Who needs a plan?
Thus, as I speak here, I may look ahead or to the right or to the left, and in either case the intervening space and air and ether enable me to see the faces of a different portion of this audience.
— in A Pluralistic Universe by William James
I like the intervening space.
Last May, a combination of latent wanderlust and desire for solitude and adventure made me spontaneously decide that I would travel to Denmark, and that I would do so on a bicycle.
After some research, I learned of the Radfernweg Berlin-Kopenhagen, a 630 km cycling route connecting the German and the Danish capitals. I had no idea how far I would be able to travel each day, but I outlined a plan that averaged 60 km/day. I still did not set any hard goals on myself. Each day I would go as far as I could without excessive effort, and no farther.
A good traveler is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveler does not know where he came from.
— Lin Yutang
I took a week off work. Under my 60 km/day estimate, that would mean a total of 420 km out of the full 630 to Copenhagen. The route would take me from Berlin, across the federal states of Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, to Rostock in the Baltic coast of Germany, and after a short ferry crossing some 50 km into the Danish island of Falster. That seemed good enough.
After a short visit to Falster, I'd take the ferry back to Rostock, and from there a train back to Berlin. Such a cycle-there-and-train-back plan would be more flexible than a cycle-there-and-back-again plan for which I would have to worry about the right turnaround point. It would also allow me to cycle farther along the route.
As to sleeping arrangements, I didn't make many. Not having established any hard daily goals, I did not know where I'd be by the end of each day. I decided that I'd sleep at some hostel or similar in whatever towns I'd end up in, or, if I could arrange that, at some Couchsurfer's couch.
So with some sort of vague plan in mind, I packed up some clothes, some food and water for the road, my camera, and my smartphone loaded with offline maps of my route. My backpack was full but I managed to pack everything I thought I might need.
And with that much of a plan, I set off around noon of 29 May 2014.
He travels the fastest who travels alone.
— Rudyard Kipling