Europe doesn’t really have a long-distance off-road trail like America’s Great Divide, does it? Well, it has one now and it stretches from Norway to Portugal.

WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY ANDY COX

What do you do when you feel like you’ve lost your way in life? Do you change jobs, change where you live, change your daily routines? Or perhaps you could try what I did, which was to rent out my house in South Wales, pack what belongings I thought I might need onto my bike, and set off into the unknown – the continent of Europe – looking for some kind of purpose. Four years ago, I had no real idea what I was doing except that I didn’t want to keep doing what I had been doing for the previous fifteen or so years. Unsure of my place in this world, spending most of my time feeling like I was living in some kind of dream. So, I decided that if I couldn’t find the right job for me, then I’d better start working on what I did want to do, and see if I could make a living from such a thing. This was the genesis of the route I’m calling the European Divide Trail. It’s a continent-spanning route that goes from northern Norway with its border with Russia and the Arctic ocean to south-western Portugal and the Atlantic.

Sierra de Carzola, Spain

Scary start

Jura, France

Waiting for the ferry to depart from Newhaven, I looked back at the South Downs rising in the distance above the port and wondered when I’d next see this ‘green and pleasant land’.

The mixture of trepidation and excitement of stepping into the unknown filled every part of me. It might not have been a giant leap in many people’s books, but it was for me. I was about to start on a bikepacking journey of undetermined length – my only real aim was to ride mostly off-road and hopefully find a new place to live.

Not having children or any dependants, I didn’t really have anyone to help, to nurture, to give more than I receive to, so in a way my life felt somewhat self-centred and rather self-obsessed. And, while that was fine when I was younger, as I got older I felt a need to help someone or something to grow, to become bigger or better than it once was.

What I was missing when I first left the UK on this adventure was long-distance bikepacking routes – continent spanning, off-road ones. There’s plenty in the Americas, but Europe is quite limited. Having ridden a few of the already established bikepacking routes around Europe, I realised there was something missing and that was a route similar to the Great Divide Mountain Bike route in North America.