How to Combine Bicycle Touring with Volunteering

If you’re planning a long bicycle tour, you might’ve considered combining it with volunteering. It’s an opportunity to take a break from cycling, to better get to know the local culture, make personal connections and contribute and make a difference in the world. During my three-month-long bicycle tour through Europe, I found two volunteer hosts via the Workaway community. This experience is some of the best memories from my travels. In this article, I will share with you tips on how to combine bicycle touring with volunteering.

In this article, I will focus on volunteering with Workaway, as I only have experience with this platform. If you’re looking for alternatives, check out this article. 

Sustainable long-term bicycle touring

In the last years, more and more people turn to slow and long-term travel. Bicycle touring sounds like a perfect way to do it – you carry everything you need on your bike and slowly cycle through the world.

It gives you a perfect opportunity to immerse yourself in nature, connect with people and see places most travellers quickly drive past without even noticing. 

But cycling every day over many months can be exhausting, both physically and mentally. If you have to pack and unpack every day, plan when you’re going to stay and figure out the route, you can quickly start experiencing burnout. Your legs begin feeling tired and lousy. Suddenly, the only thing you dream of is being able to stop somewhere for a couple of days and weeks and do something different than cycling. 

If you decide to travel by bike long-term, you have to ensure you will do it sustainably. 

Volunteering on a bicycle tour

Volunteering is a perfect opportunity to do so. Instead of checking in to a hotel or hostel, you stay with a local host and work for a couple of hours a day to pay back your accommodation and food. 

This way, you don’t only save money. You also learn new skills, get to know local people and culture and experience something most tourists will never do. 

During my first solo bicycle tour in 2018, I volunteered with two hosts from Workaway (I will write more about this platform below). In Italy, I spent 10 days picking berries on a farm in the beautiful mountains of Trentino i in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I stayed in an off-the-grid mountain hut on Trebevic, welcoming guests and serving them coffee and food. 

Both these stays were some of my best experiences from this tour. 

Benefits of combining bicycle touring with volunteering

You can make your long bicycle tour more sustainable without overstretching your budget.

When travelling long-term, most people need to be budget conscious. If you’re on the road for a couple of months or an entire year, you probably cannot afford to stay in a hotel for two weeks in a row. If you need a break from cycling, volunteering gives you an excellent opportunity to get off your bike and do something different for a few days, weeks or even months.

This way, your bicycle tour becomes more diverse (after a few weeks of pedalling for hours, I’d welcome even the most mundane work like gardening with gratitude!). It also allows your body to rest. 

Most Workaway hosts offer you free accommodation and at least some meals in exchange for about 25 hours of your work a week. This is a great deal, especially in countries with higher living costs, like Canada, Norway or Switzerland. 

You can better get to know the local culture.

Staying with locals on your bicycle tours is always a terrific way to learn more about the country you’re visiting and about the local culture. Warmshowers and Couchsurfing are great, but Workaway and other volunteering platforms allow you to stay longer, giving you a more in-depth insight into the daily lives of locals. 

For me, cultural exchange is the most important benefit of volunteering. 

During my stay in the mountain hut in Bosnia, I learned much more about this country than from all the books. My host Primoz was a great storyteller and most of the visitors at the hut were locals from Sarajevo, so I’ve heard plenty of tales about the history, daily life and complicated political situation in Bosnia. I would’ve never learned all of that if I stayed in a hostel. 

You can learn new skills.

Volunteering is a fantastic way to learn new skills. From construction and renovation, eco-farming, and language teaching to video editing – Workaway hosts look for people who can help with various tasks. Many projects involve traditional crafts specific to a certain region or work with nature conservation. If you’re dreaming of your own organic farm or a small hostel, volunteering is a great way to learn about the day-to-day reality of this kind of project. 

You can meet other travellers.

During my bicycle tour through Europe, I loved the independence and freedom of cycling alone, but after a while, I started feeling a bit lonely. I craved interpersonal connections and sharing my experiences with others. 

WorkAway turned out a perfect solution to this problem. On a berry farm in Italy, I met a group of amazing, open-minded travellers with whom I quickly became friends. We are still in touch with each other, even after four years! 

Working together is one of the best ways to bond, and after a few hours in the field, we had plenty of time to go hiking, explore the area or simply hang out in the garden and relax. 

How to incorporate volunteering into your bicycle tour? 

Combining bicycle touring with volunteering can be a logistical challenge. I would definitely not recommend it if you have less than two months to travel. 

Only a few hosts accept volunteers for less than ten days, with the vast majority looking for people ready for a longer commitment (one month or more). 

You will usually have to start planning your stay at least a few weeks in advance. One way to create your itinerary is to look for WorkAway hosts first to ensure finding places along your route.

If you’re more spontaneous, you can also look for hosts on the go and adjust your route accordingly. This is how I proceeded during my trip. It will require a lot of flexibility. For example, I hoped to find a WorkAway in Croatia, but none of the hosts I contacted accepted me. I decided to widen my search and ended up volunteering in Bosnia & Herzegovina. No regrets – it has been one of the best experiences of my life!

How to choose your WorkAway host? 

Choosing your WorkAway host is not an easy task. There are many variables to consider to ensure you have an amazing volunteering experience. Here is what I learnt from my experience. 

Read reviews

Host reviews are the crucial criterium for choosing the right WorkAway program. Do not only look at the average rating on their profile but also read the feedback other volunteers wrote. It’s a great source of information: people will write about the standard accommodation, the workload and the host’s attitude.

If you see negative reviews, take a closer look and evaluate if the issues brought up by the volunteers seem like a deal-breaker for you. Sometimes people complain about stuff like having to share a room with others, which may be 100 % fine with you.

Some volunteers leave confidential negative feedback (WorkAway allows them to hide their profile name and the content of the complaint for their safety). If you see one of these reviews – run! 

Thoroughly read the profile description.

Give yourself enough time to go through the profile description of your host. See what kind of work they need help with and if you have the skills to actually contribute. Read the details about the accommodation they offer (sometimes it’s a really fancy room, other times you’ll have to sleep in a tent and there won’t be WiFi). 

Check how many volunteers can be hosted: if you’re looking for an opportunity to socialise with other travellers, look for hosts who host many people at the same time. 

Read this article for more tips on choosing the right WorkAway host.