Adventure Pedlars

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Adventure Pedlars

We inspire and facilitate adventures on bicycles.

11/01/2025

in Aviemore today provided a more than adequate alternative... (even at -15°c!! 🥶)
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09/01/2025

Good luck to everyone taking on the 24hr Race this weekend! Conditions look like they're shaping up to be one to remember!!
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I'll not be racing this year but instead will be knocking about to heckle and catch up with some familiar faces... (& potentially hiring out ice spiker tyres to the highest bidder 😂)
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I took a wee spin round the course this afternoon and I can confirm it's curently VERY snowy! With some cold weather forecast I'd say plenty of the white stuff should be expected.
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18/11/2024

Inverness Winter gravel series was a hit!!
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So nice to get a lovely big group of folk together out on bikes this Sunday. Braving initial wintery showers we were rewarded with crisp sunshine and beautiful conditions for our exploration of the Black Isle.
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Thanks to everyone who made the effort & supported the !
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01/11/2024

- the art of moving very slowly (sometimes on bicycles) without much clue as to what will happen next...
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So we're just back from a family bikepacking trip along the wild coast of Northern Spain!
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This was to be our first overseas family 'cycle tour' with both Pip & Mae on their own bikes; we took the opertunity of a postponed ferry ticket (back from covid times) and the 2 week highland 'tattie break' (where everyone picks their potatoes obvs) to have a mini family adventure & catch some last rays of sunshine before winter sets in.
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Well we certainly learnt alot about kit choices, letting go of plans and expectations, being flexible with our goals and route choices (...and also an important difference between 'Portsmouth' and 'Plymouth' when catching a ferry!.. *thanks for your understanding* 😂)...
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However, the feeling of moving slowly between some truly beautiful Cantabrian beaches and getting back to our cycle touring routes as a family is one that will stay with us for a long time and inspire and inform many future trips.
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Our trusty Frontiers did the business of hauling us and all our kit along a route plucked off and we were also very impressed with the for keeping the kids moving.
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30/09/2024

Messing about in the woods yesterday with fellow riders and to round off a fantastic !
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Got us some good game faces on!!
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12/09/2024

Thoughts on L'esperit de Girona 2024 - Challenge was what attracted me to this notoriously difficult event... the impossibly small scattering of previous finishers and the 26000m of elevation in under 800km tells its own story. says he set out to create the hardest event he could think of on his doorstep & I guess he succeeded! On entering I knew there was a high possibility of a first scratch for me in a race but more than anything I was curious to see where my limits lay. I expected a scratch to come when I had nothing left to give. Unfortunately, work commitments forced me book a flight just under 5 days after the start and this, in the end, was the undoing of the race (and the experiment) for me.
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As was expected, the route was ridiculously tough & hilly and the first days, whilst not the highest in elevation were steep and relentless. Before the start a delayed flight, 2hrs sleep, a 15km time trial from the airport & an inexplicable tyre blowout on the startline all add to a less than ideal start & in the heat of the afternoon I thought my limits had already been met. Experience tho tells me that limits are elastic and my energy levels inexplicably do now follow a linear downward trajectory. A boost comes in the evening and carries me all the way through day 2. I'm flying high and my brain starts calculations to see if I could in fact finish in time. The night sees me bump into 2nd position but around 300km I know a decision point is coming...
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Day 3 starts with another tyre slash and there's no longer enough sealant to compleatly seal the hole. I decide a new tyre is essential before the high Pyrenees but to get it in time I'll have to leave the route... the thread is pulled and the unravel begins...
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I contemplate heading on but knowing now that I certainly do not have time to finish the route prompts the decision to scratch whilst it logistically easiest to make it back to Girona. Practicalities, in the end won out before finding my true limits. I'd like to think I'd have had a good crack at the rest of the route but this time it wasn't to be... put on a exceptional event. I've got no regrets.

02/09/2024

It's been very last minute for a number of unexpected reasons but massive thanks go out to and Inverness for getting me sorted with this just in time for the 's Le'spirit de Girona race starting next weekend! Anxious and excited to take on this infamously brutal challenge... can't say I wish wasn't better prepared but one way or another I'm going to find put where my limits are on this one...
Watch this space.
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17/08/2024

A while back I took on the new 'XL' route on the brand new Cortex:
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"The first 200km went pretty swiftly on smooth trails and with a convenient tailwind. A surprise initial slog up the ‘Burma Road’ quickly identified that the new Cortex was very happy climbing. The lockout was super effective on smooth trails, but even with the suspension open, it made short work of technical climbs with little bob. Rolling into Aboyne at 8 am just in time for a snatched co-op picnic breakfast, I’d had a few hours kip sheltering from the rain under a bridge and felt a growing confidence about making it all the way around. Then the trail headed back West & into a building headwind, and the hard physical nature of the XL Loop began to be revealed...
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My plans for an early lunch in Ballater, or perhaps even Braemar, quickly evaporated with the realisation that the next four climbs would be monsters! Struggling to stay upright in the gusts whilst heading over Mount Keen did not help matters but, as is often the case on these rides, the ‘sweet’ reveals itself only in contrast to the ‘sour’ and some epic technical descents more than made up for the suffering to get there. ‘Heartbreak Ridge’ heading down into Ballater, in particular, blew my mind. The extra weight of my luggage quickly got forgotten, with the Cortex soaking up this supremely technical, slabby trail. Refuelling on a burger in Ballater and some quick calculations made, finishing the total 500km XL Loop before Saturday afternoon pizza begins to look unlikely. Still, the trails were sweet, and the sun was out, so all began to matter less and less than the joy of just moving on an unknown trail..."
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Head on over to 's 'Daring Deeds' (Link in bio) to read the full story.
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01/08/2024

