L’habitat
An ultralight shelter
This is the fourth part in a series about ultralight cycling.
The previous stories have described how to setup an ultralight bike, pack useful clothing, and how to take care of oneself on a road-trip.
This article will focus on means to shelter from the elements.
L’habitat
Multiple, combinable, strategies are available when it comes to seeking shelter on a road-trip, especially to sleep or to take a break.
Checking in to a hotel room, or a hostel, motel, apartment, etc… is a possibility, and certainly recommended from time to time, taking a proper shower, enjoying a fresh bed, the sound of silence (compared to the outdoors), waking up with a vital breakfast, and resuming a journey well rested makes quite a difference.
You can also just stick to that, or for a few days (e.g. stormy conditions), people referrer to this as “credit card touring”.
Staying with kind strangers or with family and friends is great too, you can find heartwarming people on CouchSurfing and websites alike to host you and show you around in their city.
You can also sleep whenever you feel like it, in a train, on a bus, on a beach,… in order to catch your breath and rest your legs.
Camping is another option, and the more interesting aspect of it: wild-camping, sure it’s illegal in a lot of countries, and infrastructure is a bit lacking in a forest, near a sea or a lakeside… and animals, sometimes scary, might drop by in the middle of the night out of curiosity or because you’re on their territory, but this is about adventure.
Wild-camping, sure it’s illegal… but this is about adventure.
For wild-camping there are multiple options: a combination of a sleeping bag and a rain fly for the lightest and most devoted campers, a full-on one person tent for the classical, or my favourite choice: a comfy lightweight asymmetric hammock with included rainfly and bug net from Hennessy Hammocks.
Le hamac
The great aspects about hammocks? Well they are very very fast to setup, faster than any tent I have previously setup: 2 straps, one cord, done.
They are very relaxing and more comfy than laying on the ground to sleep. They allow for most sleeping positions on the back and on the side, and they can even act as a camping chair or a swing.
They are compact and can be as light and much cheaper than the best one-person ultralight tents you can find (below 900gr.).
They also provide small hooks and little pockets on the cord which you can use to store food, electronics and small equipments (see picture above, there is an included pouch on the cord). You can also hang pretty much anything to the cord inside or outside the hammock, e.g. you can collect rain water on the outside, or bring you shoes inside to prevent bugs from camping in them.
Hammocks are also pretty easy to adjust and allow you to bring additional cords, straps, rainflies, etc,… and let you setup to the conditions and your preferences.
What are the cons? There are not many, but still some to take into consideration: two mounting points at about 4 to 6m apart to lay nicely are always needed, trees or big rocks are perfect. In the worst case scenario one end can be attached to the bike or another single point, and the hammock can still be used as some sort of tent with the rainfly.
Cooling down from below is a general issue, the wind blows directly against the body, a thicker sleeping bag is advisable and a mat in colder conditions needed, a very cheap and lightweight trick I used is to cut out a piece of bubble wrap to lay on, it is rudimentary but it works and is extremely lightweight.
Mounting the rainfly even if it isn’t going to rain also helps to shield from the wind coming in from the sides and keeps the heat inside the hammock.
Feel free to leave comments if you have any questions, and if you like the article please recommend it! More articles about ultralight road tripping, cycling and traveling are available in my Voyage Voyage publication.
Enjoy the trees Tarzans & Janes 🚲
