Claudia and Daniel travelling around the world in DILLING underwear

Claudia and Daniel from Germany have ripped two years out of their calendar to travel around the world on their bicycles. This trip requires some great gear; therefore, they have packed DILLING’s woollen underwear in their luggage. The trip started off in Iran along the ancient caravan routes of the Silk Road.

We have been travelling on our bikes for 770 days, across 5 continents and 4 climate zones. Obviously, we took no more than the essentials on this journey, including a tent, cooking utensils, water and food, spare parts for our bikes, and of course, high-quality clothing, appropriate for all seasons. Apart from a waterproof hard-shell jacket and a warm quilted jacket, we decided to take merino wool clothing. Wool barely stores any moisture, odour, or dirt; therefore, you can easily clean it. It is also exceptionally breathable and quick drying, so we chose to take DILLING‘s long-sleeved tops and pants. DILLING produces their clothing in fair, sustainable, animal and eco-friendly conditions.

DILLING’s long-sleeved tops and t-shirts are loose-fitting, allowing plenty of freedom for movement and mobility. When biking, there is lots of room in the shoulder area of the shirts, although for very tall men, the torso could be slightly too short. The seams are flat and well positioned, therefore nothing irritates or pinches your skin. The fabric is very soft and feels like a second skin, even when it is wet. An extra thin collection would be nice for the regions where it was very hot. We absolutely loved the comfy long johns and were excited for the cold and rainy days in our tent, so we could wear them!

In contrast to cotton which absorbs a lot of moisture and feels very wet, merino wool doesn’t store moisture, but instead transports it away from the body. In hot weather, when you’re sweating a lot, DILLING’s shirts help cool you down. Even when they are soaked with sweat, they are still comfortable and don’t feel cold and wet on your skin. When possible, we even dipped our shirts in a river and wore them wet, a bit like mobile air-conditioning. As wool is also dirt repellent, we didn’t have to wash our underwear very often. When we did have to wash our clothes, we often just rinsed them in a nearby stream and hung them on our bikes to dry overnight, but this wouldn’t work with cotton; it wouldn’t clean or dry. It has been suggested that merino wool dries twice as fast as cotton.

Claudia seemed to sweat solely rose water, whereas I, Daniel, didn’t want to sanction anybody to suffering from the smelly odour of a cotton or lycra shirt after I’d worn it for two days. Merino wool clothing may begin to smell after a few days, but once you’ve rinsed and dried it, the smell is gone. We tended to rinse our shirts every 7 to 10 days. As it was so easy to wash our clothes like this, we could even change our underpants daily, a luxury which is not always the case when travelling for months on end.

We wore every pair of our underpants for more or less 150 days or 400 hours. We put them under a lot of stress from cycling, sitting, rubbing, washing and wringing them out countless times. By the end of our trip, the surface in contact with the saddle had thinned out and two seams had broken, but apart from that, our merino wool underpants were still fully functioning. What a performance! We didn’t wear the shirts as much; therefore, they didn’t show any signs of wear. The fluffy fabric of the leggings developed some holes, but this was after almost two years.

Merino wool clothing comes at a slightly higher price, which raises expectations. However, it is an investment well worth making, especially for long trips when you can only take a limited supply of clothing. Merino wool is very low maintenance; two shirts and two pairs of pants are enough, and you can still feel fresh every day!

/Claudia and Daniel

10% discount on your first order

When you sign up to our newsletter,
you also get news and inspiration directly into your inbox.

Please accept marketing cookies to subscribe to our newsletter

Change your preferences

Our DILLING

Order at DILLING

Information

Articles

Cotton underwear

Merino wool tops and T-shirts

Merino wool leggings

Woollen underpants

DILLING is a Danish family enterprise with a long tradition of producing organic wool products that will keep you warm. Today, we make organic clothing in organic merino wool and cotton for the whole family with the fourth generation, Morten Dilling, at the helm. Our organic wool wear sells at favourable prices because you are buying directly from the manufacturer.

You’ll find soft, breathable, and allergy-friendly clothing in natural materials on our website, produced without harmful chemicals and within Europe's borders under good working conditions.

Most of our products are certified with the Nordic Swan Ecolabel and gently dyed at DILLING's own dyehouse in Denmark.

You'll find DILLING's products in the following countries: dk.dilling.com, dilling.de, dilling.se, dilling.nl, dilling.fi, dilling.fr, no.dilling.com, dilling.ch, us.dilling.com.