Cycling the Trans Dinarica with kids and bike trailers?
Curious about cycling the Trans Dinarica with kids? We have received a couple of messages with questions about exploring the Trans Dinarica cycle route while toting a child in a bicycle trailer. This is difficult to answer clearly … but we’ll try anyway. Keep reading for insightful tips and insights to make your family biking trip through the Balkans as smooth and enjoyable as possible.
It is hard to say if cycling with a trailer for children is not possible, but it is certainly quite challenging in some stages.
Let the author of this text begin with a story from eight years ago. I was crossing the border between Macedonia (now North Macedonia) and Albania, between Ohrid and Pogradec by Lake Ohrid in a van. At the time, it seemed to me one of the more problematic border crossings in the Balkans; usually the customs officers wanted to inspect the van, and they sent me with the documents from one container to another (when we drove there in 2023, during the research of the Trans Dinarica cycling route, it, luckily, went easier and faster).
A happy adventurous family of four
While waiting in the van, a young family of four drove up the opposite direction: father and mother each on their bicycle with a trailer, while father was driving one kid behind the handlebar and the second one in the trailer. They looked happy and carefree; at least that’s what I imprinted in my memory along with the thought that I want to experience something like this myself once I have children. Ten years later, with two kids … Yes, I bought a double trailer that has turned out to be great for visiting the town, the kid’s playground, the nearby river, or the market (you can see it on the photo, riding it to Ljubljana). But would I take kids in it on an expedition across the Balkans? Um, I think we’ll skip this kind of bicycle adventure. Anyhow, I always have all the respect for parents who dare to explore the world in this way.
If you’re planning to cycle the Balkans with kids, be sure to plan and prepare thoroughly and carefully assess the terrain for each stage of the Trans Dinarica cycling route.
Let’s be honest: the life of a cyclist is not always all romantic
Why? The Trans Dinarica cycling route is indeed planned to suit the widest possible range of cyclists, from those who will pass it on their journey around the world to more ‘touristy’ explorers of new countries in a sustainable way. But although together with local cyclists we tried to find the best roads possible, this is not a trip (only) on cycle paths. There will be roads, sometimes better, sometimes worse; sometimes quite busy (which means smoke from old trucks that haven’t heard about the emission standards) and sometimes bumpy macadam (which means vibrations and dust). There will be stages where you will not encounter a shop or restaurant from morning to evening, which is what makes bicycle touring here a true adventure.
We don’t want to scare you, but we also don’t want to give you false hope that cycling through the Balkans is a Hollywood romantic movie. Also, for this reason, we try to prepare informative and picturesque photos, videos, and text material for the website you are currently reading. You can read and see more about what kind of roads you can expect in this article: How many paved roads and how many macadams can I expect on the Trans Dinarica cycling route?
If you are going to cycle through the Balkans on the Trans Dinarica bike route, please send us some photos. Enjoy!
Experience of a family with a child on the Slovenian and Croatian part of Trans Dinarica
added November 11, 2024
Below we are posting the experience that was sent to us by cyclist Justin. With a child, a child seat and a trailer, this young family cycled across the Slovenian and part of the Croatian Trans Dinarica, and after that, then stayed on the coast and islands due to the weather. We are publishing this very informative write-up that will surely be helpful to anyone who wants to embark on a similar journey. This was their first long-distance ride with a child.
- Although buying tickets online isn’t possible (you have to get them at the counter), Austrian and Italian regional trains cater very well to bike tourers with dedicated wagons & spaces for bikes.
- Many of Croatia’s islands are easily accessible with most ferry’s accepting bikes at reasonable prices.
- We managed to take our bikes and trailer on multiple long distance buses to skip certain sections of the route when needed; everything fit in one compartment underneath with each bike costing one ticket paid in cash directly to the bus driver.
- We always found space in campgrounds despite not reserving in advance (although we found that in Croatia they tended to cost almost just as much as a cheap hotel / vacation rental).
- When booking a vacation rental we always paid close attention to what floor the apartment was on and / or whether they had dedicated space for storing bikes (since hauling everything up multiple flights of stairs was always a pain).
- We rode two gravel bikes with a Mac-Ride for our daughter to ride in the front with me and a Thule trailer for her when it was raining (with her 16″ bike strapped to the top).
- Although our daughter spent 95% of her time on the Mac-Ride, we were happy to have the trailer for poor weather and additional storage; the Thule can really go anywhere and can handle everything you throw at it.
- The Mac-Ride is fantastic because it makes the ride much more interactive / social for both my daughter and I but does result in pedaling with my legs more spread out which isn’t always ideal.
- Our daughter didn’t ride her own bike a lot because flat, low traffic sections were rare but getting her to pedal every now and then engaged her a lot more with the trip and built confidence / skill.
- In the future we’d modify our setup to opt for more of a touring setup rather than a bikepacking setup because our hands and backs suffered after a few weeks (eg. we’d probably change our handlebars for more of a “Dutch” posture).
- Although we didn’t regret taking our camping gear because we very much enjoyed the nights we did camp, we didn’t camp nearly as much as we expected (due to poor weather, limited camping grounds in certain areas, and inability to find compatible gas canisters for our MSR pocket rocket); you can obviously lose a lot of weight by ditching all camping gear.
- Our sweet spot was around 3h riding / day or approx. 35 – 40km / day and 350 – 400m elevation gain / day; beyond that our daughter would tend to get a bit restless and we’d have limited time to enjoy the places we were travelling through (longer days made us feel like we were just passing through everywhere, just biking / eating / sleeping but not really interacting with our surroundings) so we often found ourselves dividing stages into two.
- We planned our route in a way to try to find kid friendly activities along the way or at the destination (eg. farms with animals, beaches, playgrounds, ice cream, etc).
