When you’re going on a long bike ride, there are many things to consider. Distance, scenery, potential cafe stops – and of course whether there is a pub at the end where you can click-clack your cleats across handsome flagstones and guzzle frosty pints while horsing down their entire supply of Scampi Fries. All these things were entirely unguaranteed when fate decided my long ride would be to follow a David Bowie song lyric.
It was mid-2016, Bowie had just passed, Prince too, and, well, it seemed like the country was in an irreversible aquaplane into a ditch full of sodden vegetation and division. I wanted out, not of Europe, but into it. And it was the Starman’s journey of the mind that would take me there. One day, just as I’d started mournfully singing his classic ‘Life on Mars?’ I passed my bike in the hallway – and an unexpected route presented itself. “See the mice in their million hordes, from Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads”. The lyric was, for Bowie, a sneer at mass tourism, but to me, in my ready-to-burst midlife crisis, it demanded to be cycled. I undertook the ride over six weeks during autumn 2016, and wrote a book about it. Now, 3,000 miles and nine years later, here are six reasons why everyone should ride a song lyric.
(Image credit: James Briggs)
You’ll see the world
From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads, according to Google Maps, could’ve been a straight-ish 103-hour romp from southern Europe that passed through Valencia, Pamplona and Biarritz and then headed up France’s western seaboard to stock up on cheap plonk at Ouistreham. A ferry to Portsmouth, a spritely dash around London to Norfolk, and I’d be done.
But Google Maps is a bothersome chump that often leads you down dead ends, very wet streams and across people’s back gardens. If, like me, you were considering a more sonic approach, Bowie’s musical waymarkers could spirit you from Olympic stadiums he played in Catalonia, the hometown of his artistic inspiration Salvador Dalí, the Berlin wall he helped fell, and Parisian studios he recorded in. Such a route may be musical, but it’s definitely not glamorous.
Expect long verges of bland, wind-battered French dual carriageway. Yes, that’s you, D-6086. Dusty flybys of stonemasons’ yards that leave you covered in ghoulish chalk. Autobahns whose entrances you accidentally breach will confirm that BMW drivers deserve their reputation the world over. Ditto English village store masters who refuse to believe what you’re doing even if you buy two kingsize Snickers and a yoghurt-topped flapjack. Oh, don’t forget the Dutch rain. That’s got your back… and your head… and your shoes. And the pannier you lazily left open.
It’ll get you fit
Hours spent listening to David Bowie’s music is no substitute for hours spent not doing any training. Fortunately, having 3,000 miles to cycle means you have a lot of road to get fit. Obviously, the first four days will feel like your lungs are an accordion being manhandled by a Frenchman; your legs are essentially empty tubes where waste products joyfully gather before manifesting in spectacular, spasming cramps on Catalan hard shoulders; and your refusal to buy chamois cream will mean your buttocks will develop a prune-like polyp that’ll have you shifting from one bum cheek to the other for around 400 miles. But rest assured, fitness is coming.
“YOU’LL BE SO FIT, THE ONLY THING YOU’LL HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT IS YOUR AGEING BLADDER”
An extra fitness boost came with a 13km detour up an Ardèche mountain to see if a mountain village called Saint -Pierre-la-Roche was home to Bowie’s namesake make-up man. It wasn’t, but my thighs were whittled like silken balsa wood. Calf strengthening is assured by cranking your pedals to a blissful cadence and then bringing them to a grinding halt as you navigate Parisian traffic. And fast-twitch muscle fibres will be gained through terrified sprints back to your youth hostel as you dodge nouveau-riche millionaires racing matte-black SUVs on terrifying six-lane Moscow highways.
In fact, by the end you’ll be so fit, the only thing you’ll have to worry about is your ageing bladder and the lack of public toilets lining the route between Norwich to the Norfolk Broads.
You’ll find your limits
No matter how many moodlifting David Bowie songs you listen to, injury is inevitable. ‘Space Oddity’, ‘Let’s Dance’, ‘Sound and Vision’ and ‘Moonage Daydream’ will have you thrashing along no-handed as you attempt air-drumming while sitting atop a bike saddle for the first time. But beyond the 3,000mile mark, you will inevitably succumb to a range of age-related injuries.
Kneecaps, once able to withstand footballs, English winters and bacon-heavy diets, will start to creak and grind. Not in a musical manner, but that of a man in his late 30s who had previously been sedentary for most of his life. That strange numbness in your finger that makes it feel as though it’s someone else who is picking your nose? That’ll be 48 days of vibrations coursing through your nerve endings. And God forbid you buy a cheap pair of glasses that snap on the second day of the trip, rendering your eyes receptacles for grit, dust and an aperitif of black flies.
