Travel Insurance

A quick post about my experiences with a topic that seems to cause a few problems for cycle tourists- travel insurance. 

Obviously when going on a big trip like that, it often means you’re taking a lot of gear with you- sometimes it’s pretty much all of your worldly possessions! And if you’re the sort of person who believes (like me) that buying really good gear tends to pay for itself in the long-run, that gear can be worth quite a bit. Combine that with the fact that your primary mode of transport – the bicycle – can be quite susceptible to damage or theft, you’ll often be pretty interested in getting some travel insurance.

The main problem that I found when looking into travel insurance was that they don’t cover sporting equipment when it’s being used as sporting equipment. This was true even when looking at companies who supposedly specialise in active travel like World Nomads. They’ll cover you if you hurt yourself doing some relatively risky stuff, but they won’t pay if your bike gets damaged or stolen.

I recently met a kiwi couple (Katherine and Simon) who leave in a couple of months to spend the European summer riding a tandem from Amsterdam to Istanbul. I’ll post the link later on once their website is up and running. Anyway, they had been doing a lot of research too, and mentioned that some travel insurance policies cover bicycles if they’re being used as your primary mode of transport.

I had been looking at going with TravelSure (Update: now CoverMore), as they seemed to have a comprehensive range of cover for a reasonable price. So I emailed them to see if this was the case, and got confirmation that as long as the bike was being used for transport (ie between cities) it would be covered, but it I was using it as sporting equipment (eg an evening ride around a park) it wouldn’t be. Strange rules, but it’s better than nothing..

The other minor annoyance is that their maximum term is 12 months, so I need to renew it whilst overseas, which hopefully won’t be too big a problem. At least by then I’ll almost be in Australia so it might be easier to sort out.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at with insurance- hopefully I don’t need it, but it’s good to have incase the worst happens!