Matilda Wellin
Looking for an alternative to flying, Matilda Wellin decided to embark on a long-distance bicycle trip from London to Sweden. Here's what she learned:
Before the advent of fossil fuel-powered vehicles, travelers crawled slowly across the Earth's surface. The world was much bigger then, and getting somewhere was an adventure in itself. Today, the world is smaller. I live in London, England, but I also get to attend family events in my native Sweden a few times a year. I get to have the best of both worlds.
That is, if the climate wasn't an issue. The carbon emissions from flying mean that flying is one of the most carbon-intensive things most people do. To avoid this carbon footprint, I've been trying to travel between the UK and Sweden by ferry and train for over a decade. But flying is almost always the cheapest option. So what about cycling?
Cycling is one of the greenest and cheapest ways to travel short distances, while long-distance cycle tours are a popular holiday option and have gained new levels of recognition thanks to so-called dot-watching, which allows spectators to follow “bikepacking” races from the comfort of their own couch. But most people find it impractical to travel the distances that would be covered by air.
To test whether it could really be an option for me for long-distance travel, in June 2024 I cycled 1,500 km (930 miles) from London to Sweden over 17 days.
Matilda's 17-day cycle from London, England to Trelleborg, Sweden, including multiple ferries (Photo: BBC)
My bike trip started on the couch. Usually when I go back to Sweden, I just check in at the airport and wait in the plane while the pilot flies me over forests, cities and mountain ranges. This time, I will be crossing every intersection, bridge and hill alone.
There's a great trail network for those who want a well-planned itinerary already in place, but I also enjoyed planning my own. Each night, while my partner was asleep, I pored over outdoor planning apps, cycling apps, Facebook discussion groups, and Google Street View. Which landmarks and cities did I want to see? Which routes were the safest and, important for a big guy like me, had the fewest hills? I booked accommodation about 100 km (62 miles) into the trip, with the ability to cancel if plans changed, and scheduled two days for rest and catching up.
“I don't want to go,” I told my partner from under the covers.
Next, the gear: I already had a bike, acquired through the UK government's Bike to Work scheme, and a pair of padded, cycling-friendly Lycra shorts for £20 ($26), which I teamed with the same sports bra and top I wear to the gym.
I packed a small pair of panniers I bought on sale for about £50 ($65) with my rain jacket, rain pants (to add to my clothes on rest days), a spare top to wear to bed, a fleece jumper, and gloves.
Then there were my toiletries, a first aid kit, bike repair tools, credit cards, my phone and my passport. My partner added a little pink heart as a good luck charm and my budget luggage was complete.
As the departure date approached, I did lots of Pilates to prevent shoulder and arm fatigue, and also did a three-day test ride. The last item on my to-do list was the most dreaded: I needed to learn how to fix a flat tire. Intimidated by the complexities, I usually leave my bike for the simplest of repairs, which not only costs me money, but also makes me feel like a cliché untechnical woman. So I spent £85 ($110) on a three-hour bike maintenance course at London Bike Kitchen. It was expensive, but worth it. After the course, I replaced two flat tubes on my bike, all by myself. I was ready to go.
Matilda Wellin
Matilda had a detailed itinerary in place to keep her on track during the 17-day trip. (Photo by Matilda Wellin)
On the day of departure, my alarm went off at 6am.
“I don't want to go,” I said to my partner from under the covers. “Why not just stage a photo of me with my German-Dutch background? No one will have to know!”
The streets were quiet in the early morning. I was cycling my usual route downtown, but this time was different. I wasn't just riding to meet a friend, go to dinner, or go to a work event. I was heading to Sweden.
Soon I was past the nearest train station, past a museum I'd visited and a venue where I'd given a lecture, a pub I'd been to a few times with friends and a park I'd visited once for my birthday. My last base in a city I knew was a friend's house on the east edge of London. A familiar white building passed to my right and I could see the road uphill ahead. I was about to embark on a new path.
As I rode my bike, I felt like I was really getting a sense of the true distance of the journey I'd made so many times by plane.
Over the next 16 days, my life settled into a comfortable rhythm: I crossed the English Channel, rivers and seas by boat and train, cycled across seven countries, developed a rare tan on my gloved cycling hands, spent a week trying (and failing) to outrun rain clouds across northern Germany, stayed in cheap hotels, Dutch castles and people's homes.
In southern Belgium, I rented a room from Pasquale, a local man who lives with his dogs, cats, and chickens. As we walked through his garden, we used a translation app to converse in a mix of French, Dutch, Swedish, and English. In southern Denmark, an older woman rented a room in her dreamy country house. When I woke up to a downpour, she invited me to stay a few extra hours and made me jam sandwiches. I ate them wrapped in a wool blanket, with the window open and the sound and smell of water lapping on the green trees.