(Image credit: James Briggs)
You’ll make friends with your local bike shop
Having all the gear isn’t compulsory, but a few key instruments are essential. Bowie wrote the bare bones of ‘Life on Mars?’ on a battered 12-string guitar but was accompanied by a cast of ensemble musicians, including lead guitarist Mick Ronson and classically trained pianist Rick Wakeman, who made the song really sing. I was accompanied by my fly-by-night camping gear, consisting of a second-hand tent, musty sleeping bag, stove and knackered soup pan, all bundled together inside a blue Ikea bag.
My bike set-up needed more professional assistance. I’d rolled into an east London bike shop with a 1980s racer, asking what panniers I could hook on, and was met by a certain amount of laughter. Fortunately, Brixton Bikes, a stone’s throw from Bowie’s birthplace, but now devastatingly closed for good, introduced me to the cycle-to-work scheme, touring bikes, hex keys, ‘bulletproof’ panniers and 30cm-long pedal spanners. Remarkably, I didn’t have a single puncture in 3,000 miles on which to use said skills. That said, the tools they recommended for dismantling my bike to the satisfaction of a budget airline and judgemental train guards proved a godsend. May your demise not be in vain, Brixton Bikes. Do use your local bicycle shops, even the ones who laugh at you.
You’ll get lean
Diet is important on a long ride – mostly in the sense you can put whatever you want in your face without seeming to put on any weight. Bowie’s favourite foods in the 1970s were supposedly red peppers, cocaine and milk. A heady cocktail. But on a bike ride from Spain via France, Switzerland, Germany, Russia and Holland, you can expand your palate into farm-fresh huevos, golden croissants, absurdly pricey Swiss ice cream, mountains of kartoffel and carb-laden potato and mushroom Russian pastries that would be well suited to building houses.
Ch-ch-changes-inspired ch-ch-chocolate chip cookies are go, as are Haribo Minions shovelled into your trap on French D-roads. Hell, even strawberry-flavoured drinking yoghurt, the likes of which I hadn’t been near since I was nine, provided delightful sugar-laden hydration, and probably diabetes, too. Looking to stay extra lean? Simply cycle for eight hours in 35ºC heat dining on cheap supermarket cheese. In other tales of dehydration, consoling yourself after a rain-lashed, goosepimple-packed ride across middle Germany with four tall yet deceptively strong bottles of Helles lager, will temporarily make you feel emboldened to text ex-lovers – but will also leave you with a thumping headache in a waterlogged campsite, wondering what the German word for paracetamol is.
You’ll meet interesting people
Cycling a David Bowie song lyric is a sure-fire way to provoke conversation, and sometimes, anger. You’ll get a steady stream of “Man! David Bowie? That guy was a maverick”, but you’ll also get Russian cyclists from Kazan telling you about the River Volga’s start and end point; Spanish road cyclists too busy enjoying a tailwind to comment on your heroic musical endeavour; a Russian ballerina telling you she’s mad for Chris Rea; and, when you shelter from an autumnal downpour over Suffolk, a blazing argument with a woman in a ski jacket who’d rather have Cliff Richard wiggily singing her to sleep than the Starman. Is there life on Mars? Well, David, your song certainly put life in my legs and sodden soul. Indeed, whether you’re cycling a lyric from one of the greatest songs ever recorded, out for a weeknight blast to blow away the cobwebs, or simply setting forth for a Sunday jaunt, there’s music everywhere – from the wind whistling around your ears, the thrum of tyres on cool tarmac and the dawn coos of the narcoleptic wood pigeon. You’re a cyclist. The open road is a hymn to music and living, and there’s nothing like it in the world.
The route: Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads – via Moscow
After a quick whizz across Ibiza, I took the ferry to Barcelona and its Olympic Stadium where Bowie had played. I then pedalled east past Salvador Dalí’s house in Figueres and over the Pyrenees to France, headed to Switzerland for Bowie’s marriages, mountains and more. After dropping in on a Parisian studio where he recorded, I took the old Trans Europe Express to Russia and the Kremlin Palace he played. Then it was back on the train to Berlin, site of his Seventies sojourn, before cycling through Germany to Holland to catch the ferry to Harwich. Finally, I headed north via English villages, stargazing observatories and the ‘Life on Mars?’ piano player’s home, to the Norfolk Broads.
(Image credit: Future)
The full, original version of this article was published in the 25th September 2025 print edition of Cycling Weekly. Subscribe online and get the magazine delivered direct to your door every week.
