From Brussels to Istanbul by train and handcycle: How two friends pulled off an epic journey

Let's go back in time: six years ago, I smooshed my head into the bottom of a lake, which rendered me the side-effect of having no-worky legs and a pretty no-worky rest of my body (spines do quite a lot, it turns out).

In the process of figuring out this new life in which I moved around entirely on a pair of wheels, in which people asked me weird questions, and in which I learnt to poop on command with the help of a pill, I stumbled upon a podcast. It was created by similarly smooshed people with the intention of helping their smooshed peers navigate the wild world in which we had all suddenly found ourselves. It was called Spinal Crap, and one of the hosts was someone called Grace.

Grace was my window into the outside. Through her podcast, I could see what my life might look like when I got out of rehab. It meant a lot to see and hear about her experiences as she navigated life as a medical student, one year ahead of myself. When I got out of the hospital, I found her on social media and sent her a message asking for advice. We met up when she was in Edinburgh (where I live) and shared a pizza in the Meadows. Turns out, we had more in common than just being broken.

Soon, I found myself sleeping on her couch when I needed a place to stay and spending my next few broke-neck-a-versaries swimming with her in the pond where I’d done the neck-breaking a few years earlier, celebrating not being dead. She became an important person in my life. And when I received an invitation to Grace's wedding in Istanbul, I knew I had to be there. I also knew it was going to be tricky.

I am a self-described eco-zealot; several years ago, I swore off flying if I could help it. I have family in all corners of the globe, and I feel I have already over-used my privilege of jetting about at a cost to the planet. I decided that if I want to travel, it would be in a way that is less impactful to the world around me. Also, I love an adventure. 

I considered driving from London to Istanbul using my slightly unreliable Volkswagen Motability van; diesel is decidedly not a green way of travel, but it is marginally better than jet fuel, and at least I could guarantee a place to sleep for the night. This was an appealing option — in a world where most beds are up a set of stairs (as unachievable as Mount Everest to me), nine times out of ten there is literally no option to get a roof over my head. But the idea of breaking down halfway across the world, trying to find parking and driving on the opposite side of the road through unfamiliar cities was not so appealing. 

Could I get there by train? Possibly. Trains are great and wonderfully plentiful in Europe. But, the sad reality is that they are often not accessible. So, I decided to supplement train travel with another means of transit: my handcycle. 

At home, I use my electric handcycle for every journey I can, so why couldn't I use it for this one, too? "Many reasons why not," some might say, but with this option, the only footprint would be a little electricity to charge my batteries (to supplement my pedalling on hills and give me some speed), I would get to be outside in nature (my favourite place to be) and see much more of the land I’d be travelling through. Most importantly, cycling is fun! 

And so, I set about trying to prepare for the journey.  

The first step was finding someone who would be up for undertaking this challenge with me. I occasionally know my limits, and even I knew my plan could only work if I had someone with me as my right-hand human — someone who could shove me over obstacles and carry me up stairs and help me overcome all the barriers of a very inaccessible world. So, I floated the idea to all-round good egg, Archie. Interrail provides a complementary caregiver Pass to those who require assistance, and Archie had proven experience as a piggyback carrier, laughs at my jokes, matches my levels of chaos and, most importantly, likes a challenge. Admittedly, we had recently broken up, and asking an ex-boyfriend to spend five weeks in your company carrying you on and off trains and being your sole way of accessing lots of the things you need to survive is a risky move. But he was up for it, and so was I.

The next step was plotting a route, an overwhelming task with so many options and so many amazing places to choose from. It was obvious I would never be able to cycle the whole way (or at least, not with a job). I had been graciously granted the chance to combine all my annual leave, got extra leave from working the last few bank holidays and figured I could work remotely on a few days of the trip, so I could scrape together five weeks off — but even the most ambitious cyclist would need to work hard to cover that kind of distance, let alone an untested gummy worm on a hand-powered tricycle. That's where trains factored into the plan; I would rely on them to do some heavy lifting on this trip. 

