Wheely good fun: Two women cycle across the world on bamboo bikes

A journey that started out with some trepidation has turned out to be transformational for Julie Lawrence and Li Dietlif.

WHEN Julie Lawrence and Li Dietlif embarked on their “bamboo odyssey” last March – riding their self-made bamboo bicycles from their home in Peckham Rye in South-east London halfway across the world to Sydney, Australia – they didn’t quite know what to expect.

They anticipated adventure, surely, and were prepared to be exposed to different countries and cultures. But would they be able to cycle the distance? Could they spend a year or so away from friends and family, cycling from place to place, day in and day out? They weren’t 100% sure.

“It was our first long tour. Before this we’d only ever done weekends or week-long trips so we were a little bit concerned about everything, really. Will we have a place to sleep every night? We were mostly going to be camping and would be quite exposed – would we encounter problems? We could be robbed or assaulted or threatened. We were also a little scared because some places had bears or wild dogs which are real issues for cyclists,” says Dietlif.

Adds Lawrence, “For me, it was ‘can I actually do this?’. Both physically and mentally, I didn’t know if I could do it.”

Now, just over a year later and at the very last leg of their tour, the two women can’t wait to plan and embark on another tour.

“I could do this forever,” says Lawrence, a self-employed cabinet maker. “I have never felt so free and happy. This sort of journey … it really plays with your ego. You feel strong at times and weak at other times but overall it has been great. We’ve met so many different people … and seeing how little some people have and yet how generous they are with us … it renewed our faith in humanity,” she says in an interview while the two were in Kuala Lumpur for a few days, en route to Malacca, Johor and then Singapore.

In bamboo they trust

It was four years ago when the two friends first thought of cycling halfway across the world together. While details of where they’d go and what they’d see were hazy, the two were sure of one thing – they wanted to travel on bamboo bicycles and they wanted to build the bikes themselves.

“Five years ago we went to New York for a bamboo bike building workshop. At the time, we really wanted to go to New York as neither of us had been there before. This was the perfect reason to go. Julie’s background is in cabinet and furniture making, so she works really well with wood and I was really into cycling and got her interested too. It seemed like a good combination … go on holiday and come back with a custom-made bike,” says Dietlif, who is a radiographer at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Central London.

Julie Lawrence and Li Dietlif looking over the Goderzdi Pass in Ajara, Georgia. – Photo from Julie Lawrence and Li Dietlif

It was love at first ride for Lawrence and Dietlif.

“The bicycles are just so comfortable. And it is so nice to ride something that we made ourselves. When we were planning this trip, we knew it had to be on bamboo bikes,” she says.

Bamboo, explains Dietlif, is not only durable and strong but offers a smoother ride because of the vibration dampening effect of the bamboo which absorbs any bumps cyclists may encounter on the road.

“It is perfect on rough roads and even for city roads with potholes,” says Dietlif.

Bamboo is said to have a higher in-tension strength than steel, a natural resistance to the environment and six times more dampening than carbon, thus ensuring a strong and comfortable riding experience.

The two researched on the type of bamboo bicycles they wanted to use for touring.

“At first we thought we’d tandem bike because it’d be nice to ride together. We hired a tandem bike on a couple of occasions and … we nearly killed each other. We had totally different riding styles and weren’t compatible at all! So we decided we had to ride separate touring bikes,” relates Lawrence. As the bikes they built in New York were single-speed city bikes which weren’t suitable for touring, the two had to read up on building touring bikes.

“At the time, not many people had built touring bikes from bamboo with the kind of gear system we wanted so it took us some time to research it. The actual build took us about three days but we spent maybe 10 days just nutting out the problems and another day picking out our bamboo,” says Lawrence.

The entire frame of their bicycles is made from bamboo, joined together and bound with carbon fibre that’s dipped in epoxy glue.

Building their own bikes for the tour has several advantages to picking one off the shelves, they explain.

“Because we custom made it for ourselves, we really measured it to fit us perfectly. We took all kinds of measurements – our hand size, the length from our wrists to our elbows the ratio of the saddle in relation to the rest of the bike … we put the information into a free bike building software called BikeCAD and the result is a bike that is so comfortable I could ride all day and still feel comfortable. We made them longer than a normal bike so that they’d be more stable when climbing hills with our luggage load. Everything was just a little more chunkier. We probably over-engineered our bikes a little just for peace of mind,” says Dietlif.

And, because they built the bikes themselves, the duo were confident that the bike could endure their long journey. Also, should the bikes need repair, they’d know how to fix it.

“We were very confident with our bikes and if the worst case scenario happened and anything did bread – it would take a hard collision for that to happen – we were confident we could fix it,” says Lawrence, adding that they packed essential tools should they have to fix anything.

So far, it’s been an easy ride. Tiring, but comfortable, they say.

“When we started, we were riding about 60km a day. We didn’t have a strict schedule. Some riders set a target of riding 160km a day, everyday and end up missing a lot of the sights along the way. We didn’t want that so we rode as much as we could each day, depending on where we were, what we wanted to see and how we felt. Now, our average was about 120km a day,” says Lawrence.

