Our story

Bikepacking Buds is a free and inclusive community, created to help people connect and share cycling adventures.

In January 2022, one of our co-founders, Saoirse Pottie, put a call out on social media asking if anyone would be willing to join her on bikepacking trip to the New Forest (United Kingdom). The response from the online community was overwhelming with nearly 30 people turning up to camp out. Most of the participants hadn’t met before but over the course of the weekend, these strangers became close friends! Around a campfire and newly forged friendships, we reflected on the power of social media to reach out, connect and build communities. It was obvious that there was a huge interest in bikepacking but a barrier for many was finding others to go with. From these conversations, four of us (Saoirse Pottie, Liv Rubene, Itzi Aldecoa Tamayo and Cat Green) decided to set up Bikepacking Buds, a community where people can share trips and connect with each other.

Our team of volunteers has since grown to 11 women, from Kelly McCain who volunteers her time to help organise the community trips, Ellie Reynolds and Zara Bellos who run the monthly informative webinars, Vera Ngosi-Sambrook who co-hosts the fortnightly podcast, Diane Mullholland who creates regular blogs, Jessie Stevens who collates bikepacking routes on our Komoot profile and finally Vedangi Kulkarni who helps with admin and helping to create a kit library.

Since that first bikepacking trip to the New Forest in January 2022 the community has grown from 30 enthusiastic bikepackers predominately based in South England to 4000 from across the United Kingdom. We have enabled over 30 trips for 200 participants and help people create friendships that we hope will last a lifetime.