Speakers for this event

• Anna Hughes

  Anna Hughes

  Anna is an environmental campaigner, author and cyclist. She is the Director of Flight Free UK and has written a number of books about cycling.

  URL https://www.annacycles.co.uk/

• Bernard & Sarah Wragge-Morley

  Bernard & Sarah Wragge-Morley

  Bernie and Sarah have been cycle touring together in various parts of the world for the past 20 years. Now both on the higher side of 66, they travel slowly but love the mountains. They actually started as mountain bikers, or at least Bernie was a mountain biker and Sarah cycled up mountains but was not skilled enough to cycle down them the right way up, some things never change! They started touring around Europe for 2 or 3 weeks at a time during work holidays then as they retired the trips got longer. They love off-road touring which they have done in more than 21 countries including in Europe, India, Australia, South America, North America, New Zealand and their latest trip, Cornwall to Scotland off-road. They have ridden several off-road routes designed as races such as the Great Divide in the USA, Tour Aotearoa End to End in New Zealand and the Hunt 1000 in the Snowy Mountains Australia, but at their own snails space, as well as many routes of their own devising. Bernie, being an engineer, has built their last two fat bikes, including the wheels. They have a blog www.wraggemorleycycles.com on which Sarah writes touring blogs and about plants and flowers found on trips and Bernie writes technical articles on bike building, mapping, cooking on tour and touring equipment.

  URL www.wraggemorleycycles.com

• Candy Whittome

  Candy Whittome

  Candy is a trained barrister who practised human rights law and policy for ten years, working in Palestine, New York, and Washington DC, before returning to the UK at the turn of the century, and moving into the world of psychology. Probably inevitably this turned into working in prisons for some years, and has now taken a quieter turn (at last) teaching for the Open University. Never a keen exerciser (as in, not at all), it was fear of the middle aged spread that resulted in buying a bike, and the rest is history. Now working on writing up her travels, with the emphasis on the places and people she discovered.

• Clive Parker

  Clive Parker

  In 2006 Clive Parker completed a 7,000 km solo bike ride through Mexico and Central America. With roots in Suffolk and North Yorkshire, Clive has lived in the West of Scotland for most of his life. He still regularly cycles to and from work and locally. Although officially retired, Clive does voluntary work with the children's charity NSPCC. He wrote a book about his journey called - "Pedalling to Panama".

  URL https://www.cliveparker.co.uk/

• Daniel Gauld

  Daniel Gauld

  Daniel lives in the NW and has been cycle touring for over 20 years with around 20 tours completed. He fits his touring around full time work, MTB and road cycling , family and his other sport: skydiving. Favourite tour: Morocco Most beautiful scenery: Croatia Wildest scenery: GNT N of Fort Augustus Longest day in the saddle: touring 99km, road 160km, MTB 60km Most m ascent in one ride: 2835 - ouch Bikepacking? No Chair? Yes Coffee maker? Yes Lightweight? No Dynamo? Yes Long term goals - to turn left and go the whole way round.

• David Charles

  David Charles

  David Charles is one of the thighs behind Thighs of Steel, a social enterprise that organises Europe's longest charity bike ride. More jelly than steel, David has been cycle touring since 2009 and is one of the few people to have (nearly) cycled around Britain twice. Motivation: all the carbs.

  URL www.thighsofsteel.com

• Jack Thurston

  Jack Thurston

  Lost Lanes

  Jack began has been exploring the British countryside ever since he set up a school cycle touring club as a way to avoid having to kick a ball around a muddy playing field. He is the author of the bestselling Lost Lanes series of cycling guidebooks and has written about cycling for The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Rouleur and all the main cycling magazines. In 2004 he started presenting The Bike Show, a cycling radio show on London's art-radio station Resonance FM. It's now podcast and has had more than 5 million downloads. He lives in Abergavenny, on the edge of the Black Mountains in Wales and is gently introducing his two children (aged 6 and 4) to the pleasures of travelling by bike.

  URL https://lostlanes.thebikeshow.net/

  Lost Lanes

• Jon Houseago

  Jon Houseago

  Jon and Frank both have always loved the outdoor life and camping and used to do a lot of hill walking and mountaineering. But in 1996 Frank unfortunately developed a chronic pain problem in her back. Which meant that she had difficulty climbing up mountains. They therefore decided that they needed something that would still get them into the great outdoors. They had both been keen cyclists since they were kids and Frank found that riding a bike didn't seem to give her problems with her back, so it was actually Frank who suggested that they have a go at cycle touring (something Jon always reminds friends when they say, isn't it about time you took your wife on a proper holiday that involved hotels and relaxing on a beach!). They did their first trip on the Norfolk coast in 1997. They just loved the freedom of cycle touring and from that point onwards were hooked and haven't looked back since. They are now in their 25th year of touring as their summer holiday and have mainly toured in Scotland, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Poland, Sweden and Norway. They run the cycle touring website www.cycletourer.co.uk

