The Adventure Syndicate launch bike packing courses for girls as phase one of their Inspiring, Encouraging and Enabling Schools Project.
Working with five schools in the Scottish Highlands, The Adventure Syndicate have launched bike packing courses for teen girls, taking place this summer. Pete had a chat with Syndicateers Lee Craigie and Emily Chappell to find out more.
Who and what is the Adventure Syndicate, and what do they do?
The Adventure Syndicate is a collective of female endurance cyclists whose aim is to increase levels of self-belief and confidence in others (especially in women and girls) by telling inspiring stories, creating an encouraging community, and delivering enabling workshops and training.
We do this because we love the way adventuring by bike makes us feel and we passionately believe we are all capable of so much more than we think we are.
Where did the idea to run a girl’s bike packing course come from?
In March 2017, we ran an overnight adventure out of Inverness for 8 teenage girls identified by Scottish Cycling. They could all ride bikes (some of them better than us!) but they’d never carried everything they needed to survive on their bikes before and some of them had never slept outside or cooked on a stove. We loaded up using bike bags supplied by Apidura and pedalled up to Abriachan above Loch Ness where all the girls said they wanted to keep going until they were on top of the biggest hill they could see.
It was a perfectly calm, midge-free night and we all cooked dinner on stoves before all the girls piled into the bivvy equipment Exped had provided for us and lay gazing up at the stars in companionable silence. It was while we crouched on a rock watching this silent sea of down and goretex under a setting sun that we’d somehow managed to get on top of a mountain that we thought “we have to do this again”.
How can people get on board for the courses?
Well the overnight expeditions that we’ll be running in May and June are for 5 groups of selected girls the from schools across Scotland we’ve already identified but this is part of a bigger project that everyone can get involved in and follow online. In order to earn their place on the expedition, pupils can show their commitment by getting involved in our Match the Miles Challenge beginning on 22nd April.
Four Syndicateers will ride #southbound in a straight line for one week carrying a GPS tracking unit visible online. We have no set destination but we reckon we’ll get somewhere near the south of Italy or Spain. Schools and other interested groups can attempt to collectively match our mileage by riding to school, jumping on static bikes in PE or going out together at weekends.
We’ll interact on social media and keep a close eye on our followers mileage. When we return, the school will select 8 girls from each of our 5 key schools who got most involved in Match the Miles to come on expedition with us later that month.
If someone reading this fancies setting up their own group to Match our Miles, then get in touch via our website and we’ll make sure we add you to the list of people to shout out to as we travel south. We could even be persuaded to deliver an expedition opportunity to you sometime in the future.
What’s unique about bike packing that made you choose it over a different kind of adventure?
Bikes offer so much freedom. Add to that the ability to carry enough equipment to eat and sleep regardless of where you find yourself at the end of a day and suddenly the world opens up to you in a very exciting way.
If you then take that to the next level, and push your daily mileage then it’s staggering how far you can travel while remaining independent. It’s such a special feeling. Of course you can get that on foot too but there’s something about the paring back of your equipment to the bare minimum to fit in tiny bags that hang off your bike that is incredibly liberating.
What can the girls expect from these courses?
They’ll get the opportunity to learn hard skills such as riding fully laden, packing light and small, cooking on stoves, equipment management, bike maintenance on the trail and navigation but, more importantly, they’ll learn about themselves in relation to the natural environment and each other and (hopefully) realise that they are capable of more than they thought they were.
It’s our hope that they will also spend 48 hours in the present without disappearing into a virtual world though their phones. We’ll slow life down enough that the important stuff becomes about the human interactions and real world happenings around them. You know, the important stuff that we all forget about when we spend too long on Facebook.
What advice would you give to people who have maybe always fancied bike packing but never taken the plunge?
Go! You don’t need specialist equipment to ride 5 miles and sleep in a ditch (that’s more fun than it sounds I promise). Rickie Cotter got into bikepacking by buying a lilo and borrowing a sleeping bag, strapping it all on her £5 bike using bungees and bits of string and disappearing off into her local woods for the night.
If you’re nervous, force a friend to go too. If you do it on a school night and arrive back at work or school having not gone home at all and pulling bits of leaf mould from your hair at the morning meeting, I guarantee you’ll feel like you’ve scored a wee secret victory over society (if you don’t get fired that is).
How did you pick your routes to start with?
I love a map. I can pore over them for hours trying to piece things together and make up two-day adventures from my door. If you’re not like me, there are plenty of forums out there with folk dying to tell you where to ride or I recommend an app such as Komoot.
Here you can search for routes others have done by location, terrain, difficulty or type. Or just go. I used to take a train to a far-flung location then work out how to get home. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t but I always had a story as a result.
What do you think the girls-only bike packing trip can give you that you can’t get anywhere else?
I don’t know of any other project out there doing anything quite like this. I suppose our thinking is that traditional, structured ways into riding bikes for young people are often through clubs and competition but that only appeals to those that want to compete or get faster. There are so many other ways to hook young people’s imaginations into being outside and physically active without compromising on the sociabilitiess to be found in club riding.
Anyway, all the good stuff happens round camp fires when most other bike riders are back home or in the pub. Actually, that’s not strictly true ‘cos the pub is a good place to be after a bike ride too, but perhaps not with a group of teenagers. No. That’s not what this project aims to teach. They can learn all of that under their own steam in a few year’s time.
Where next for the Adventure Syndicate?
Well this weekend we are supporting four of the girls Dingwall Academy have already identified as prime candidates for this project in the Strathpuffer. If you’re under 14 you need adult chaperones to ride the “world’s toughest” 24-hour mountain bike race so what better way to cement our relationship with the girls we intend to inspire, encourange and enable for the rest of the year. Or make us sick to death of each other. One of those two things will happen this weekend.
Anybody to thank at this point in the journey? Long-suffering spouses/parents/friends?
The Sporting Equality Fund (from The Bike Lottery’s Spirit of 2012) for funding the project but also Dingwall Academy, Inverness Royal Academy, The Bridge Educational Unit, Mary Russell School and Rosshall School for rolling their sleeves up and getting involved.
And anyone out there reading this who thinks they can rally the troops enough to create a Strava group for our Match the Miles Challenge be it a work place, community group or bunch of mates. We are all capable of more than we think we are so get in touch and match our miles as we go #southbound in April.
Finally a big thanks to our support crew at the Strathpuffer this year (Mark at Orange Fox Bikes, Dingwall Academy, Ferga and Kim) who are going to help Syndicate riders Jenny Graham and myself create bonds with four of the finest potential future bike packers (Amelia, Rowan, Lillybelle and Bethany) in Highland.
