wild camping in italy
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Bicycle Touring in Europe on a Budget

How we cycled through many “expensive” countries without breaking the bank

Many people we’ve spoken to worry that traveling in Europe will be prohibitively expensive. We bicycle toured through several countries that are generally thought to be costly such as France, Switzerland, Italy, and Austria. In our experience, we found that we could stick to a $15 – $25 per person per day budget. This felt like a good balance between “spartan” and “splurging” – we had to forgo some comforts but we could still work in the occasional museum or restaurant.

The most crucial areas to save money are on lodging and food. Dialing in your spending in these categories is essential to making your money last. There are several ways to approach these expenses, and we’ll go through each one in detail.

Lodging

Hotels in Europe can be quite expensive, especially if you’re in a touristy area. Sometimes you can find good deals, but staying in a hotel every night gets pricey rapidly. Luckily, there are a few different ways that you can sleep for free or cheap so that your money takes you further.

Warm Showers

If you’ve already got some bike tours under your belt, you’ve probably heard of Warm Showers. It’s similar to Couch Surfing, but it’s exclusively for bicycle tourists. Once you’ve signed up, you can search the network of hosts and view their feedback before contacting them to see if they can host you.

Example map of hosts in a small chunk of France. Clearly, there’s no shortage of options!

The site recently introduced a paywall where new users have to pay a one-time fee of $30 to sign up. Luckily for us, we were already members and weren’t required to pay to continue using our account. There is a monthly fee for using the phone app, but you can use the desktop site without paying extra.

We’ve only used Warm Showers a handful of times, but we had great experiences when we did. For example, we stayed with a kind family in France that welcomed us despite having plans to throw a dinner party! It’s a unique experience to stay with locals, and it can enhance your cultural understanding of the country you’re visiting.

The main issue we had with Warm Showers was host availability. We were traveling in France and Switzerland during summer vacation season, and many hosts simply did not respond to our requests. Others were out of town themselves and couldn’t host us. We recommend casting a wide net by messaging several different hosts in the city where you want to stay.

Free Camping Networks

We haven’t used Welcome to My Garden yet personally, but we’ve had a couple different people recommend it to us. It’s more focused on hosts that allow free camping on their property, and some have shower/kitchen/laundry access but it depends on the individual host. 1Nite Tent is similar and primarily in Germany, though there are a handful of hosts in other countries.

Wild Camping

We chose to wild camp for most of our time in Europe because it allowed us the most flexibility – we didn’t have to worry too much about getting to a specific place to stop for the day. Our biggest concern was making sure that we were at least a few miles outside of urban areas. Camping in the mountains, where there are large swaths of undeveloped land, is generally easier than camping in agricultural areas, but in the end we’ve always found a place to pitch our tent.

We look for green space without any houses nearby as potential sites for wild camping. We use OSMand+ for cycling navigation, and it’s very helpful for finding “green space” on our routes. Camping along bike paths or gravel roads is ideal because it decreases the likelihood of being disturbed by passersby.

We try our best to be discreet and out of sight of anyone who might be walking or biking past. It’s important to follow Leave No Trace ethics and look for natural clearings rather than disturbing vegetation. Research the regulations on wild camping in each country you visit. We do not hop fences or camp in areas where it’s clearly prohibited (such as national parks).

wild camping in europe
Nice wild camp off a bike path in Italy. We saw an overgrown side road and walked up it until we found a flat spot.

Established Campgrounds

The availability, cost, and quality of campgrounds vary quite a bit between countries. France has a few different tiers of campgrounds – the cheapest and most basic being municipal campgrounds. These are a good option if you’d feel more comfortable going to an established site with bathrooms, showers, and other amenities. Some campgrounds seem to cater more to motor homes and can be loud and unpleasant in a tent, so try to scope things out before paying for a site.

Food

For us, food is definitely the trickier area to maintain a strict budget. We love trying the local cuisine wherever we’re traveling, so we certainly indulge in a restaurant every once in awhile! The price of eating out fluctuates between countries and regions, so it’s important to reassess when you cross borders. Switzerland was far and away the most expensive, and we only ate out once the whole time we were there. We try to cook most of our own food and eat out in moderation to stay within our budget.

