Berlin to Alcobaça, The Idea
The Idea
CHAPTER 1
“Every journey begins long before the first pedal stroke.”
For most of my professional life, I have worked as a multimedia designer. Creating images, solving visual problems and spending long hours in front of a computer became part of my daily routine. I enjoyed what I did, but over the years I increasingly felt the need to reconnect with something more physical, more natural and less predictable.
Outside work, I found that balance through cycling, photography and nature.
Cycling had gradually become much more than a hobby. Over the years I took part in mountain bike competitions, triathlons and endurance events, including a Half Ironman. I enjoyed challenging myself physically, but competition was never what attracted me most.
What I truly valued was the freedom.
Riding alone for hours offered something that modern life rarely gives us anymore: silence, time to think and the opportunity to observe the world at a human pace.
By the age of fifty-seven, my life was already well established. I was married, the father of two children and professionally fulfilled. From the outside, it probably seemed an unlikely moment to begin an adventure that would take me across Europe by bicycle.
Yet I have always been driven by curiosity.
I have always wanted to discover what lies beyond the horizon.
As the years passed, I started feeling geographically confined. Day rides were no longer enough. I wanted to travel farther, experience different cultures, cross landscapes that changed day after day and discover Europe in the slowest and most honest way I knew.
History has fascinated me for as long as I can remember, particularly the events that shaped Europe and transformed entire nations. Some cities carry a weight that goes far beyond their monuments.
Berlin was one of those places.
Berlin, Germany.
I had visited Berlin before, but I left with the feeling that I had only scratched the surface. I wanted to return, walk its streets again, photograph it and spend time in a city where history is still present in everyday life.
Berlin felt like the right place to begin a journey that would eventually lead me home.
Once the destination was chosen, emotion gave way to planning.
I knew I had between twenty and twenty-three days available. I was physically prepared, and the distance seemed realistic.
The project immediately became a series of practical questions.
When should I leave?
How much would the journey cost?
Would I stay in hotels every night?
Would the weather help or work against me?
Every answer transformed an idea into a realistic plan.
The day I fixed the departure date, the journey stopped being a dream.
It became a commitment.
Surprisingly, I never feared the distance itself.
I trusted my body and my experience.
What worried me were the things I couldn’t control.
A mechanical failure.
Several days of bad weather.
A problem far from home.
The countless unexpected situations that every long journey inevitably brings.
Between Burgos and Valladolid
At first, I only spoke about the project with friends who understood this kind of adventure. I wanted opinions from people who knew what crossing countries by bicycle really involved.
Only when I felt certain that the journey would happen did I tell my family.
By then, the decision had already been made.
Everything seemed ready.
Or so I thought.
There was one question that kept returning during the final weeks before departure.
Had I planned a cycling challenge…
or a journey?
The daily distances were perfectly achievable, but they left very little time for something that mattered just as much to me.
I didn’t want to cross Europe simply to say that I had done it.
I wanted to stop.
To observe.
To photograph.
To sit quietly in a village square.
To wait for the evening light.
To create memories instead of merely collecting kilometres.
Sometimes I wondered if I was giving too much importance to reaching Alcobaça and not enough to everything that existed between Berlin and home.
I didn’t know the answer.
Perhaps I would only discover it somewhere along the road.
The journey hadn’t started yet.
But, without realising it, the most important question of the entire adventure was already travelling with me.
Thank you for reading.
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Next Chapter
Preparation
“Every journey begins with a decision. This one took eight months of planning before the first pedal stroke.“
→ Read Chapter 2 of 18
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