This one was massive, even by Unbound XL winner Rob Britton’s outsized standards. 2,600 km. A staggering 26,000m of elevation gain. 84 hours in the saddle. All squeezed into just nine days of mostly unpaved riding. All far from the FKT routes and races that have defined the road-pro-turned-gravel-campaigner’s career.

A Big Ride Home, as documented in the new film, No Place Like Home, looked a little different than the Saskatchewan-raised racer’s usual exploits.

A familiar finish line

In fact, over a week after leaving Victoria, B.C. Rob’s Big Ride Home finished, quite literally, at his parent’s door step.

“Finishing in Regina was wild,” Rob says of his must unassuming finish line yet. “You ride your bike pretty much the entire way across western Canada then roll up and finish with my mom, my dad, my sisters, my nieces, my best friend. It was really cool.”

Whatever his exact ride time was, it’s not a route any one else is going to repeat. For Britton, that makes his Big Ride Home stand out among his many palmares.

“No one’s really going to get it, other than me, right? It’s not their home. It’s my home,” Britton says. “I wanted to do this because I’ve biked all over the world, I’ve traveled the planet as a pro. But we live in one of the biggest countries in the world and I just experienced big chunks of it.”

Photo: Matt Clark StirlandRaemediahaus
A ride five years in the making

The Big Ride Home is the latest step in Britton’s move away from the regimented world of road racing. The idea for the route, though, started five years ago. Back then, he was still officially in Rally kit. When the pandemic hit, Britton was, like other pros with no races to race, looking for some way to stay on the scene.

“I’m probably the only professional rider, I think, that didn’t do an Everesting challenge during COVID,” Britton jokes. Instead, he was drawn into a challenge called Parallels, put on by Apidura. The idea was to see how far you could ride in a straight line, “as the crow flies,” over 24 hours of the summer solstice.

Britton rode the length of Vancouver Island with Taylor Little, a friend from his days of junior racing on the prairies. It was Little’s idea that the ride could benefit WIRTH, an organisation that provides access to mental health supports for those that cannot otherwise afford them. Five years later, The Big Ride Home is still raising support for WIRTH. Along with the connection to WIRTH, the Parallel’s ride started Britton on his path to really big, long gravel rides.

“But I started to go down this rabbit hole of these mage-long rides. One of the ones I planned was around my friends. Jamie, from Calgary, Taylor from Edmonton. I was from Regina. We could ride home to visit our folks,” Britton says. “They were definitely not interested in riding that long. They both have families and kids and jobs that make that almost impossible.” 

Big Ride Home becomes a reality

Five years later, with the road racing scene in the rear view mirror, that sort of adventure ride is exactly what Britton’s job is. When a sponsor suggested a similar idea, kind of off-hand, it was all the push Britton needed to make Big Ride Home finally happen.

“I just kind of chucked and said, ‘funny you should mention that,’” Britton says. And then he got to work, digging into maps and charging out a route.

“Once I got my teeth into it and started thinking about it and planning, it’s really hard to switch that off,” Britton admits.

Matt Clark, of Stirl and Rae Media Haus, who has worked with Britton on past media projects, signed on for the only nine days he had free all summer. The two put together a minimalist plan, splitting accommodation and gas, and got the project done just on time for Clark to fly out of Regina the same day they arrived. The result, titled No Place Like Home, will premier this Wednesday in Victoria.

Photo: Matt Clark StirlandRaemediahaus
The perils – and pearls – of plotting a precise route across Canada’s vast open spaces

Unlike race courses and FKT routes, Britton had to map out the Big Ride Home himself. Avoiding highways meant heading into the expansive wilderness and open spaces of B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan, some known and many unknown.

How do you plot a 2,600-km-route?

“As I’ve said before, I’m really good at bad ideas,” Britton says. The route was more focused on the experience than any sense of efficiency. 

“B.C. was pretty dialled, pretty specific on where I wanted to go. But it’s Canada, right? There’s just huge gaps between places where you can spend the night. Sometimes its hundreds of kilometres before you’re in a spot with a hotel and a restaurant.”

After B.C.’s mountains, the prairies presented their own challenges.

“I remember mapping out and adding turns, just to break the monotony. Because you can, from Lethbridge to Moose Jaw, you can just kind of go east and not turn. It’s wild.”

