A genuinely historically themed cycling tour is one where the route, the sites and the story are built from real historical and archaeological research – not just named after a historical figure and left at that. That distinction sounds obvious until you look closely at how many “historical” tours are really just a marketing theme layered over a standard cycling holiday: a name, a logo, maybe a blurb about a famous general or explorer, and then a route that was never actually built around their story at all. At Bike Odyssey, the history isn’t the decoration. It’s the starting point.
Where the depth actually comes from
Before there was a tour company, there was a decade of doing this professionally. Bike Odyssey’s founder, Sam Wood, holds an honours degree majoring in Classical Archaeology and Greek and Roman Literature. He spent the following ten years working as a field archaeologist around the world. That’s not a weekend interest. It’s trench supervision on the Porta Stabia excavation project in Pompeii, Italy; further excavation supervision at Pompeii for the University of Bradford; field supervision of English and non-English-speaking student teams at Chersonesos in Ukraine; trench work at Paphos in Cyprus; archaeological survey at Alonissos in Greece; supervision at Sepphoris in Israel and shipwreck mapping for the Bermuda Maritime Museum. In the UK, that same expertise went into commercial and conservation archaeology – on-site work across multiple sites for Cliveden Conservation and in Australian into commerical archaeology both on Indigenous and colonial sites.
After excavating around the world Sam then spent three years at the British Museum – one of the world’s great museums – managing archaeological, conservation and scientific data coming in from excavations and on-site laboratories and consulting directly with museum specialists on how to use it. He later, when he moved back to Australia, continued as an Archaeological Consultant for the British Museum and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation running projects for museums and archaeologists internationally. That’s years spent inside two of the institutions that actually hold and interpret the historical record – not reading about it after the fact.
Then came the BBC. Sam scripted, presented and consulted as the historical and archaeological expert for On Hannibal’s Trail, a six-part documentary series that aired on BBC Four in July and August 2010, was later repeated on BBC HD and BBC Two, and was picked up by National Geographic Channel and Viasat for international distribution by 2012 – reaching over 70 countries. The premise: three Australian brothers cycling the actual historical route Hannibal took from Spain to Rome, elephants and all. It’s the same expertise, aimed at a camera instead of a trench – and it’s the direct origin of Bike Odyssey’s flagship Hannibal tour.
The BBC connection ran deeper than the screen. Sam and his brothers also wrote about the expedition themselves – for Current World Archaeology (Issue 43, September 2010), covering the archaeology behind Hannibal’s route and army, and later for RideOn magazine (“On the Trail of Hannibal,” January 2012). And the BBC thought enough of the format to draft a pre-production plan for a follow-up – Napoleon’s Trail, Paris to Moscow. It didn’t happen. By then there were three children between the three brothers (one each!), and family came first. It’s a small detail, but it says something real: this was a genuine archaeology and broadcasting career that happened to lead somewhere else, not a marketing story built backwards from a tour company.
That expertise hasn’t stayed in the past, either. In July 2026, the Guardian profiled Sam and the Odyssey tour directly under the headline “A modern odyssey: the archaeologist following Homer’s route on a bicycle”- the “archaeologist” framing is the Guardian’s own, not ours. The piece gets at exactly why the Odyssey tour took real work to design: as Sam told journalist Alexis Buxton-Collins, “When people have tried to map out Odysseus’s route, it’s a bit of a challenge because he went to all parts of the Mediterranean” – the 27-day tour condenses Homer’s ten-year voyage through Turkey and Greece into a rideable itinerary, mixing mythological sites with genuine archaeology. It’s also where the company’s name and logo come from: Bike Odyssey is named for the journey itself, its logo based on Argos, Odysseus’s own dog. Interest in this kind of historically-grounded travel keeps growing – Bike Odyssey and the Odyssey tour were also discussed on ABC Radio National’s Life Matters, in a segment on the rise of literary tourism.
This is the point of Part One, stated plainly rather than argued for: when Bike Odyssey calls a tour historically themed, that word is carrying the weight of an actual archaeological and broadcasting career – and it’s a claim independent journalists, not just the company itself, have looked into and backed. Everything below is what that career turned into, tour by tour.
