Andrea Borchi, co-founder of NorthCape4000 alongside Andrea Tozzi, shares for the first time his experience as a participant in the adventure he helped create. After eight years of organizing behind the scenes, this year he decided to experience firsthand the 3000 kilometers from Berlin to North Cape, discovering from within what it truly means to be part of this community of cyclists who cross Europe in search of freedom and authenticity.
While the world discusses the launch of the new version of ChatGPT, we are outside the bubble. Outside all the mechanisms that are present and persistent in our lives, outside work hours, outside routine, outside the stereotypes that want to box us into some precise category. Outside of everything and everyone except ourselves.
We have the wind in our faces, we are over 500 strong, and we’re all pedaling across Europe.
Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t fix the broken air conditioner at home, respond to a client with a problem, or attend that famous dinner with friends we were invited to. Everything that normally occupies the mind and steals energy is, here, simply impossible to do. Not because there’s no willingness, but because space and distance protect us. We are far away, unreachable, in a parallel world where priorities have changed.
And this physical impossibility brings with it an incredible peace of soul. It’s as if someone turned down the volume of a deafening background noise that accompanies us every day without our noticing. Finally, we can hear the silence, listen to the rhythm of our breathing, recognize the freedom that comes from pedaling without interruptions and without distractions.
In this suspended space, we alone are the masters of our days. There are no notifications demanding attention, no commitments to chase after, no duties piling up. There is only the road ahead, the wind, and a horizon that calls to us. And we have a precise destination to reach: North Cape.
Having a clear and ambitious goal becomes a medicine against the chaos of everyday life. No need to make lists, juggle appointments, remember a thousand deadlines; here, every gesture is already written in its simplicity. You just have to pedal. At every moment of the day and night, you know exactly what to do, and this absolute clarity is a rare luxury in our era, a form of wealth not measured in money but in freedom.
In this eighth edition of NorthCape4000, there are those who started from Rovereto with a 4,000 km route to complete, and there are those who, like me, chose the new “short” route, starting from Berlin with an almost entirely flat 3,000 km itinerary.
A geographic romance: freedom
The ambitious goal is to cover an average of 200 km per day for 15 days to reach the destination on August 14th, the last day available to qualify as a finisher.
The NorthCape4000 offers an incredible geographical succession across the entire European continent. You start from Rovereto in Trentino, embraced by the Dolomites, then cross the Alpine passes of Austria, the great rivers of Germany, the plains of Poland. From there, land gives way to water: the ferry becomes the symbolic bridge to Sweden, and then on to Finland with its endless lakes, and finally Norway, which accompanies you to the end of the continent.
It’s a journey across an entire continent that reveals something extraordinary that we have taken for granted for too long: the freedom to undertake it. Pedaling for thousands of kilometers without ever stopping at a closed border, without having to show a visa or exchange currency at each border. No checkpoints, no fear of crossing into hostile territory.
And it is precisely this freedom that strikes more than anything. Because today we know it is not at all guaranteed. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has violently reminded us of this. There are places, just a few hundred kilometers from us, where crossing a border is still a matter of life or death, of belonging or exclusion. Traveling by bicycle from the Po Valley to the Barents Sea becomes, then, an enormous privilege, an achievement we should never forget.
The NorthCape4000 is therefore not just a sporting adventure, but also a concrete celebration of what Europe represents: the possibility of moving freely, of feeling like citizens of a continent before being citizens of a single country.
A shift of perspective
My dual role as organizer and participant added an extra dose of anxiety to a fixed appointment that has accompanied me for eight years now. Until now, I had only taken care of the organizational aspect, but this year I decided to give myself a real gift: to experience firsthand the adventure that I myself created together with Andrea.
If at the Rovereto start I felt almost anesthetized, it was the Berlin departure that struck me deeply. There I wasn’t the organizer behind the scenes, but the cyclist ready to leave like everyone else. And I wasn’t the only one to feel that inner jolt.
We met at the Berlin Pavilion: time for a coffee, a quick greeting, and then the brief pre-departure briefing. When Roberto took the floor, something difficult to explain happened: absolute silence, and the air suddenly became electric, as if we were all connected by an invisible thread. Roberto told us that the previous year he had been one of us, that he knew exactly the mixture of emotions that was running through us at that moment: the joy for the imminent departure and the fear for what awaited us along the road.