In France, we relied heavily on artisan bakeries because they were actually fairly cheap and incredibly high quality. A baguette would usually run about 1.10 euros, and pastries ranged from 1.50 – 4.50 euros depending on how fancy they were. We ate lots of make-your-own sandwiches with baguettes, lunch meat, and fancy cheese for breakfast and lunch. For dinner, we would cook pasta with bell peppers, mushrooms, and summer sausage and change up the type of sauce to keep things interesting. This was our staple dinner throughout Europe and was cheap no matter which country we were in.

baguette vending machine
All of the bakeries were closed for Bastille Day, and we didn’t realize this in advance. Luckily, being France, the local bakery had stocked this baguette vending machine the day before so people wouldn’t go hungry.

A consistently affordable option for eating out (except in Switzerland) was doner kebab. Kebab consists of a generous portion of slow cooked meat, fries, and salad. We could usually get a full plate for 10 euros or a sandwich for even less. In Italy, pizzas were affordable, delicious, and filling, and some places sold it by the slice – a great lunchtime snack!

Final Thoughts

Bicycle touring in Europe on a budget will invariably require some discipline and picking and choosing. We are on the road long term, and we would rather sacrifice some comforts so that we can travel longer. On the flip side, everyone has different levels of disposable income. Folks that are planning a shorter trip to Europe might want to see lots of museums and take in all the food – which is totally understandable! The goal of this post is to show that Europe is doable on any budget. You just have to do your research and regularly tally up your expenses to figure out if you’re within budget or need to cut back on extras.

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7 thoughts on “Bicycle Touring in Europe on a Budget”

  1. Well. Accidentally came onto your cycle journey via u tube. En searching for a nice quite route from London to southern Italy, well the land of Sicily
    for no single reason. Tonight I checked out your cycle journey Munich then South. Stunning mountains and nature. You have shared so much and more research of your journey, its links en other data ongoing if all grows well. No big date plans to set off at present. Though have some ideas about building up a little practice prior to this journey.
    My best friend happens to be my bike and in all have had some amazing life changing experiences on this beautiful planet we all share. Enough of all that. If youd like to stay in touch, I may be able to share a space here in London if your passing, of a rustic in the Tuscan Apennines, north of Senna.
    So, very safe journeys for you both and thank you for what you share. I know this may seem a little out of the blue, then some of the most natural things are right there.
    Keep on growing
    Scott

  2. I have very bad experiences with Warmshowers in 2019. The responserate was only some 5% (no mistake, some 100 messages and only 5 responses) during a 6-month peroid, of which 2 positive. By far most of there members did (do) not loggin for 3, 6 or even more months. I joined a forum to discuss that (by cleaning their database) but was blocked almost immediately. Where the “management”of ws “communicates” only anonymously. Couchsurfing was a little bit better since it has far more members, while not only concentrating on just cyclists. Then they both started there paymentwall.

    So do not rely on them while you are on your way already. All those messages will cost you an awfull lot of wasted time.

    I recommend BeWelcome and TrustRoots.

    1. We’ve had that same issue with Warmshowers, so we try not to rely on it too heavily and always have a backup plan. In a couple places we’ve sent tons of messages and received no responses. It was really frustrating since, as you said, writing all those messages takes a lot of time. On the other hand, we’ve also had some really great experiences. These days we try to only message hosts that have logged in recently and have a fairly high response rate. Thank you for those recommendations – it’s great to have some other options to try out.

  3. Hi,
    Just wanted to ask you why you have a blue tent. Wouldn’t it be more obvious using a green tent (or camouflage colour) which blends in more in the natural surroundings?
    Greetings from the Netherlands.

  4. Jason Fitzpatrick

    A baguette vending machine is the bomb! I’ve never used warm showers although I’m aware of it. I hate campgrounds. To pay to sleep on the ground is over rated. And the RV’s that are parked right next to a tent are too loud. I prefer to be stealthy and “camp” in the woods. And I am very concerned about single women traveling alone, I’m glad y’all are together. I don’t like to travel alone either, maybe I should find a biking partner who can ditch work and travel, that would be a dream. It would be good if we could have a pay shower at all campsites to use, so that if you just want a shower you can stop/pay/shower and head back out to the road. I want a baguette vending machine.

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