Cycle Tourism as Learning/Education 

for Life.  
BiK(e)iwi: An ethnographic bike research trip around New Zealand. 

Celia Velo Camacho and Bart Bloem Herraiz 

This is us 
We’re Celia and Bart, two passionate cyclists and adventurers who also have a Bachelor
in Sports and Physical Activity Sciences. We met in 2015 at the Master Degree in
Management and Promotion of Adventure Tourism Activities, where we started sharing ideas
about traveling by bike, and even did a
short one day bike trip together.
After we graduated, Bart planned (and
carried out) a solo bike trip around
Europe, cycling through 26 countries
during 6 months and over 14.000km. The
publications about their adventures in
social media sparkled the curiosity of
Celia even more, who started being
interested in this way of traveling to get to
know other cultures, places and people.
A few years later, we are now two
PhD students who are part of the Research
Group Motiva2 at the University Pablo de Olavide (Spain). Celia focus topic is the educative
potential of outdoor sports, but they have also done research on the inclusion and
biomechanics of sport climbing. Bart, on the other side, is interested in the experiences of
trans people in outdoor activities, outdoor methodologies and the intersections between
outdoor pedagogy and queer pedagogy. Because of that, we are often taking part of
conferences related to our topics and connecting with other scholars in those events. Last
summer we went to the International Adventure Conference 2019 (Dumfries & Galloway,
Scotland) by bike from Manchester. 10 days and 900 km of cycling, camping and spending
time outdoors led us to the present project about the learning potential of cycle tourism for
people’s lives.

Research plan
What better way to carry out research about cycle tourism than during a bike trip?
Hence, we want to take our research outdoors. Drawing upon outdoor methodologies, we will
carry out a research about cycle tourism as learning and education for life. During our trip we
want to conduct semi-structured interviews with other cycle-travellers that we find on our
way, which combined with the writing of auto-ethnography diaries will led us to throw some
light on this topic.
As the destination of our trip we have chosen New Zealand. This decision was and is
not arbitrary, as the next International Adventure Conference (IAC) will be held there in
December 2020. Thus, we will finish our trip at the conference, where we will be already able
to present the process and methodological challenges that we faced during the fieldwork trip.
Moreover, we’re planning on giving talks to diverse publicum during the trip, from
schools to universities, passing through non-formal education talks about our trip. We are
interested in knowing the impact that traveling by bike has in the development of people’s
well being. For doing so, we will pose ourselves, as well as the people we will interview,
related questions regarding feelings and emotions, fear and risk, and learning and resilience
processes.
 
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 
Another focus of our trip will be sustainability, following the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDG), which “are an
urgent call for action by all countries -
developed and developing - in a global
partnership. They recognize that ending
poverty and other deprivations must go
hand-in-hand with strategies that improve
health and education, reduce inequality,
and spur economic growth – all while
tackling climate change and working to
preserve our oceans and forests” (United Nations, 2015). We will be mainly focus on those
goals which are more related to our research topic and actions, those would be the following:
- Goal 3: Good health and well-being
- Goal 5: Gender equality
- Goal 10: Reduced inequalities
- Goal 11: Sustainable cities and communities
- Goal 12: Responsible consumption and production
- Goal 13: Climate action

The route 
Starting in November in Auckland, and cycling through the most significant natural and
national parks from New Zealand, we will arrive in Queenstown for the IAC 2020 after 5
weeks of cycling, camping, learning and adventures. We are also planning on giving talks
about our project during the way, for different kinds of public and in differents institutions.

What do we offer you? 

To be able to carry out all of these ideas we need ​your support. Before, meanwhile and
after we will promote your brand on social media, both through photos and posts on our
instagram and blog, as well as with short videos about the trip/research. Moreover, as we will
organize the trip around the IAC 2020 in New Zealand, there we will reach businesses and
scholars who are involved in adventure activities. In addition to that, we will publish an
academic article, which we will present at conferences and talks where we will explain the
results as well as ​the process, which you will be part of​. We will also write small articles
during the trip/research process,
both in English and Spanish, to be
published on online and paper
magazines.
We  won’t  always  follow  the 
easy  road,  but  it  is  on  those 
roads  where  the  change 
happens.