On one Fatty 2014 - A coastal adventure
On One Fatty 2014
The On One Fatty, does anyone remember this beast of a bike? Well back in 2014 I had an idea to escape the world and go travelling on a bike. But I wanted to do things a little different. You see I had been riding a lot up to this point, long rides but in a very short amount of time. Think 250–300 mile days. That’s my problem, when I ride a fast rolling road bike I go far fast, and I can just go on and on. Even if I say I will just do a short day, I know in reality I won’t. So then the fat bikes boom was starting to happen, so I thought to myself yes this is perfect. You see, the idea I had was simple cycle around the coast of Europe. From Calais, keeping the sea on my right and follow that until I would get to Italy and then cut across to Budapest, Hungary where my partner was at the time. That was the plan, nice and simple, me my bike and a compass.
The bike was the on one fatty and at the time On One had a great deal on. The Frame Forks and wheels for I think £500 it might have been £400 it was a long time ago, but I remember it being a very popular deal. A great foundation to build the bike up to how I would want it. I will try my best now to list the specs, it was a long time ago though so I might not remember all the numbers.
Frameset - On one Fatty Xl Aluminium frame - Steel Forks
Wheels - On one
Tyres - Surly Knard 26x3.8 (I think)
Rear mech - Shimano ZEE
Shifter - Shimano ZEE
Brakes - Shimano Deore
Crankset - Raceface ride (38T Absolute Black chainring)
cassette 11-36 Shimano (unsure which one)
pedals - Shimano saint (flat)
Seat post - Raceface (unsure exact model)
Handle Bars - Raceface
Saddle - Nukeproof
Rear rack - Salsa
It was a long time a go and i no longer have the bike, so that’s as much detail I can remember. One thing I do remember though was the fat bike scene was quite new and getting a rack to fit this bike was basically impossible at the time. The options were slim. There was the fat bike rack that I ended up getting, the salsa one, however the rack wasn’t tall enough for the on one fatty as it was such a slack bike. So to make it work, a friend in a bike shop would fashion some steel stilts for the rack, which worked out great. Another little quirk of this bike was that I had to run the chain ring backwards. With the 38T chainring from absolute black the correct way round, I would have to run too many spacers on the BB, meaning there was not enough of the BB actually screwed into the frame. Running the chainring backwards though corrected that issue. Fat bikes often had random things like this to overcome due to them fat tyres and wide chain stays.
So let me tell you a little bit about the adventure this bike took me on. This bike took me on an adventure that lasted around 3 months, I set off from my friend’s house in Abingdon, Oxfordshire where I would pedal my way to the true starting location. Dover or Calais I guess.
The Plan
The plan was actually to ride all the way around the coast of Europe. France - Spain - Portugal - Spain - France I was going to cut across Italy, then head to Hungary, where my partner at the time lived. But things don’t always go to plan.
After riding from Abingdon to get the ferry over to Calais I would arrive towards the end of the day and the daylight was already fading so after just about finding my bike on one of the many levels on the ferry I would start making my way along the French coastline. Just trying to get away from Calais and into the countryside to find somewhere to camp. I remember vividly this night the first night in a new country it was warm, and I remember just finding a bench at around midnight, which is where I ended up sleeping. And I remember the sun rising early in the morning for my first day cycling the coast of Europe.
It’s definitely a strange feeling knowing that everything I had this bike the gear I had packed onto it was my life. And it would be my life for about 2 and half months give or take. I pedalled most days from very early in the morning 4:30 am until it got dark just keeping the sea on my right. Often at times making the most of the fat tyres and cycling along the long sandy beaches with not a care in the world. I would from time to time stop and stay a few days in places that seemed nice, sometimes with friends of friends, occasionally with strangers that invited me into their home. Each day was different, different places to see different people to stop and chat too. And plenty of people asking about what the hell that bike was all about. One thing that never seemed to changed on this trip though was the heat. Every day this summer was hot and the further south as you can imagine just kept getting hotter and hotter. The On One Fatty does have a cool top tube, it’s split into two parts unlike a normal top tube so was very handy with carrying extra water.
Day in day out this bike would take me on a journey, an unforgettable journey. I would normally cycle around 60–100 miles each day. Stopping often enjoying the beaches, the sunshine and not so much enjoy fixing the endless stream of punctures I would pick up on this bike. Back then Tubeless wasn’t as widespread and especially not as easy on wide tyres on this bike. Lucky the low pressures of the inner tubes meant it normally meant I could patch them. I think one time I must have had at least 10 patches on a tube. Eventually I got fed up with the endless punctures, found a hardware store bought some duct tape and taped the inside of the tyres and what do you know more punctures for the rest of the trip.
