Kate Rawles is passionate about using adventurous journeys – usually by bike – to help raise awareness and inspire action on our most urgent environmental challenges. In 2017/18 she rode The Life Cycle, an 8288 mile largely solo journey the length of South America on a bamboo bike she built herself. En route she explored biodiversity: what it is, why it matters and what can be done to protect it. Look out for The Life Cycle book, coming out with Icon Books in Spring ’23.
A former university lecturer, she set up Outdoor Philosophy to explore the big questions about human/nature relations – and how to improve them – in nature rather than in lecture theatres.
In 2006, she cycled from Texas to Alaska along the spine of the Rockies exploring climate change. Her book about this journey, The Carbon Cycle; Crossing the Great Divide, was shortlisted for the Banff Mountain Festival Adventure Travel Award, 2012. Other ‘adventure plus’ journeys include the Gyre to Gaia ocean plastic pollution sailing voyage with Pangaea Exploration. She lives in Cumbria and is a keen sea kayaker and hill-walker as well as cyclist.