Ian J. Whitmore: Slow enough to tell the story

Where he rides out of

Ian works as a photographer, videographer, and web developer, a combination that pays the bills three different ways and shapes how he rides. He came to bikes as a road commuter, and then, in a detail worth noticing, stopped riding entirely between 2012 and 2020. Eight years off. He picked gravel up in 2020 and now, six years in, rides out of Barcelona.

His Catalonia

His home route is a shifting thing rather than a fixed loop. Any of a number of loops that take you up, over, and through Collserola, with views of the city and the sea. The kind of home terrain that is generous with permutations, which suits a rider who is not looking for the same loop every time.

Mid-ride, when the timing works, he stops at Asador Casa Juaco in Collserola for huevos rotos with butifarra. On his longer wish list is Gritline's Baix Empordà Loop, one of the corners of Catalan gravel he has not covered yet and is on a stated mission to fix. He wants, in his own summary, to ride every meter of gravel in this incredible place.

Asked when to come, he picks October and November. Catalonia in the fall, he writes, is pure magic. He is not the first Gritliner in this series to make the case for the shoulder seasons rather than the summer. His practical advice to a visiting rider is more novel: use the trains. Learn which trains let you wheel your bike straight on, and the whole of the region opens up. Girona first, but the coast down toward Valencia is reachable without ever packing the bike.

A ride that changed something

Ian offered two answers for the hardest ride of the last twelve months, and both are illuminating in different ways. The first was in Oregon, on a new steel hardtail he had just built up (a Singular Swift, for the readers who care). 70 kilometres, 1,345 metres of climbing, most of it packed into a sustained 14 to 16 kilometre climb. He suffered on the climb, he writes, but it was overall an amazing day. Good scenery, good friends.

The second answer is the more interesting one. A group ride in June, during the recent EU heatwave. He was not adapted for the heat and, in his own summary, had no fitness for it either. Eventually he pulled the pin and left the ride early, out of caution. In three years of riding a lot in Spain, he writes, he still has plenty to learn about the Spanish summer. It reads, on the page, as a small admission. On the road, it is the kind of judgement call that keeps a rider riding.

My riding has become more and more relaxed and casual the past 2 years. I gave up my power meter.

What riding gives him

What riding gives Ian, in the short version, is time to clear his head, or, when he needs it, to think about whatever he is juggling that week. He does not embellish beyond that. Time to think is what it is.

The longer version, when he can fully escape, is more specific. He has been making bikepacking films on YouTube, drawn to the format by other riders and creators who first made him want to add to the conversation. This is why, over the past couple of years, his riding has become more relaxed. He gave up his power meter and now rides on heart rate and calories. He gravitates to bikepacking because he wants to go slower, take in more of the landscape, and spend more time telling the story afterwards. Storytelling, he notes, is harder when you are in a hurry.

One small ritual sits inside all of this. Sunscreen before the ride. Not for any interesting reason on its own, but, as he writes, putting it on tends to mean he is committed to the ride. Applied, he is going. That is the ritual.

What's next

The near-term goal is fitness for long days and multi-day rides again. The bigger one is a 2 to 4 week bikepacking tour. He is currently planning a 10 to 12 day ride from Rome up into Tuscany and back for October 2026. He is, as he puts it, open to suggestions.