One memory of this trip though is one I can never forget, and it was the simplest things to happen. I am making my way through the French coastline getting ever closer to the Spanish boarder and I come to a bunch of different trails that I wasn’t sure if I could follow, so I stop to ask this old guy who also had a bike if he spoke English and new if I could go this way. Safe to say he didn’t speak English and my French was just as lacking. But we muddled through pointing at the bikes and just about understanding the general gist of the conversation was about. (It was about bikes) We end up getting each other’s name, I can’t quite remember his I think it was something along the lines of Michael but the French version. And at this point he starts drawing something in the gravel we are standing on, his age he was in his 90’s. The bike had kept him young. He gestures to me to follow me so we start cycling together through these gravel tracks with the sea just through the trees. He is laughing and encouraging me along with all my gear and my big tyres. In the end he cycled with me for a good 10-15 miles, and although we had no idea really what we were saying to each other the bike connected us. I met this guy once and i will probably never meet him again but over the thousands of miles I cycled on this trip this memory sticks with me the most.
Those interactions remind you, you’re not really alone out there. It’s those human moments that stay with you just as much as the landscapes. Because the landscapes the vast open roads, the endless coastline, the sunrises and sunsets those are personal. You can try to explain them, you can take a photo, but no one will ever really see them the way you did at that moment. They belong to you, and you alone. But the people you meet? The connections you make? Those become stories that live on. Not just for you, but for them too. Moments shared between two strangers on the road, carried forward in different directions, retold for years to come
Apart from the normal stuff that normally goes wrong on adventures like this the punctures the fixing the fatigue most of this trip was mostly very good. Wake up, ride, eat ride some more, see some places, eat some more, maybe meet some people ride some more and sleep some more. By the time I had made it all the way around the west coast of Spain and into Portugal that moment felt surreal. I had followed the sea just keeping it to my right no GPS device just a compass and paper maps for if I really got lost. (I didn’t) for god knows how many miles at this point. But seeing that sign was a crazy feeling a good one a bit of a relief because it felt like soon I would at least be starting to go in the direction of where I had planned to finish. Arriving in Portugal one thing I remember was the road condition just went from quite good in Spain to potholes everywhere, even with the big tyres of the on one fatty it was still quite rough, and the driving was noticeably worse. Still it was a beautiful place to ride with lots of lovely people and not so lovely heat. By this point it was mid-August and by about 2pm it was around 38 degrees most days. Way too hot for me to handle. So most days I would wake up as early as possible still camping and when I say camping it was so warm I was just laying a sleeping bag on the floor and sleeping like that. Never bothered with the tent for much of this trip. Unfortunately Portugal would be where my adventure on this epic bike would come to an end. Somewhere somehow I managed to lose my bank card. Which back then was a big deal because contactless didn’t exist. To get money I had to get my bank to send me the cash via Western Union they can only do this once, and then they cancel the card send you a new one, but cant send it abroad. So I was now on the hunt for a Western Union which proved to be easier said than done. Did I mention I only had three days to pick this money up, this was the most stressful time for this trip because every time I would find a Western Union it was either shut or no longer existed, or better yet it was some public holiday. Which meant everything was shut. By this time I didn’t have many Euros left and was mostly surviving on a bag of rice I had been carrying for emergencies. And then I finally arrive at a Western Union …. 5 mins after it shut. Typical. At this point i had to collect it the next day or it would no longer be accessible. So I had to make the call to stop moving and just wait for this Western Union to reopen in the morning I could not risk keep going and not finding one. The problem with this plan was that I was in Lagos in the Algarve in Portugal, a beautiful place but not somewhere you want to be hanging around overnight, but no cash for a hotel and no card I just tried to find a quiet place to wait the night out. I think the last few days or maybe months of cycling had taken it out of me because I fell asleep and when I woke up I knew it I had been robbed. My bike was still there luckily but my tools’ powerbank, computer pretty much everything from my bag was gone.
I ended up getting the cash from the Western Union that morning after spending a few hours and the police station reporting what had happened and I even continued on for a week or so. But I had to make the decision that it wasn’t going to be feasible that I would be able to continue on for the entire trip so I set a new goal to get to Seville where I would fly to Budapest, Hungary. I made it to Hungary just not exactly how I had planned but the on one fatty was such a great bike for this journey it turned heads was such a fun bike to ride and apart from the quirks of living with a fat bike was an absolutely incredible bike to own. A bike that was a tool to make memories and it certainly delivered.
