We're stoked to now be stocking a few copies of Bummel, an irregular zine about bikepacking. The mag is a passion project of Tom Owen, who has worked in the cycling industry and on the media side of the sport for 8 years. We whated to chat to him about the project - To understand a little more about the what, the why and the where.

Hey Tom, How you doing? Great idea of doing a little Q & A. It means a lot and we really love what you're doing.

(Tom) No worries Sam, happy to do so. I'm well, thank you.

(Sam) Ok cool, good to hear it :)

Let’s start off with a few quick fire questions, to get us in the mood…. Feel free to elaborate on your answers.

1. Flats Or Cleats?

Cleats, but with every year that passes I get less and less motivated by ideas of performance or efficiency. I go about the same speed whether I’ve trained all winter or haven’t touched the bike in months. I can’t imagine cleats make much difference really – A lot of this stuff is psychological. And on a long enough timeline, don't we all end up with a pair of SPD Shimano sandals?

(Sam) Oh thats the dream! Its hard to get a sweet foot tan at the best of times hahaha.

2. Bars and Gels or Cakes and Pastries?

I ate enough bars and gels to last a lifetime when I was super into road cycling. These days it’s real food only!

(Sam) I totally agree, not that I ever raced, but bars and gels seem to reek havoc on my tummy.

3.Tubeless Or Non-Tubeless?

My gravel bike is a Fairlight Secan 2.5 and it’s the first time I’ve had tubeless. It is absolutely game-changing and I wouldn’t ever go back. That said, I’ve never experienced a total tubeless failure… so ask me again when I’ve been stranded in the middle of nowhere trying to pressurise a coke bottle with a hand pump.

(Sam) hahhah, hopefully that never happens! I always recommend a Dynaplug, tubeless for off-road and tubes on the road for me.

4. Cows Milk Or Nut Milks?

My go-to coffee order is a long black, which sidesteps the question entirely… but on my cereal in the morning I prefer cow. 

(Sam) Nice, nice, same coffee order for me please, but a fanboy of the nut milks theses days…..

5. Threaded BB’s or Push Fit BB’s

I have installed exactly one BB in my life. I bought a threaded BB. The frame I had was press-fit. I think I borrowed a pressfit installation tool from a friend, got it working and swore never, ever again! 

(Sam) I'v been fixing bikes a long time and nothing beats some good’O thread.

Now we are feeling good, lets crack on with some deeper questions -

6. How long have you been cycling? What or Who put you on 2 wheels and why do you keep coming back for more?

I had a bike when I was a kid, but drifted away from cycling aged 11. I got hit by a car and my mum refused to buy me a new bike. I really went full-gas when I moved to London post-university (about 10 years ago). Commuting on my first ever road bike gave me this incredible liberation. I had been working in a bar 25 hours a week, while also doing an unpaid internship. Every penny I earned at the bar went on rent and Oyster card top-up. Getting the bike not only freed me from the tube, it put £30 a week back in my pocket and allowed me to actually exercise and enjoy myself every day. I went from surviving in London to living… 

I was inspired (although it would be fairer to say I was pushed!) to buy the bike by my first bosses at the internship, who’d both been keen roadies for years. One of them shared me a link to the famous London Fixed Gear and Single Speed forum, where some chap he knew had listed a yellow Decathlon road bike for £200. I never looked back. That frame failed a couple of years ago, shearing through under the seatpost… but it’s hanging on my wall behind me now as a reminder of how it changed the course of my life. 

(Sam) I love that you bought a bike from LFGSS, it seems to be a staple in the London bicycle scene these days and the fact that you have kept it really shows you love cycling, and like me - A bit of a bike nerd…..

Going from your old skool Decathlon to a modern Road bike, did you notice any mega differences that you wish you had on your well loved £200 machine?

(Tom) Yeah I don’t know if I would have found out about the bike or the forum if it hadn't been for someone who was already deep in that ’scene' pointing me the way. LFGSS an amazing resource, even today. The biggest difference when I got a proper racing road bike was the twitchiness of the handling. The Decathlon was a bit of a wagon… super steady, super comfortable… lately I’ve been thinking about getting it repaired and rebuilt as more of a tourer. I certainly can’t imagine ever living without it or chucking it in a skip. 

(Sam) Cool! Thats a lovey story, thank you for sharing, maybe a flat bar mix up.....