Matilda Wellin
Matilda was cycling when she passed the Oresund Bridge in Denmark. “Cycling made the world feel bigger again,” she says. (Photo by Matilda Wellin)
I had breakfast every morning in a small cafe along the route, and hand-washed my cycling gear in the sink every night. My accommodation usually cost between £20 and £40 ($26 and $52), and I planned on adding up to £50 ($66) a day for food and essentials. But when you spend most of your day cycling, you don't have much time to spend money, and I often came in under budget.
Of course, it hasn't all been easy. I've been threatened, harassed by bikers, and twice been yelled at by young people in passing cars – a unique experience when cycling in traffic. I've found that the best defense against this is to know the local cycling laws so that I can fight back against unjustified attacks and join traffic without holding it up.
On the second to last day of cycling, I suddenly started feeling fatigued – a glucose deprivation known in cycling circles as “bonking” (please stop giggling behind me!). I finally got to the next town and as we sat down to eat, I texted my partner to tell him what had happened. “We could just stay where we were for the night,” he suggested. But in the end, I just kept going.
Once I got home safe, I did the math on my emissions. It's a tough estimate. Should I also include a life cycle analysis of the manufacturing of my bike, the roads I rode on, the hotels I stayed in, and the food I ate to get me going? I asked several experts, but no one could give me a simple answer.
“There's a fair amount of data out there looking at the life cycle emissions of different urban transportation modes,” says Dana Yanocha, senior research manager at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) in the US. She explains that short city trips of 20km (12 miles) or less by bike, bus, taxi, car or motorcycle can be compared to the passenger-kilometer-to-passenger ratio. But that measurement doesn't necessarily scale up to my 17-day journey.
BBC/ITF
Cycling is one of the most carbon-efficient ways to travel in cities, but scaling this up to a 17-day cycle trip is difficult (Credit: BBC/ITF)
But not all environmental benefits can be measured in emissions. “Looking at the bigger picture[of long-distance travel]opens up a conversation in people's minds,” Yanocha says. “It's tempting to think, 'Oh, I've got to fly,' but actually you can do the same thing by cycling.”
Brandy Houghton, vice president of communications at the US non-profit Rails to Trails Conservancy, says cycling helps us appreciate nature: “When you're hurtling along in a car or train or plane, you're not going slow enough to notice what's out there. When you get off the highway, all of a sudden you see something completely different.”
Houghton says long-distance cyclists can also help increase demand for cycle trails that locals can use. “We can't meet our (air pollution) targets unless people get out of their cars more often. The only way we're going to get people to get out of their cars more often is to create infrastructure that makes it safe and convenient for them to do so.”
Carbon Counting
Matilda cycled in a personal capacity, so the carbon footprint of the travel required to report this story was 0kg. For more information on the potential emissions from her trip, please read the article. The digital footprint of this article is estimated to be between 1.2g and 3.6g per page view. You can find out more about how this figure was calculated here.
One thing happened during this trip that has had the biggest impact on my perspective on long-distance transport. As I cycled, I felt like I was experiencing the true distances of the journeys we so casually make by plane. The world around me was slowly changing.
English gave way to French, French to Dutch, Dutch to German, Danish and Swedish. During my first few days on the bike, old men outside cafes stopped to stare at me in awe. But by the time I reached the northern German city of Bremen in the pouring rain, I no longer felt special. Everyone here was cycling in ponchos or full-body waterproofs.
The big squares of northern France and southern Belgium were replaced by planned German cities and Danish towns. The landscape changed from the canal-lined Atlantic plains to the mountainous Bergisches Land and Danish forests. I never realized how much energy a two-and-a-half-hour plane ride required.
Matilda Wellin
Having completed her long-distance bike journey, Matilda now feels ready to tackle medium-distance journeys. (Photo: Matilda Wellin)
Faster than I expected, I arrived in Trelleborg, a town in southern Sweden just south of Malmö. So did this bike trip save the planet and money? Technically, neither. I did save on flights, but after meeting up with my mom for a few hours, I had to fly straight back to London with my bike and myself to get back to the office. I ended up flying and not spending any time with my family. In total, I spent about £1,400 ($1,830) on the trip, far more than the £100 ($130) for a plane ticket or the £350 ($460) for a train ticket.
But the price also included an unforgettable trip. Substituting a bike trip for a train trip doesn't mean you have to take such a long trip. Next time, maybe I'll cycle from London to Burnley, or from Stockholm to my dad's house a few dozen miles north of the city, over a few days. Now I know it's possible, if I'm well prepared.
The trip also changed my perspective on how our modes of transportation make the world smaller. As Horton told me, when you bike or walk, you experience the world around you at “human speed.” When I was on my bike, the world seemed big again.
For more BBC science, technology, environment and health coverage, follow us on Facebook and X.
