Belén & Tristan

On the eve of their “Bike Life” book release Wildhood sat down for a chat with Belén Castello & Tristan Bogaard to talk about the book, their cycling journeys and post-pandemic plans.

How did you guys actually meet?

B: We met in 2015 on the evening of my 25th  birthday while I was working as an architect in the Netherlands, because a common friend introduced us to each other that night.

T:  In 2014 I completed my first big bike tour from New York to Los Angeles. About a month after we met I left on another tour that would take me from the Netherlands to France, Spain and eventually Norway.  Since I was kind of into Belén I thought I should write her and get some tips for traveling through Spain. Belén had moved to London by then and she had always wanted to do some extensive traveling.

B: Soon enough, we started a long distance relationship and he convinced me to join him on his trip.  That was quite a big step since I had never done any real cycling before except for my daily commutes, but I was ready for the challenge. It then took me about a year to settle everything down and prepare for this departure which was in June 2017.

T: When Belén joined me I’d already had the idea to document my travels and make a “job” out of it and when she joined this transformed to ‘how do we make it work for the both of us, and can we sustain ourselves while making a small living of the things we document while on the bike?'.

B: We found our ways to sustain ourselves and basically work from where we are as long as we have our cameras, laptops and a good WiFi connection.

T: It’s not the cycling that sustains us but it is the jobs that come out of our cycling experiences that do. After 4 years, the first signs of this are finally showing, especially now with our book. So I would say it is possible for anyone to do it this way, as long as you don’t mirror yourself to what you see on Instagram and realize it’s actually a lot of work to turn your creativity into a living. For us, it’s either 24/7 on the bike or 24/7 behind the laptop.

Did you have any previous experience with cycling before you started touring?

T:  For Belén it was a totally new thing, but for myself it’s a bit harder to define. For my first big trip, it was like a craving, I wanted to do something big that took me out of my comfort zone and made me kind of.. prove something to myself. And out of that, came the thought “I like it, but how do I keep it going for myself?”.  So it mainly started as  hobby through commuting, but then it became a life goal and eventually a lifestyle.

What’s the first big trip you guys undertook and how did it influence you.

B: The first trip we undertook together was in Norway and that’s also the first chapter in our book, as it tells the story of how we found our way to ride together. I had barely cycled before and I had never camped out in my life, which was the opposite of Tristan, who was used to traveling by bicycle already. Just trying to keep up to his speed was the first real challenge for me.

T: I was pretty adjusted to life on the road by myself, but then we had to make it work for the two of us.

B: I honestly didn’t find Europe exiting enough as a first destination, but Tristan convinced me that Europe, especially Norway, was the best place to start your first ever bike tour. For example, wild camping is allowed in Norway, so it would be easy to set up a tent when we got tired. Norway is also extremely beautiful and it would deliver us the right landscapes to shoot the pictures we wanted.

T: Scandinavia is an easy place to start for almost anyone because you can, at the end of the day, pitch your tent anywhere you want and not worry about being found and have to move in the middle of the night. 

Tell us about your best and your worst touring experience?

B: The best is hard to choose, because we had so many great experiences. But the worst is easy, and I’m pretty sure Tristan is thinking about the same thing right now.  Our worst happening was actually in Norway after about 2 months into the trip. We just left the city of Trondheim behind us and were looking for a place to camp. Eventually, we found a nice spot close to a riverbed, where people had clearly been camping before.  There were traces of fire pits and we even saw some other people setting up their tent in the distance.

T: But, in the middle of the night I woke up and I could press the tent down as if I was on a waterbed.  The river had come up! I woke up Belén, who was also floating on her air mat,  and we freaked out for a moment. We immediately started putting our loose stuff in our drybags as water kept coming inside from the raising river.  At some point I thought “those girls who camped next to us, I gotta wake them up”.  So I was in the river up to my belly and found out they weren’t there. I shouted to Belén “they aren’t here “and suddenly I heard a voice; “We’re here!”. They had moved their tent and went to sleep and didn’t alert us in any way! Fortunately, bad situations also attract good people. Shortly after we made it to a gas station down the road, we met this great guy who helped us out by letting us use his apartment to dry our things and rest.

B: We couldn’t sleep near to a water source for moths and for some days, we would wake up in the middle of the night scared that we were in that situation again. So if you want to camp close to a river, make sure it’s not a tidal one or check if there can be floods because of rains high up the mountains.