7. All trips and adventures are great in their own way, but do you have any more stand out moments you didn’t share in the Bummel Zine?

Although our final stop was Pamplona, we actually rode past the city and continued north on our penultimate day, so that we could go to this tiny village called Aribe. The river Irati flows through Aribe, and this was supposedly Hemingway’s favourite river to fish for trout in. 

It really is a tiny little place. We managed to get dinner and some excellent Basque brandy in a guesthouse restaurant, then we stumbled off into the empty field behind to lay out our bivvy bags and sleep, with the river chuckling and gurgling a few metres away. In the morning we were woken by a dog walker, who took one look at us and simply left us Mad Englishmen to it. Then, for breakfast, we found a petrol station with a bar attached (this is a really common combo across Spain). We drank cafes con leche and ordered every pastry they had in the building. 

Hemingway writes this beautiful long passage in Fiesta (which is set mostly in Pamplona) where his two characters go hiking up the valley of some river in the Basque country to fish. While I never found any explicit confirmation that this river in the book was the same one we rode to, I like to think he probably did tread the same ground as we did. Maybe he walked along that bit of bank. Maybe he had a sleepy Sunday morning coffee in a bar just like the one we went to.  

I’ll save the story of the time we saw a bear while making camp for the night for issue 2. 

(Sam) Thank you, it sounds amazing and super surreal! Just having that freedom of camping anywhere is sorely missed in the UK. I think it’s safe to say you walked in the same place Hemingway did all those years ago, a really special moment.

No way! Very cool, but also a little unnerving, I look forward to reading about the bear story…..

8. Have you learnt any useful, cool or interesting life lesson whilst riding bikes or being around cyclists?

I can only think of one real aphorism that I have taken to heart and carried with me, and to be honest it’s kinda meaningless… people are people. Basically, everyone is an individual. They all have their own stuff going on. Everyone you interact with has an internal life that they’re grappling with. Nobody sets out to in the morning to make themselves the baddie in your personal movie… 

One can easily fall into a trap of thinking ’this group of people are always like that’: car drivers are careless, Gen-Zers have no respect, cyclists run red lights. But it’s never that simple… people are people. 

(Sam) I dont think its meaningless at all. In fact, I think its such a real way of thinking and totally true, thats a great and fruitful insight that people often forgot in the moment.

9. When and where is your next Bummel adventure? I love the Hemingway twist and looking forward to what you write next.

What I’d love to do with Bummel in the future is devote each issue to a single adventure, trip or experience. I can ‘officially announce’ that Issue 2 will definitely focus on a trip I did to North Macedonia, where we sought out out these crazy, Soviet era sculptures that are dotted all over the countries that used to be part of Yugoslavia. The trip is done and we have the images, it’s just a case of laying it all out and firing up the printing presses.

(The thumbnail pic is one of the monuments as a little taster…)

Later down the line if the zine is a success, I want to open things up so that not all the trips are ones done by me. It’d be amazing to have a mixture of 'guest editors’ who each bring their own perspective on bikepacking. What we want to do is capture that magic feeling of adventure you get through bikepacking, the same feeling that you had when you were 10 years old, messing about in the woods with your mates. 

(Sam) Oh wow! North Macedonia is often overlooked as a country to visit, as it’s landlocked and doesn’t offer that beach holiday that so many people desire. I suppose you had cycling in mind as well as a bit of a history adventure.

How did you find the people and the place?

I think it would be very cool to see Bummel grow further and your idea of having ‘guest editors’ is super cool!

I would love to do a feature of my own…..Maybe in the UK for me….

(Tom) It’s a really beautiful country. It feels very wild, in the sense that it’s green and verdant and very mountainous – But it’s also a poor country. It’s the most ‘foreign’ I’ve ever felt while still being in Europe. A lot of the people we met were pretty perplexed to see us and would openly stare, something I’ve only really experienced in Asia and Africa before. It did feel as though there was a bit of a barrier between us – Partly because of the language gap.

(Sam) Right, I totally get that and must have felt a bit odd, but also very refreshing. Hahaha, I can just imagine the locals all taking about you guys and thinking how bizarre it was - That you guys were living on bikes and wild camping.

Thank you so much for giving us some time, I cant wait to read issue 2 of Bummel, maybe we can go on an adventure together one day.

END.