Good to be back in the leader hotseat!!
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21/06/2024

Solstice wonderings.
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18/06/2024

Felt good to get out on the again after a few weeks out what with work commitments and an annoyingly long hand injury...
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appreciated the spin around our local Strathpeffer trails!!
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26/05/2024

Caught some riders after brekkie in Contin woods... they're all flying this year!! Check out all the action on .cc

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http://adventurepedlars.com/

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Our Story

At the helm of Adventure Pedlars are Pete & Alice McNeil. Back in 2012, Pete & Alice set out from the Peak District on a ‘honeymoon bike ride’. Two years, 22 countries and 20,000km later they showed up in New Zealand with a fresh perspective on love, life, riding bikes, sleeping outside, talking to strangers and pretty much everything that happens in The Places in Between destinations.

On returning home in 2015, convinced that the simple pleasures of a bicycle adventure can provide anyone with the perfect antidote to modern living, ‘Adventure Pedlars’ was born as a way of inspiring and helping others to get out on their own two wheeled adventures and, by doing so, re-engage in the most basic of ways with the world around us and our own minds within. On top of their extensive adventure cycling experience, Pete and Alice also bring their own highly unique personal and professional backgrounds into making Adventure Pedlars what it is today:

Pete is a Bike Adventurer, Racer, qualified Guide and Expedition Leader of unparalleled experience…

With over16 years of working in the Outdoors, beginning with a degree in Outdoor Studies in the Lake District (where he and Alice met), Pete has held an SMBLA Mountain Bike Leader Award since 2008 and has worked as a full-time bike guide & mechanic in the UK, Spain, Nepal and NZ . As an expedition leader he has worked with youth groups all over the world and since being inspired to get out on his own cycling adventures at the tender age of twelve (way before ‘bikepacking’ was ever a thing..) he has embarked on countless ambitious personal challenges and expeditions in a vast array of environments; from Scotland to Nepal, Lesotho to Patagonia. In recent years he has also been one of the UK’s most successful self-supported racers, finishing at the pointy end of some of the world’s toughest off-road bike races; including both the HT550 and Silk Road Mountain Race.

Pete has an infectious enthusiasm for getting out and having adventures, whether big or small, and even more so for inspiring and facilitating others to do the same. He achieves this through public speaking events, facilitating workshops, writing, film-making, guiding and coaching courses. Pete’s approach couples his extensive experience, knowledge and skill-set with a down-to-earth pragmatism and humility; firmly believing that the best way to inspire others through adventure (and perhaps in doing so helping to address some of the world’s more fundamental problems) is not in over-dramatising tales of ‘daring do’ but in presenting challenges, achievable to all, that inspire a first step into a lifetime of adventure.

Alice is a Registered Yoga Teacher, Chartered Physiotherapist and Mindfulness Teacher with a background in Outdoor Learning and a love of adventure…

After sustaining a serious back injury in the remote Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan and then rehabilitating herself to continue with her bike ride on towards NZ she realised that physical health cannot exist without psychological health along with the help of the natural environment. Always curious and always exploring she realised that in-fact none of these areas stand alone and (not being content to just stick to her own hunches and experience) she formally achieved an array of academic qualifications to support her work.

With an MSc in both Psychology and Physiotherapy and a BA Hons in Outdoor Studies, she combines all of these highly complementary disciplines as she invites you to explore your physical and psychological capabilities both on and off the bike and the yoga mat through our Breathe Escapes; unpacking the profound sense of wellbeing that we all gain through adventure, physical exercise and the outdoors.

Alice has a natural propensity to combine disciplines in both 'eastern knowledge' and 'western evidence'. She wrote her Psychology thesis on the Restorative Effects of the Natural Environment, and her Physiotherapy thesis on the effectiveness of Mindfulness on Chronic Pain. Under her own company Hope Yoga Physio she runs various yoga classes including ‘Yoga for Adventure Sports' at Alpkit Hathersage, designs bespoke yoga programmes for people as part of their injury prevention/rehabilitation and is guest yoga teacher at a number of Adventure and Cycling festivals around the UK.

Helping to provide the theoretical and spiritual underpinning of what Adventure Pedlars aims to achieve, Alice adds a rare and unique depth of knowledge and experience to what we do.