Meet Pete

I'm one of the Instructors at Pedal Power Training

My love of cycling started the moment I learned to balance on a Raleigh Chipper. Childhood was all dirt tracks and homemade jumps, and I’ve still got a few scars to prove it.

By thirteen I was racing cycle speedway, with winter cyclo-cross and fast laps around the Southampton Sports Centre track. I was also working at Jim Guard’s cycle shop after doing my school work experience there. We even took our speedway bikes onto the ice at the Southampton ice rink, racing between ice hockey periods and eventually in a three-team tournament against Poole and Weymouth. No brakes, knobbly tyres, unforgettable.

In the nineties I moved on to mountain bikes, spending Sundays on the New Forest fire roads, the climbs of Butser Hill and further into Dorset. I also went back to cycle speedway, as team captain, just as a wonderfully chaotic group of school kids joined the club. That was my first real taste of coaching. They went on to win the Under-16 British title, and a couple became world junior champions. Add in international caps for Scotland and a British team championship, and cycling has been the defining ride of my life.

I stepped back from racing in 2000 for family life but never stopped riding, and I’ve coached Fareham Town youth football since the 2010s. Now I run a little bike workshop from my garage.

Moving from a 30-year IT career to Bikeability is a bigger change of direction than I ever managed on the track, but it feels like coming home.

What I love most about teaching cycling

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Favourite cycling routes

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