His words, spoken from the heart, made the emotion palpable. He was visibly moved, and we, perhaps, even more so.
Being there, ready to leave with everyone else, made me strongly perceive the high sense of community that you breathe at the NorthCape4000. We weren’t just individuals gathered in a venue in Berlin; we were part of something bigger, intertwined by invisible bonds.
Each with their own story, certainly, but stories that resembled each other in fundamental traits. Months of training, waking up at dawn to steal time from work and family, kilometers ground out with always the same goal in mind: to arrive ready for that departure and experience a true adventure. Each with their own intimate reasons, the desire to test themselves, the search for freedom, the need to disconnect from daily life, to live an unforgettable adventure—but all traceable to a common motivation, a shared “why.”
And it is precisely this commonality that created something special in the air. A sort of collective magic. It was as if in that place we had made an appointment for much more than a bicycle journey; we had met to share a dream, and in that instant, we were already living it together.
Because participating in the NorthCape4000 is much more than cycling to North Cape. It’s a journey that begins long before getting on the saddle; in fact, it starts the moment you manage to secure your ticket.
The purpose
Here again returns the magic of clarity of purpose. When that confirmation email arrives in your inbox, you understand that you’ve just boarded an epic adventure: crossing the entire European continent, day after day, meter after meter, until you reach the most extreme point, where the road no longer continues and the only thing in front of you is the ocean.
Someone might ask: “But how do you find fifteen days to cycle to North Cape?” The answer is surprisingly simple. Once you have the ticket in hand, the calendar rewrites itself. Commitments that previously seemed immutable suddenly reorganize themselves, family finds a way to support you, work compresses, friends understand. It’s as if the entire universe decided to shift a millimeter to let you pass.
From the very day of registration, something happens inside you: a new energy is born. You get up two hours earlier in the morning to train without struggle, not because you’re not tired, but because now you have a purpose. You find the will to make that extra gesture toward a child or partner because you know that time together, in those months of preparation, will be even more precious. Every small sacrifice transforms into a conscious choice, part of a larger design.
Because the NorthCape4000 is not just training, kilometers, and physical endurance. It’s above all an exercise in concentration, of absolute focus toward a goal that goes beyond the journey itself. It means learning to look ahead with eyes fixed on a distant finish line. It’s about pedaling toward the end of the world, pushing north until the asphalt stops and the land gives way to the Barents Sea.
It took me longer than expected to really feel on the journey, to become aware that I had finally departed. It’s such a big emotion that it resembles that paradox of sleep, when you’re dead tired but can’t fall asleep.
Then, suddenly, it happened. Without warning, without a specific reason. It was a moment; I stopped to observe the clouds racing quickly above the trees.
I felt happy.
Happy for having found the courage to sign up, to depart, to turn the wheel northward. Happy for having granted myself the luxury of true adventure, one where you don’t know how it will end, where behind every curve there’s a new territory to discover. Happy to find myself in a context where you don’t master everything, where each day forces you to measure yourself against the unexpected: a storm, headwind, a language you don’t understand, a local custom that surprises you.
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The bicycle becomes your home. Loaded with bags, it seems to contain little, yet inside is everything needed to pedal three thousand kilometers and, deep down, to never get off again. You feel it heavy when you restart from a traffic light or a stop. But at the same time, it educates you to patience, forces you to find your own rhythm, the one you can maintain without burning out your legs. No need to go fast; you need to go far.
And so you learn to seek that cruising speed that is not just a physical value but a mental state. It’s the cadence that accompanies you for hours, the one that allows you to pedal from dawn until sunset without losing lucidity.
Patience is a virtue I’ve learned to rediscover. On a bicycle, you can’t “hack” time and space too much; it’s simply not possible. You must accept the reality of mathematics. With an effective average of 20 km/h, to cover 200 kilometers takes ten hours of pedaling. There are no shortcuts. And if the wind turns and you have it in your face, there’s no use getting angry or being stubborn; you just need to have more patience, because that day you’ll pedal a few more hours than planned. Here everything is real; there are no filters like on Instagram.
