Why this exists.

Most travel doesn't do that. It moves you past beautiful things and asks nothing of you. You come home with photos and a tan and not much else. I wanted to build the opposite: a holiday with a spine to it. Something that asks a little of a group and gives a great deal back.

Cycling was the obvious way in. There's something about a day on a bike — the effort, the air, the fact that you arrive somewhere under your own steam — that makes the evening that follows feel earned. The good dinner lands differently. The comfortable bed lands differently. You've done the work, so the indulgence isn't soft; it's the reward.

But a bike ride on its own is still just a bike ride. So I gave it a story. A trail to follow, clues to solve, a reason to keep going and a reason to talk to each other along the way. Something that turns a group of people on bikes into a group of people on a mission. By the end of the weekend, you haven't just seen a place. You've solved it, together.

I started with Suffolk because I know it, and because the Deben estuary is one of the quietest, most beautiful corners of England that almost nobody outside East Anglia thinks to visit. It deserves to be discovered properly — slowly, on quiet lanes, with the tide and the light and a smuggler's old secrets to chase.

That's what LockYourBike is. A weekend that feels like an accomplishment. I hope you'll come and ride it.