Lessons From My First Summer as a Warmshowers Host

Let me start by saying that I have been running a trekking-centric hobby blog for the past 20+ years and only occasionally incorporated a bicycle in my adventures. Sure, I cycled across Tibet, Southern France and a few other places over the years, but the rides were just impulse trips that I kluged together on the spot.

I didn’t even know that I was officially bikepacking until last spring while riding a used push-bike (purchased on Gumtree for $80) around Tasmania for a month .

Read the Blog version of this page.

Tasmania is pretty remote, and I tended to stay way off the beaten path, so my accommodation options were wild-camps or very limited (a room in a small town pub). And then I found out about warmshowers.org and signed up immediately. Over the remaining month of sleeping out, I got two good hits as a guest with warmshowers.org hosts. I thoroughly enjoyed the facilities and especially the connection with the hosts. It was such a positive experience that a seed was planted.

Let’s fast forward a few months to the summer in Croatia where I decided to be a host at my summer island house. I also prepared two pieces of land that I’d inherited along EuroVelo Route 8 as basic camp sites (one on the seaside and one on the Vransko Jesero Lake). Once posted, I immediately started getting pinged with requests. Since my place and the camp properties are only a few km off the EuroVelo 8 trail the demand was intense.

Some of My Merry Warmshowers.org Guest from the Summer of 2025

My house or the camp spots were almost always occupied through the summer and early fall (a total of 85 bikepackers stayed for 2 nights on average). Although I couldn’t meet all these cyclists, the ones that I did spend time with were a refreshing break from the summer hordes. The bikepackers were real travelers, not tourists; the kind of people I look for when I trek in remote parts of the world or in the future when I plan to do bikepacking trips.

At shared meals, I discussed the difficulties of finding places to go (adventure locations) and especially in finding willing and compatible travel buddies. Those talks over dinner and drinks got us thinking, scheming and planning.

How I found Travel Buddies In the Past

Let’s segway back to my past trekking adventures. I had spent years perfecting the art of Post-It notes in Kathmandu coffee shops (“Canadian guy looking for trekking buddies”) until last year when I automated by creating a mobile buddy finding app (Trekking Buddy Nepal). It was another one of my projects for people who wanted to find treks in Nepal and more importantly, find trekking buddies.

Fast-forward back to the summer. At the dinner discussions all the bikepackers said that they would love a similar solution for finding bikepacking buddies. A lot of these bikepackers were riding alone (36 out of 85) and even the couples liked with the idea of expanding my trekking app to include bikepacking.

It would be a win-win. Find bikepacking adventures around the world and then find bikepacking buddies to join up with. I had my new marching orders. I got down to work.

Adventure Travel Buddies is Born

So with that the last warmshowers bikepacker gone from my seaside property I re-built and re-branded to the Adventure Travel Buddies app with bikepacking routes from around the world, including data packs for import with all the EuroVelo and many New Zealand and Australia routes, etc.

The Adventure Travel Buddies app now also includes Community Forums covering bikepacking regions worldwide so that bikepackers can post their availability or ask questions and others can respond. And advanced features like private chat and user secure emails for verified users makes it easy to connect.

Followup Conversations With My Long Gone Guests

But that wasn’t the end of the build. Over the past few weeks a number of my warmshowers guests have reached out to me via WhatsApp (yes I swapped numbers will all 85 guests and we keep in touch) and they shared their YouTube channels, social media handles and exchanged stories. It turned out that they also wanted a way to post their social media/ websites in the new Adventure Travel Buddies app.

Sure, I agreed and went back for some last minute additions and tada…now it’s possible for users to share their content in the new Regional ‘User Stories‘ forums.

Adventure Travel Buddies App Released

So now it’s official. The Adventure Travel Buddies app is available for download from your favorite app stores.

Download or Review the latest and greatest version of the Adventure Travel Buddies App from one of these fine App stores.

What’s Next

Just like in my trekking days, my goal is first to get people off the couch and out the door on an adventure. And second, for us to find adventure travel buddies, so naturally, let me know if anyone is available to join me for a month of bikepacking in NSW, Australia in January 2026 (New England High Country Loop or the Australian Alps Trail). Just install the app and visit the Australia Community Forum to connect with me.