As featured in
The Guardian isn’t the only outlet that’s looked closely at this. Bike Odyssey and Sam Wood’s archaeological background have also been covered by Forbes (“If you like bike trips, you might love a Bike Odyssey”), National Geographic’s Trip Planner (Norie Quintos), Outside Magazine (Trips of the Year), Cyclist Magazine, RideOn Magazine, and the Canberra Times, among others. See the full list →
What actually goes into building one tour
None of that expertise skips the work for any individual tour. Every historically themed route Bike Odyssey runs starts with roughly two years of dedicated research and development.
That starts with primary reading – not tourist-guide-level history, but the actual academic sources. The Hannibal tour, for instance, draws on Polybius’ and Livy’s ancient accounts of the campaign alongside modern scholarship, including consultation with Dexter Hoyos, one of the foremost living historians on Hannibal and Carthage and the author of Hannibal: Rome’s Greatest Enemy and Hannibal’s Dynasty (Oxford University Press and Routledge respectively). Getting an actual specialist’s read on a route – not just a reading list – is the difference between a tour that’s about a historical figure and one that genuinely follows their footsteps.
Sam also draws on the network built through the British Museum, the Mellon Foundation and the BBC years, consulting colleagues and museum contacts as each new tour takes shape. Then the research has to leave the desk. Every route is worked out on the ground with local cycling clubs and suppliers in the regions it passes through – the people who actually know the roads, the closures, the seasonal conditions and the terrain a map alone won’t show. That’s what turns a historically accurate line on a map into a route that’s actually safe, well-supported, enjoyable and of course contains spectacular hotels and roads!
Put together, it’s a consistent process: research and primary sources, specialist consultation, local reconnaissance with clubs and suppliers, route testing – repeated for every tour, not just the flagship ones. That process is what decides which valley, which climb, which town a route actually takes – and why, more often than not, it’s not the easier or more obvious option next door.
Delivered on the road, not just on the page
None of this matters if it stays in a research folder. It has to show up in three places: the people leading the tour, what’s published about it, and the ground itself.
An example of this is our Allies tour. Before each trip we consult with the riders joining us as to their family connections to WWI and WWII. We then research their family members and taper the tour to visit the sites most relevant. This is always a touching and memorable experience for all involved – from laying wreaths at the Menin Gate, Ypres to visiting the battlefields and cemeteries where family were involved.
The guides. Bike Odyssey’s crew includes several working historians and archaeologists, not tour leaders reciting a script. Sam Wood leads as founder and historian. Professor Richard Cosgrove brings a historian/archaeologist background to the tours he guides. Thor Schei Hellesnes, a historian with a specific Viking background, supports the Vikings tour. Ramazan Bostanci and Aydin Aygun guide as historians across the Turkey-based routes, and Ken Nairn brings the same historian depth to his tours. They’re backed by guides with their own regional expertise – Bruno Ramain’s two decades as a sommelier and guide bring the food and wine history of each region into the same story – and by the mechanics, soigneurs and fixers who make “fully supported” an actual fact on the road, not just a phrase in the brochure. Meet the full team →
The published record. The historical research behind these tours isn’t kept in-house – it’s written up. Recent pieces on the Bike Odyssey blog include Who Were the Vikings? The Real History Behind Sailing – and now Cycling – Norway’s Fjord Coast and Was Marco Polo Really Venetian or Croatian? Tracing the Venetians Route, alongside Where We Came From: The Story Behind Bike Odyssey and earlier pieces on the Plantagenets and the Hannibal route itself. It’s an ongoing body of work, not a one-time claim made on a homepage.
The route itself. The Hannibal tour is the clearest example: 2500km from Barcelona to Rome over 33 days, through Catalonia, Provence and one of the potential Alpine passes his ancient army could have crossed – this is much argued about! Down into Piedmont’s Barolo country, and on to Lake Trasimene in Tuscany, the real site of Hannibal’s victory over Rome in 217 BC. Every named stop is a real, ridable place tied to a specific point in the history, not a theme slapped onto a convenient cycling region – and the same pattern holds across the Vikings, Alexander and Lionheart routes.
That’s the whole answer to what makes a cycling tour genuinely historically themed: a founder with the archaeological training and institutional experience to know the difference between real history and a good story, a research process long and rigorous enough to get the details right, and guides and routes that actually deliver it on the road. See the tours built this way →