If you fancy giving bike packing a go and don’t want any hassle organising, give Pete over https://www.adventurepedlars.com/ at a shout.
Pete @ Adventure Pedlars is based in Hope Valley of the Peak District (and you can often find Pete at the Alpkit store in Hathersage). They have a selection of different bikes, ranging from of course Sonder bikes, to the Caribou Fatbike’s that we were riding.
For this little adventure, there was 4 of us riding (Craig, Dan, Dom & I) and all we needed to do was bring our own helmet and sleeping bag. Pete kitted us out with bikes, bags to pack our gear in, an Alpkit brukit stove, some tarps, bivvy bags and a Garmin loaded with a route to go cycle.
Unfortunately our fitness level is not what we thought it might be, so we didn’t manage to get to the suggest wild camp spots that Pete had told us. We ended up setting camp in what I believe was a cycle path/walking path, next to a railway line. As we did it on Halloween weekend, it wasn’t the best of night sleep.
Day 1 route: https://www.strava.com/activities/759581257 and https://www.strava.com/activities/760640592
Day 2 route: https://www.strava.com/activities/790727495
I have link the Strava routes above so you can get an idea of what we did. Coming out of Hope Valley we did a climb up Mam Tor, across to South Head and ended up in Charlesworth at a pub for dinner (we were really cold and exhausted, so we needed it!)
On Day 2 we headed over to Glossop, where we stopped at a Costa coffee to grab breakfast then headed to do the famous Snake Road / Snake Pass down to Ladybower Reservoir and eventually back to Pete.
What’s really nice, is you can set your sights with a little bit of Hope at the end (ending in Hope Valley).
I haven’t spent enough time up in the Peaks really, but Pete surely is the expert on bike packing, having done many amazing trips around the world. I could sit and listen to his stories all day, but if you are keen to try it, give him a bell and use his services please!
Go nice places, do good things!