About Me, Steven Primrose-Smith
Since 2009 I've cycle-toured around 43,000 miles / 69,000 km, through every country in mainland Europe, many several times, and to every capital city except Moscow. A map of where I've been is shown below. On this site I've tried to compile what I've learnt about cycle touring into country guides that I hope will be useful to others.
I've written nine books, six of which are about my cycle adventures.
No Place Like Home, Thank God was my first, about my 22,000 mile ride to every capital in Europe while searching for somewhere worse than my home town of Blackburn.
Hungry for Miles was a cycling experiment, to see if it's possible to travel a massive distance on a tiny budget. I got a group together and we tried to survive on just £1 a day each while cycling around 3,500 miles. We supplemented this with fishing and foraging, not always successfully.
Route Britannia is in two parts, North and South, about my 5,000 mile tour through every county in Britain.
Biking Broken Europe tells of my 6,000 mile tour through the bits of Europe that want independence, including the frozen and not-so-frozen conflict zones of Transnistria, Abkhazia and Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Quest for the Holy Quail is my latest book, about a 3,000 mile adventure through the varied landscapes of Morocco and its freakiest food while the country closed down because of Covid-19.
I try to write my books to appeal to the general reader who's interested in travel rather than specifically for cyclists.
I have exciting plans in the Covid-eradicated future, including another experimental tour - something I believe has never been tried before - as well as a bunch of others. Join the Europe by Bicycle Facebook group below for all the latest news and tour updates. Obviously, anything I learn will be added to the pages here.
If you have something to add to the information provided on this site - and I sincerely hope you do - either agreeing or, more crucially, disagreeing, then please either comment on the relevant page or get in touch via email or Facebook, especially if you can provide a link to a blog or something that tells your story first-hand.
Best wishes,
Steven Primrose-Smith
(Yes, I know my eyebrows are weird.)
Where I've Cycled
1,600 miles, Isle of Man to Nerja, Spain, 2009
22,000 miles, 52 capitals, 2011-13 (No Place Like Home, Thank God)
3,500+ miles, budget of £1 a day with fishing and foraging, Liverpool to Gibraltar, 2015 (Hungry for Miles)
5,000 miles, every county in Britain, 2016 [not shown] (Route Britannia in two parts)
6,000 miles, 39 often dodgy, independence-seeking regions, 2018 (Biking Broken Europe)
3,000 miles in Morocco, 2020 [not shown] (The Quest for the Holy Quail)
+ other several shorter tours around southern Spain [not shown]