  URL www.cycletourer.co.uk

• Laura Moss

  Laura Moss

  Cycle Touring Festival organiser

  Laura is the festival organiser. During 2013-4, she completed a 16 month, 13,000 mile cycle around the world through 27 different countries. Elsewhere she has crossed the Wahiba Sands desert on foot, walked across Patagonia and run the length of every London Underground Tube line. Laura was previously a director of The Adventure Syndicate, a collective of female cyclists who aim inspire, encourage and enable more women and girls to get into cycling. Laura will open the festival in Welcome to the festival: intro and virtual social on Saturday 12 February at 10am.

  URL https://cycletouringfestival.co.uk/

  Cycle Touring Festival organiser

• Lisa Lucas

  Lisa Lucas

  Lisa runs a marketing company, writes and consults. She’s an American who lives in London and has planned many European cycling trips. She is now teaching her children to love distance cycling. Passionate about parents bringing kids along for THE adventure - she writes about it: www.thedistancetotravel.com

  URL www.thedistancetotravel.com

• Neil Wheadon

  Neil Wheadon

  In 1981, Neil set out for a 4 week tour of Europe armed with a tent, touring bike and a map of Europe and hasn’t stopped since. Having tandemmed to Australia with his wife in 1997, Neil has since organised over 100 cycling holidays for both the Tandem Club and Cycling UK. Over the past 15 years, Neil has specialised in family holidays but this has combined with taking groups on bespoke trips all over the world from Sri Lanka to China, Cambodia to numerous locations in North America. Organising many of these from scratch has given Neil enormous pleasure and a deep insight into the joys and problems of taking groups around the world. If you would like to hear Neil speak then check out his talk entitled West Country Cycleways on Sunday 13 February at 3pm.

  URL https://www.bikexplore.co.uk/Articles-of-Interest

• Richard Ingham

  Richard Ingham

  Richard Ingham: nuts about all types of cycling but especially mountain biking, touring and bikepacking. He believes that everything is better when done by bike. Earliest sighting on a cycle: age three, racing his brother downhill on tricycles. (There is photographic evidence). Richard has had a continuous relationship with his bicycle for over 60 years now. From “larking about” as a lad, to cycling to school and commuting into adulthood. He has managed to bring his love of cycling into his professional life as an active transport planner who is still working part-time on the Greater Manchester Busy Bee cycle network. He has also found time to introduce to the UK from the Netherlands the Global Bicycle Mayor Network – an organisation of cycling advocates with a mission to achieve “50 by 30” – that’s 50% of urban journeys to be by bicycle by 2030. He was elected as the Bicycle Mayor of Cumbria in 2019. Richard is married to Susanna and they have two children in their twenties – all have the cycling bug!

• Rob Ainsley

  Rob Ainsley

  Rob Ainsley is a cycling writer, but does more cycling than writing. He’s collecting international End to Ends, has ridden all Britain’s rhyming coast to coasts, and once biked to all the places in the world called ‘Bath’. He lives in York but is usually somewhere else.

  URL http://e2e.bike/

• Sophie Gordon

  Sophie Gordon

  Sophie Gordon works on off-road access at charity Cycling UK, from traffic-free railway trails to epic long-distance adventures and everything in between.

  URL https://www.cyclinguk.org/

• Tim Boden

  Tim Boden

  Tim started cycle touring nearly 10 years ago with trips to Cuba, Myanmar, Kerala and Jordan. During lockdown he designed and published the Oyster Wheel, an eight-day orbital route around London. Now retired, he has since moved to the Lake District where he produces guides for local gravel routes and undertakes multi-day tours in the UK.

• Tim Moss

  Tim Moss

  The Next Challenge

  Tim has supported over 100 expeditions across all seven continents, including cycling 13,000 miles around the world with his wife (festival organiser Laura Moss) and setting a Guinness World Record for the longest distance cycled on a rickshaw. His annual expedition bursary, 'The Next Challenge Grant', has helped fund over 50 first-time adventurers.

  URL https://thenextchallenge.org/

  The Next Challenge

• Timmy Mallett

  Timmy Mallett

  Timmy began his broadcasting career in student radio and local radio but really rocketed to fame with the ‘Wide Awake Club’ and ‘Wacaday’ shows on TV-AM - featuring the famous ‘Mallett’s Mallet’. And who can forget Timmy’s moment as one of the UK’s most unlikely pop stars when his cover version of ‘Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini’ with Bombalurina topped the charts and stormed Europe in 1990? Timmy is an increasingly renowned artist, and a number of the pictures which he painted on his way to Spain are included in his Utterly Brilliant memoir.

  URL https://www.timmymallett.co.uk/