Once upon a time, a direct train lin used to run all the way from Paris to then-Constantinople, now-Istanbul ("the King of Trains and the Train of Kings," "Murder on the Orient Express," and all that). While you can still technically take segments of the journey on a self-styled equivalent, the cabins will set you back £3,350 minimum, per passenger, for a single night’s journey. Thankfully, the Man in Seat 61 compiled a helpful list of alternative train links that will get you across the same territories for a lot less money (albeit also with a lot more changes and a lot less luxury). 

What his incredibly thorough bible of train travel can’t offer, though, is specific advice on how to do this journey as a mad tetraplegic on a handcycle.  I know from experience that travelling by rail with a mobility aid can be a tricky experience — sometimes assistance doesn’t turn up, ramps don’t materialise, and train staff may not like the look of your device or don’t feel very helpful, so I anticipated taking the train still wouldn’t be an easy option.

But what I hadn’t anticipated was the barriers to travelling with any kind of cycle at all. At several points, Archie’s regular bicycle posed an even bigger issue than my handcycle, being categorically disallowed on several of the services we had hoped to take from Edinburgh to Istanbul. Indeed, it was the fact that all bicycles must be disassembled to travel on the Eurostar from London to Paris that influenced our decision to officially begin our mission in Belgium.

Earlier in our planning, we had agreed to prioritise cycling in parts of the world neither of us had visited much before, skipping quickly over the Western part of Europe to save time, get the most bang for our buck with our Interrail Passes and, in theory, maximise accessible train infrastructure where it was available. We began with a direct night train from Brussels to Vienna. Importantly, the ÖBB Nightjet had a communicative assistance line, reachable by both phone and email, and a wheelchair accessible carriage (which I was offered pictures of in advance) at a very affordable rate, even allowing the free passage of a carer. But what they did not allow was bicycles. After a bit of gentle pleading, it was agreed that Archie would be allowed on with his bicycle as long as we could fit it in our private space.

This was to be our approach for the whole of the trip going forward. By hook or by crook and with a bit of luck, begging, Tetris and sweat, somehow we would get #TooManyWheels and #NotEnoughLegs safely where they had never gone before.

As fate would have it, we didn't make it to Vienna as planned — instead, my handcycle broke down, necessitating an adventurous detour to Bühl, Germany to visit the headquarters of Stricker (the oldest handcycle manufacturer in Europe). With my broken handcycle replaced with something far more capable (thank you Stricker!), the trip was saved. A few days later, we resumed our night train to Vienna where we picked up the EuroVelo 6 cycling route.

The EuroVelo 6 cycling route eased us into the journey with a straightforward ride along the Danube all the way to Budapest. I had never plotted a long-distance cycling route before, able-bodied or not, and the availability of access information for this mode of travel was even less available than with the trains. Unlike with rail, however, the only people I would be reliant on to make the journey possible would be Archie and myself. This meant that, though we were unsure of the terrain and if there was likely to be a barrier, we could rely on our own judgement and strength to see if the way was navigable or not and make our best attempt. 

You see, while systems around access to public transport can make your life a lot easier, they can equally make things a lot more complicated. Navigating them requires knowledge and goodwill; often the red tape and bureaucracy that disallows someone an opportunity of movement can be far more of a barrier than a tricky passage. You find yourself struggling to get through on a booking "hotline" that plays several hours of hold music, sending countless unreturned emails that require weeks of notice, and trying to distil confusing information in a foreign language. Then, you might be informed that your mobility aid is a few centimeters too long, or a certain station is unmanned, or a lift is out of order — this can all result in you being completely denied access and the right to travel, regardless of whether or not it's your only option, regardless of the fact that non-disabled people are able to board public transportation without interception or justification.

When I’m on my bike, I still encounter barriers — sometimes they still stop me in my tracks — and they are still frustrating and sometimes discriminatory, but where I go and how I get over them is up to me, not a set of rules or a man in a bad mood at a ticket kiosk. Plus, on this journey, I had my secret weapon: Archie, and his skinny but determined, able body, to muscle our way over obstacles, a privilege that I and others rarely have as a backup.