It was another way to escape routine, to detach from days where everything runs too fast and, without realizing it, it’s already evening. At the NorthCape4000, instead, reaching dinner time is a long journey, marked by hours and hours of pedaling. And so you learn to savor time, to live it in its entirety. Every kilometer is a piece of the journey.
The landscape changes, slowly, and only a traveler proceeding at 20 km/h can truly notice the transition. The forests that gradually transform, the asphalt that takes on different characteristics, as does the character of the people you meet along the road.
And then, at a certain point, the reindeer arrive. That animal that as children we associated with Santa Claus becomes the unmistakable signal of crossing into a region that doesn’t belong to a single State but to an immense shared space: Lapland. A land that embraces Sweden, Finland, and Norway, and whose most evident symbol is precisely the reindeer. At first, you stop to admire them, to photograph them. Then, as you climb further north and they become more and more numerous, you get used to their presence, until you almost no longer notice them. Yet it remains a unique and surprising experience: cycling among them, as if you were a temporary guest welcomed into their home.
The Power of Community
This adventure is already truly the journey of a lifetime for the emotions it leaves inside you. But there’s a factor that amplifies everything in an incredible way: the travel companions.
To truly understand this, we must reiterate a fundamental point: the NorthCape4000, like all events in the Bike Adventure Series, is not a race event. It’s not a competition; there is no ranking that establishes who is better. And this changes everything.
The people you find beside you at the start, or whom you meet along the road after hundreds of kilometers, are not opponents to beat. They are companions who, by their very existence, make your experience richer. The journey thus becomes not only a geographical route but also a human path, an exchange of energies, emotions, stories.
It takes little to feel part of a community. The nameplate fixed to the handlebar, the official cap pulled down on your head, a greeting gesture exchanged in the middle of the road: minimal signs that create an immediate bond. People who until a moment before were strangers suddenly become accomplices. It doesn’t matter if you don’t speak the same language; sometimes a smile, a nod of understanding is enough. These are tiny details, but they have the power to illuminate an entire day.
And then there are the shared stops. Sitting at a table with a “stranger” and finding yourself chatting with the naturalness with which you would talk to an old friend, telling each other about the day’s fatigue, the unexpected events, the moments of joy. In those moments, you understand that you are not alone in pedaling toward the great North, but that you are part of a community traveling together.
When they see us passing along the roads, they recognize us immediately: “they’re the ones from NorthCape.” Impossible to confuse us: the loaded bikes, the nameplate fixed to the handlebar that makes us recognizable from very far away, and above all that light in the eyes that only people who dare to dream big have.
This year, many were waiting for us along the road with smiles, words of comfort, and disarming generosity. Hot coffee, water, spare parts for the bike, apples, and cookies prepared by them. Sometimes real banquets left along the route, a thought dedicated to us. After kilometers in boundless territories, finding them was an absolute joy. People who feel the pleasure of welcoming you to their country and somehow giving you a welcome. Indelible emotions that will remain forever in the memories of all of us participants. Thank you from the heart.
The Art of Self-Sufficiency
Another aspect that has always fascinated me about bicycle travel is how it’s done, the self-sufficiency that requires you to have everything you need with you. And so your wardrobe (maybe you even have more than one) transforms into tiny bags where everything fits inside and allows you to live. And clothing as well as equipment focuses on substance rather than form because that trendy “X” brand product doesn’t come with you on the journey if that waterproof jacket isn’t actually waterproof or if the chamois starts hurting your backside after a while.
It’s a process that eliminates all the superfluous and leaves only the substance. A revolutionary act in our times. And you discover that not only is it easier than expected to do this, but it gives you an incredible mental joy. Because you don’t have to consume mental energy to choose, you have no choice. You have just one waterproof jacket, one clean jersey for cycling, one shirt for dinner. Sometimes I think how much more comfortable it would be to adopt the same approach in everyday life if only we had the strength to break free from marketing dynamics.