T: On a positive note, the best experience for me was in Kyrgyzstan when we were cycling on a mountain plateau in the middle of nowhere, through a hail storm. Shortly after, we saw this little yurt in the distance.  We rode up to see if we could camp close to it.  With hand signs and broken Russian, we asked the elderly couple if we could camp. The way they treated us was remarkable as we were so vulnerable.  After we pitched our tent, they invited us for a meal and brought extra blankets. It was a heart-warming moment I will never forget, because these people didn’t have many resources and they still wanted to help us and know more about our story.

It looks like you guys have been transitioning from classic touring to bikepacking. How did that evolution happen?

B: We’ve always wanted to "lose weight” on our bikes, but it is very difficult because of the way we travel since we carry so many electronics. Transitioning to bikepacking wouldn’t be possible for us on long journeys because of the way we work and support ourselves. But on our last trip we did manage to reduce our gear and redistribute the weight, which allowed us to take rougher paths than before. 

T: Our latest bike trip was in the North of Spain where we cycled and pushed our bikes up the many steep mountains there. In the Basque Country we teamed up with Ana.  She introduced us to her way of cycling, which is really off the beaten track, a very nice (but tough) experience for us as we ended up in very isolated areas. I think our future adventures will definitely be going in that direction as we’re moving away from asphalt roads more and more.

How about the drone, does it like traveling too? When I look at your images it seems like 3rd member of your crew?

T: It’s pretty essential for what we do on our journeys. We started with a DJI Mavic Pro drone and have transitioned now to a DJI Mavic Air 2. Throughout the years, drones have gotten smaller whilst keeping their superb quality - and they now fit in a fanny pack.

B: If you’re not into documenting your journey, we don’t recommend carrying all the tech gear. In our book we dedicate a small chapter on how to document your journey, but actually, all you need nowadays is a good phone. There’s no need for Go-Pro’s, big DSLR cameras or computers unless you really want to focus on creating high quality marketable content.

What’s your favorite piece of camping equipment and why?

B: Well, definitely the chairs. They‘re not a necessity but they add so much comfort on a long trip.

T: In Central Asia we were constantly looking for a place to sit down and after that trip we got some Helinox chairs. They are compact, lightweight and you can set them up pretty much everywhere. We fell in love with them and they’ve been on the road with us ever since.

B: Of course, we also thought we didn’t need chairs, until we tried them. They’re not indispensable items, but if you have some back troubles they are a game changer - especially on longer trips.

You guys just released a book called Bike Life. How did the idea of a book took shape?

T:  There was never a plan to make a coffee table book. We document our rides for ourselves and for our social media channels, but eventually this book proposal came to us, and we knew we had to accept this lucky opportunity. As we were cycling in Norway, we decided to go on a mid-night-sun hike up the side of a fjord. As we reached the top, a guy submerged from the forest downhill and starts taking pictures, so we walked down to him and started chatting. It turned out he was a Belgian photographer (Johan Lolos), whom we were already following on Instagram. He was there working on this own book project, and after its release, he got commissioned to look for new stories. He remembered these two cyclists he had met some years ago on a snow capped mountain in northern Norway and proposed us to his publisher, who, after a few calls, accepted our book idea.

What’s next for you guys?  Where’s bike-touring taking you after these Corona-times?

B:  The year started with Tristan proposing a two year bicycle plan (instead of a ring) to me but then the pandemic started, and like many others, we changed plans.

T: We were lucky we didn’t have to come back from any faraway place, as we were only in the planning stage and hadn’t yet left for a ride. We stayed in the Netherlands and eventually went out to Northern Spain when the borders opened up again. Now, we are back in the Netherlands for the book release and its promotion.

B: As far as cycling is concerned we’re not planning long term for now. If it’s possible, we’d like to go to Italy for two months in the fall, but that’s about it for now.  We want to discover the more remote sides of Europe until it’s wise and safe again to go further abroad. We don’t see a big risk in that because you’re camping out and not meeting many people. You just go into the supermarket once in while like you would do at home. We’ll be riding somewhere, that’s for sure!

Belén and Tristan their book “bike life” will be launched internationally on the 29th of September, you can get it here.

Words: Philippe Michiels

Photography: Belén Castello & Tristaan Bogaard