I should stop to make a note about this privilege because it is not to be taken lightly. Our journey — the way we ended up navigating this challenge as a partnership, its joys and its challenges, its message of "triumph over adversity" and optics of "Disabled Woman Doesn’t Let Her Disability Stop Her" — can’t be boiled down into tabloid, inspiration-porn headlines. Nor is it a story of "Heroic Man Helps Tragically Injured Cripple Fulfill Dream of Attending Her Friend’s Wedding."

Archie is heroic. I did have to overcome a lot of adversity and refused to let it stop me. But the story is a lot more nuanced than either of those angles (and thankfully, a lot less icky). It’s a trope that we frequently had to contend with, disguised as awe in compliments that betrayed a subtle ableism that is as revealing as it is well-intentioned. It was in the many comments I scrolled past that called me an "inspiration" before I’d even done anything, when I'd posted to cycling groups asking for route advice. And it was in the hurtful thinking, when I told someone I wouldn’t change my disability, and they asked "But would he?" (meaning Archie). It’s in the suggestion that my life is a burden and the barriers we face are so significant and permanent that one or both of us have to be inspirational just to survive it, without acknowledgement that there are practical things we can do to make it easier — and joy to be had in the doing so. It’s in noting someone else’s misfortune or barriers and using them self-servingly to make ourselves feel better about having a relatively easier life, congratulating someone on struggling without joining the fight to ease things. It’s not done maliciously, but we need allies, not audiences.

In the end, our route took us over thousands of miles. We rode a train through a wildfire, stayed with strangers from Facebook who offered us beds, swam in a Serbian waterfall, nearly got left halfway off a train carriage, ate food both unfamiliar and delicious, listened to jazz, cuddled baby bunnies, explored "God’s Eyes" in cave form in Bulgaria, cried (okay, that was just me), cycled through the night, visited churches, spotted tortoises, floated in the Danube, made friends with locals, sweated, laughed and learned. Every part of it was worth it.

At the end of it all, I made it to Grace’s wedding. I watched my friend roll down the aisle and make every eye shed a tear as she pledged vows to her person. We shared wheelchair hugs and danced in wheeled form and celebrated what it was like to live differently and the same as everyone else. We celebrated the journey and the destination and everything in between and everything that is to come.

Archie and I made it across Europe, and we did it as friends, and we did it despite the barriers of inaccessibility and despite perceptions. We did it despite me having to give all my freedom and trust to another person, knowing that I would be reliant on him for everything I needed and knowing that many nights I wouldn’t even be able to get to a sink, let alone move freely. We did it despite Archie having to give his whole body, as well as his time, to be an extension of my own — blood, sweat and tears.

Archie would have to tell you his own story as to why he did it — what made it worth doing for someone he was no longer in a relationship with (at least not a romantic one). I like to think that travelling is more than just efficiently using your legs to get from A to B, that I still make good company, that the banter and shared joy at the world we exchanged as we cycled made travelling together worthwhile. That maybe, just maybe, it provided a window into a world and mindset that many don’t experience, where barriers are different and people are sometimes more infuriating but often kinder; where problems don’t feel so problematic and new ways of doing things open up new experiences and new beauty. That it can be a privilege, because that’s how it feels where I sit. But I’ll leave that for him to say. 

In the end, it is easier to "other" when someone looks different to you, when their needs are so obviously visible, but the more people I meet on our mad, spinning planet, the more deeply I believe that struggle is universal and our worth transcends what meets the eye. When we open ourselves up, the world becomes our oyster. You can only imagine what adventures it holds. 

My message to readers: say no to flying, say yes to exploring – the planet will thank you and the stories you will create will be so much more worthwhile. With friends by your side and friends to hold onto, there’s more beauty to life than we can contain. 

Katie Renker is a planet-loving handcyclist, adventurer, third culture Anglo-German-Lankan kid raised in the tropics, who likes climbing trees in a paragliding harness and spends a lot of time thinking about how to make the world a better place. A former teacher, she spends her time campaigning for equal cycling opportunities for disabled people in the United Kingdom.