Beautiful people, amazing vistas

Preparation for the trip included doing sufficient research from the type of clothing that would be best (and lightest to carry) to how much money they’d need for a trip that could take anywhere between 12 to 18 months.

“We had to pack for the cold and the heat. We wanted clothing that could keep us warm but were light and easy to travel in. We also took a wilderness medical training before leaving and we carry with us a lot of medication, though thankfully we haven’t had to take much. It is just risk assessment,” explains Lawrence.

Adds Dietlif, “A friend of ours gave us rabies shots as a Christmas present, which was good too!”

The two also talked to others who had done similar trips and planned their budget accordingly.

“We worked really hard and saved up about £10,000 each and I made sure I applied for a credit card with a high credit limit. So far, we have managed really well. Apart from food and beer, which is essential (they call it liquid bread in the Czech Republic!), there isn’t too much expenditure because in most places, especially in Europe, we camp out and sleep in our tents,” says Dietlif.

So far, the two have travelled through some 20 countries, covering about 13,162km. Though they started off with a rough idea of how they would chart their course, Lawrence and Dietlif were determined to keep their route fluid and their options open.

“We didn’t do much route planning, really,” says Dietlif. “We knew we were going to take the ferry from New Haven (in East Sussex, England) to France and we knew we were headed to Paris as we’d arranged to meet a friend there. Then we thought of following the Danube river as there is a clear and fairly flat route cyclists take through Europe. But we made many detours along the way.”

But while plotting their path day by day was easy in Europe, the two found that they had to be more exact in their planning once they moved on to Western Europe.

“In Europe it was easy to choose our route day by day as we both have European passports which allowed us to go virtually anywhere, whenever we wanted. But when we got to Turkey and had a visa, we realised that we had a time frame and that we had only so much time to get in and out,” Dietlif explains.

The fluidity of their route and schedule, they say, has allowed them to see many places located off the beaten track.

“Highlights of our trip? There have been many but the most surprising and wonderful were the places that we weren’t planning on going to … places no one has even heard off. In Turkey, we kinda got stuck in a little village which had no hotel for us to stay in. It was getting dark and we decided to knock on the door of a local baker and ask him if we could camp out on his garden. We were expecting him to say no but instead, he invited us in.

“It was during the month of Ramadan and he showed us how he makes hundreds of loaves of bread every day and then invited us to break fast with him. He then invited us to stay on his roof terrace. It is these personal experiences, apart from the amazing landscapes we’ve seen along the way, that have made this trip so amazing,” shares Dietlif.

Being on the road for an entire year – though it meant packing for both bitingly cold weather in parts of Europe and the heat in Asia – also allowed the two cyclists to witness, first hand, the transforming landscapes as they moved from place to place.

“It was just so beautiful to see the seasons change and the changing vegetation. This, you don’t get to see on a short trip. Sometimes, we’d be cycling up a mountain, struggling and out of breath but when we reach the top, we see a beautiful field of flowers … these are things to remember,” says Lawrence.

Lessons learnt

The journey, Lawrence says, has also been transformational.

“I realise that anything is possible when you are willing to confront your fears. One of the highlights of my trip was when we were in Thailand. It was a hard day and we were on quite a boring stretch of road. I put some music on to give me some motivation and suddenly I realised that I’d changed.

At the beginning of the trip, when we encountered a particularly boring or difficult stretch, I’d ask myself if I could or if I even wanted to go on and keep doing this for a year. But at that point, I no longer doubted my abilities. I knew I could do this. for as long as I wanted to. It was a personal realisation. It took 12 months but suddenly I had no self doubt. It was nice,” she shares.

While their journey has been relatively trouble free – save for minor hiccups like

having their compass stolen and being

hustled a few times – the girls have learnt

it’s best to trust their instincts when dealing with difficult situations.

“We faced some issues when we were travelling in Turkey where, you know, some men tried to make sexual advances. I guess they assumed that because we were Western women, we’d be willing to have sex with the locals or something. In the beginning, we kind of ignored out gut feeling. Even though we felt uncomfortable, we didn’t want to be rude

and thought that perhaps we were reading too much into situations when the men tried to be too friendly. But after a while, we learnt to be … well, to be b****es, basically.

“We didn’t shake hands with the men and ignored them. It was conflicting, really because the whole point of out trip was to learn about different cultures and people and here we were being unfriendly and putting our guard up. But, you know it came to a point where it was potentially dangerous and very uncomfortable and we had to put our foot down. Perhaps we were rude to some people who were genuinely trying to be nice but we had to be safe,” shares Lawrence.

But these bad experiences were few and far between.

“We’ve met a lot of really nice people with whom we’ve shared stories and cooked and eaten with. The bikes are really a great leveller and it makes us easily approachable. We’ve had so many positive experiences, especially in the smaller towns and villages off the usual tourist trails that have been really amazing,” says Dietlif.

Wheely good fun: Two women cycle across the world on bamboo bikes