Sam Wood

Sam Wood - Bike Odyssey Founder and Director

Founder Sam Wood comes from a very different background to most bike tour operators. From cycling for the BBC to directing archaeological excavations around the world he brings a unique angle to Bike Odyssey's touring portfolio.
  • Bike Tour Leader

    Sam has designed routes and led tours around the world for 18 years for cycling groups, documentary series and charity events. This broad experience has refined Bike Odyssey's aim - to run 10 tours per year only, in unique and spectacular locations around the world. To concentrate efforts and expertise to yield thoughtful, finely crafted, well-researched and executed itineraries - essentially to create unique, exceptional odysseys. Read about What makes a cycling tour historically themed here.

  • BBC TV Presenter

    Sam designed his first historic bike route and cycled it with a BBC TV crew in tow. In 2010 ‘On Hannibal’s Trail’ was created - a six-part travelogue documentary presented by Sam and his brothers. It has been shown in over 70 countries worldwide on BBC, National Geographic and Viasat. Sam wanted to share this amazing experience with others, so he built a cycle touring company. The first Odyssey was Hannibal - likely the first ever historical long distance bike tour - and from there the Odysseys expanded to all over the world.

     

Sam Wood riding through the Hannibal Odyssey bike tour
Sam Wood, bike guide and TV presenter, on the BBC
Sam Wood, bike guide and BBC presenter, on the Sammibal Hannibal bike tour
  • Academic

    Sam studied Classical Archaeology (Hons) at Sydney University before working and consulting for the British Museum, London, The Met, New York (Metropolitan Museum of Arts) and The Mellon Foundation. He has been published by a dozen different magazines ranging from Cycling Weekly to World Archaeology. He gave this all up in 2009 to cycle and create bike tours with genuine historical content. This started with creating 'On Hannibal's trail' for the BBC. Read the 2026 article "A modern odyssey: the archaeologist following Homer's route on a bicycle" in The Guardian here.

  • Archaeologist

    Sam is not just an academic though, but a real life Indiana Jones who excavated on many prominent archaeological digs searching for artefacts and treasures and piecing together their history. He ran excavations and taught field archaeology for Stanford, Bradford and Sydney Universities on excavations at Pompei in Italy, Chersonesos in Crimea (Ukraine), Sepphoris in Israel, Paphos in Cyprus. He mapped shipwrecks in  Bermuda and surveyed excavations across the Greek Islands. He also worked in commercial archaeology and conservation in the UK and home in Australia.

Where to next?

Sam is always working on new tours, which we like to keep a secret! Where next? There are so many great places to explore...but for now, head back to the tour which started the historical bike touring niche - Hannibal - Barcelona to Rome