that changed?

I would have loved to have come but sadly I doubt my back injury will have recovered enough by June for me to join you.

If you find a miracle cure it would be great to have you along.

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

Thanks for that. I think tahini might be outside the £1 budget though. The last time I lived in the UK it seemed expensive. Has that changed?

If you find a miracle cure it would be great to have you along.

Wrt tahini, it really does depend on where you buy it. I don't use health food shops but Asian supermarkets and you only need something like a tablespoon a day. You will find asain supermarkets a much better place for shipping cheaply and being the nutrients you need and they are available far and wide abroad as well.

Sadly my back injury is bad. A ruptured disc has left me partially paralysed and I have had to buy a recumbent trike just to get cycling again. Walking still requires crutches some 4-5 months on and right now a miracle would be needed to get me touring again by June this year! We may well have to move house just because of me and I'm not sure my average speed of 6mph at the moment would work well with others!

Edit: I pay about £5 per kg for tahini. And it is much cheaper the further south you go where it's use is more common.

 

[Incontinentia Buttocks]

I think this is a brilliant idea, not for me, but horse's for courses. I wish you every bit of luck in your trip, life is very short, there is no rehearsal so make the most of it. And if you ever do the same trip but stopping at B&B's I'm probably your man!

 

[smith4188]

I think this is a brilliant idea, not for me, but horse's for courses. I wish you every bit of luck in your trip, life is very short, there is no rehearsal so make the most of it. And if you ever do the same trip but stopping at B&B's I'm probably your man!

:-) Thanks for your positivity. I hasn't been a feature of every reply to this idea when I've mentioned it here or elsewhere. If I fail with £1, then I'll do £3, then £5 and eventually I'll get to an amount that can afford a nice B&B.

 

[Ganymede]

I love this idea. I'm a keen forager and like to fish. But I couldn't be away for that long, I have a marriage and some pretty heavy family responsibility to think of!

 

[e-rider]

I don't quite see the pleasure in this. So, your last tour was of 'premium' standard and you ended up blowing a whole load of cash right? Now you want to do a cheaper tour which is fair enough but why limit it to £1 per day and living in very poor conditions - surely any reasonable person would just calculate the cost of a 'budget' trip, save the money, get the bike out and cycle off for a good time!

 

[Ganymede]

I don't quite see the pleasure in this. So, your last tour was of 'premium' standard and you ended up blowing a whole load of cash right? Now you want to do a cheaper tour which is fair enough but why limit it to £1 per day and living in very poor conditions - surely any reasonable person would just calculate the cost of a 'budget' trip, save the money, get the bike out and cycle off for a good time!

You write as a cyclist... but if you are a forager AND a cyclist, it's different. If you are a forager you are always asking yourself that question... could I survive with what I forage? What is the minimum input from civilisation/farming that I could get away with? Would I stay healthy? Would the food be nice enough? It's a hobby in exactly the same way as "as a cyclist, could I get up that hill? Could I cycle 100 miles? Could I get to my destination without using a car or public transport? Could I beat that bloke in the red jersey who's just gone past me?" It's just another way of having a good time.