From Berlin to the Arctic
Departing from Berlin seems like the perfect setting to give value to a journey toward North Cape. You start from the German capital, a city that is simultaneously a symbol of European history and a nerve center for cycling on the continent. Berlin isn’t just a metropolis; it’s a place that represents Europe in its essence, a starting point that carries with it the weight of culture, people, and languages that intertwine in this pulsating heart of the continent. Taking those first pedal strokes here means immediately anchoring the journey to a context—everyday, urban—only to leave it behind.
The route, in fact, leads to one of the most symbolic elements of the NorthCape4000: the ferry to Sweden. The ferry isn’t just a means of transportation. It’s a rite of passage. It’s the bridge that ferries you not only physically, but also mentally, toward a different world: that of Scandinavia. The magic lies precisely here. It’s thanks to Berlin and the German roads that you can fully appreciate the moment when you disembark in Ystad, Sweden, and realize you’ve entered another universe.
Scandinavia is a magical place because it seems to have a dimension all its own. The roads are extremely long, straight, almost infinite, and the climbs seem to disappear. Sure, there are elevation changes, but they rarely exceed 300 meters: they can’t even be called “climbs” in the sense we’re used to. It’s a gently undulating territory, alternating between dense, silent forests and small inhabited centers, villages that appear as isolated oases, very far from the concept of “city” that we have in the rest of Europe.
The landscape changes, but not suddenly. It’s a slow evolution, almost imperceptible, that only someone traveling at 20 km/h can truly notice. Little by little, the trees begin to lower, the forests become less dense, and you understand that the latitude is increasing, that you’re entering another part of the world.
There is a precise point that marks this change: the Arctic Circle, at the height of Rovaniemi. Rovaniemi isn’t just a passing city where you can refuel, eat, or sleep. It’s above all a symbolic place: there you cross an invisible line, drawn by humans on maps, which nevertheless marks a concrete transformation. Beyond that border begins the true Arctic territory. From there onward, the climate becomes harsher, temperatures drop, nature becomes even more wild and dominant. It’s as if someone were telling you: “Now begins another part of the journey, more rugged, more authentic.”
When it all makes sense
And then, after days of pedaling, comes the fjord. Some say the entire journey is worth it just for those two days spent traveling through it. And it’s hard to disagree with them. The Norwegian fjord is the very essence of Norway, its most powerful icon.
Suddenly, vegetation disappears, the ground opens up, and before you is the sea. Rocks that plunge steeply into the water, a clear and crystalline sea that captures your gaze and drags it far away, toward the extreme North. Cycling alongside the sea always has its charm, but here it’s different. There’s a clarity, a depth that doesn’t belong to other places. It’s as if this view, taken from the saddle, helps to bring clarity inside you as well, right at the concluding moment of the adventure.
You sense it coming even before you see it. The air changes, becomes fresher, more pungent. The smell of salt hits you, but it’s not just that: there’s also the scent of low tide, when the sea retreats and uncovers its vegetative veins, green and dark expanses breathing in the sun. Nearby appear tongues of ochre sand that break up the green and blue, painting the landscape with new and unexpected colors.
It’s the right place at the right time. And if you’re lucky enough to face this stretch in the evening, with the warm and enveloping light of the Arctic night coloring everything with golden reflections, then it perhaps becomes one of the most powerful experiences of the entire NorthCape4000. An impression that stays with you like an invisible tattoo, impossible to erase.
And finally, after thousands of kilometers, comes North Cape. The road you’ve followed for days and days simply ends. There are no detours, no other directions to take: the asphalt stops, and before you remains only the sea. There’s the metal globe that marks the end of the road, and beyond the sea is the North Pole.
The feelings you experience inside are extremely difficult to describe in words, so powerful and overwhelming are they. And they become so precisely thanks to the image before your eyes: a territory that has no continuation, that abruptly interrupts leaving space for infinity. Mission accomplished.
At that point, everything makes sense. All the kilometers accumulated in the previous days, the incredibly light days and the unbearably slow ones, everything finds its place in a larger design, the one you’ve just completed and that bears the name NorthCape4000.
Yes, this is truly a journey that changes your life. The one that makes you grow, that makes you more aware of who you are and what you’re capable of. It shows you that we are able to do extraordinary things and that everything always starts from a single, simple decision: to depart.
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