I cycle quite a bit (500-1000km / month), but my recreational routes have all been near areas where I know I’ll have access to public toilets and clean drinking water.
I’d love to venture out onto more rural roads and areas, way outside of areas that might normally have toilet access, but that’s quite literally the only thing holding me back from doing so.
What are your strategies? Piss by the side of the road and hope nobody sees you? Squat out in a heavily forested area and risk ticks?
This is not a topic that ever gets talked about with cycle tourists, endurance riders, and other long-distance cyclists, so I’d love to know how to approach this!
I exclusively ride in the middle of nowhere. If I need to take a piss I stop my bike and step off the trail for a leak and if I need to take a dump which fortunelately has only happened once I then just walk a bit further away from the trail. This would be much more of an issue in urban areas but in rural areas not the slightest. I’ve never been worried about ticks. I spend quite a bit time in the woods.
That’s reassuring! Thanks for the insight.
To add to what they said: my recommendation, from backpacking experience, is to bring a small ziploc (or waterproof) bag with a folded section of clean TP taken from a roll. For my IBS, I also bring a travel pack of baby wipes and another ziploc back to pack them out after theyre used (since they dont biodegrade).
Yeah, I’ve been needing to bring TP on my rides simply because even the state of the art, self-cleaning, fully automated washrooms are always out 😵