While the wide open spaces looked straight forward, quite literally, on paper, the prairies threw up their own unexpected challenges.

“Strava, and I can say this because Strava won’t give me a pro account, some of their mapping software is just garbage,” Britton says, again with a bit of a laugh. “It won’t let me map the ride through places I’ve ridden hundreds of times. Completely legal, like a bike lane next to my house. But it put me down roads that have been closed for years. One bridge was out. One was now a swamp. Another went into a farm. Just a persons farm. I started to feel weird about the road, then I was just in their yard. Thanks, Strava, I appreciate that one.”

Other challenges were less predictable. One trail through Cypress Hills looked great online but, in reality, had literally gone to the cows. “It’s clearly been used as a free range cattle pasture. It was like riding through a mine field. It felt like my fillings were going to shake out of my head and it took me, no joke, two hours to go 23 km. Three or four years ago, that trail probably would have been insanely fun.” 

Then there was finding out his cell phone carrier didn’t have coverage for an area covering 2-3 days of the route through the southern prairies. Or missing that another day’s route didn’t pass through a single town.

“I don’t know how I missed that one, but here was nothing. It was 30-40km off route, north or south, to the nearest town. It was 280km and the first really hot day, and I was stuck relying on Clark in the truck for water. That was stressful.”

Along with the perils, there were unexpected pearls.

“We rolled into a place called Shaunavon in Saskatchewan. Unless you’re from Sask, you have no idea where that is. I didn’t. But there’s a restaurant there that’s been voted the best restaurant in Saskatchewan multiple years. It’s in this persons very unassuming, vinyl-siding house. But inside, it’s very nice. Very good service, and the food is unbelievable. I had one of the best steak tartare of my life in rural Saskatchewan.” 

A Big ride defined by small moments

That one, amazing steak tartare was mixed in with endless moments along the way, the kind of moments that Britton doesn’t usually get the luxury of enjoying when he’s racing against the clock.

“There were times where I just stopped to look at something an enjoy it, or go over to the side of the road and have an ice cream and a coke. I spent so much time racing on the road where I didn’t appreciate hardly any of it. Even now, like with Unbound XL or Badlands, I look at the videos from them” and, Britton says, “They’re hilarious because I look at them after and I don’t remember any of that.” 

For Big Ride Home, Britton had a different experience in mind.

‘I never wanted it to be, like, how fast could I do this? I think I still did it quickly, but I didn’t want to shatter myself. This wasn’t supposed to be that kind of ride.” 

Taylor Little, left and Rob Britton, center at RBC Gran Fondo Whistler with BICI’s Ryan Anderson.
A podium decades in the making

After the Big Ride Home, Britton returned to his new home on the west coast. Just a few days after his massive effort, he raced the RBC Gran Fondo Whistler’s Forte distance. While not an international event, and almost the opposite event to his multi-day gravel expedition, for Britton, it was the company that race stand out. Taylor Little finished second.

“I think that was the first time in our whole lives were we were on the podium together. Stuff like that, that’s the best, thats really, really important to me,” Britton shares. “Being able to stay at my friends house, where we grew up racing together, and ride to the start line of an event, it’s important for me to do stuff like that now.” 

Britton’s ride and race calendar now is quite the opposite of his professional road days. That variety is, he says, very intentional.

“Bike racing on the road is the same thing over and over again. But now, I get to choose a lot more stuff, and I’m in charge of a lot, like, basically my destiny a lot more. It’s great getting to do stuff with with my friends and, like, seeing my family and all this stuff is amazing.”

Riding across three provinces (and winning the 152km Whistler fondo) also sounds really hard, for a post-racing way to enjoy riding a bike. While Britton’s not racing road, he has no plans on taking it easy any time soon. 

“I realized a long time ago that I just am a glutton for punishment. I don’t think I can do simple or easy very well. I have lots of options to take a little more relaxed approach, but that doesn’t really work out very well,” Britton admits. “So as much as I joke about, like, my wife being a doctor, then I can actually retire, I think I’d last about an hour before I went crazy.”

No Place Like Home debuts Wednesday, Nov. 5 at Whistle Buoy Brewing in Victoria, B.C. with tickets going to support Triple Shot youth racing program. Britton’s donation page for WIRTH remains open.