About — Gravel Adventure

Since 2013

Gravel Adventure grew from a simple conviction: some places are best understood from the saddle.

Not by passing through them, but by moving through them at the right pace. Quiet roads, forgotten tracks, long approaches into landscapes that reveal themselves slowly. Every route we offer has been ridden, refined and tested by us first — then shaped into a journey with support, comfort and character.

Our history

From a few friends in the Alps, to two continents.

— Tanya & Michael Sommer, founders

Est. 2013 · Gravel Adventure since 2022

In 2013, we began by taking friends out to explore new routes through the Alps. From those early rides, MTB-Adventure took shape — our mother company and the foundation from which Gravel Adventure grew.

In 2017, Tanya and Michael Sommer took the helm and lifted the whole set-up from a passion project into something professional but still deeply personal — fully supported cycling journeys built around exceptional riding, thoughtful logistics, and genuine hospitality.

As new regions and then whole continents were added and the routes took shape, so did a clear conviction: exceptional riding is only part of a memorable journey. The route matters. So do the places you stay, the people you meet along the way, and the quality of everything around the ride.

In 2022, after years of gravel riders asking for something similar, Gravel Adventure launched as a sister brand — built around mixed surfaces, longer horizons, and the particular freedom of riding through a landscape rather than simply across it.

Tanya and Michael Sommer, founders of Gravel Adventure, on a gravel ride in South Africa with giraffes grazing behind

The people behind it

Tanya & Michael Sommer.

Tanya and Michael run Gravel Adventure together. Michael plans and rides the routes — he grew up in orienteering, both running and mountain bike, and raced for the Danish national team in his younger years. That's where the eye for reading a landscape and finding the right road comes from. Tanya came to it from the fitness world, with an engineering background and a planner's head, and her side is the planning and the details that make a trip run: the logistics, the hotels, the food, the comfort waiting at the end of a long ride.

The two of them work as a tandem — each strong where the other isn't — and that's the whole idea: to make every trip challenging, exciting and inviting enough that you keep wanting the next one. And none of it would be possible without their team of guides and drivers who've ridden with them for years and who make every trip run on the ground.

T&M

Tanya & Michael

Founders · Gravel Adventure

2013

First trip

Operating cycling tours long before gravel had its own category.

Active routes

Alps, Tuscany, Pyrenees, Scotland, Cyprus, Algarve, South Africa.

< 10

Per group

Small enough to stay personal. Large enough to stay social.

100%

Routes we've ridden

Nothing on the calendar we haven't tested ourselves, end to end.

Where we ride

Remarkable places. Properly approached.

We are drawn to roads and regions beyond the obvious — mountain passes linked by forgotten tracks, coastal gravel, remote interiors. Places that reward arriving by bike, at the right pace.

The Alps Germany · Austria · Switzerland · Italy — eight days, 380–440 km

Tuscany Apennines & Chianti — the most photogenic gravel on the continent

Algarve Inland Portugal — 300–350 km through cork forests and terracotta villages

South Africa Western Cape — the furthest we go, and the one riders always come back for

How we work

Six decisions we keep making the same way.

There's no master plan. Just a handful of principles that make the trips quietly better, year after year.

01 Ride it before we sell it. Every route is scouted and ridden in full before it enters the programme. If we haven't pedalled it, you can't book it.
02 Small groups, on purpose. Under ten riders per departure. The pace stays right, the hotels stay right, and nobody disappears off the back.
03 Hotels you'd pick yourself. Quality, character, location — chosen because they're worth staying in after a hard day on the bike, not because they're the closest bed to the route.
04 Guided or self-guided. Same routes, same hotels, same support. You decide whether you want a guide on the wheel or a GPS file on your head unit.
05 Quiet logistics. Bags moved every morning, a support van on the road, help at hand when you need it. You should never have to think about any of it.
06 No urgency, no upsell. No flash sales or pressure calendars. If a tour is right for you, it'll still be there next week.

Talk it through

Most people have questions before they decide. We're good at answering them.

Happy to discuss any of the tours — routes, fitness level, what to bring, who else is coming. Half-hour calls work well. Written replies even better.

calendar_today Book a free 30-min call or write to info@gravel-adventure.com

We find
the roads.
You ride them.

From a few friends in the Alps, to two continents.

Tanya & Michael Sommer.

Remarkable places. Properly approached.

Six decisions we keep making the same way.

A few of the routes.

Most people have questions before they decide. We're good at answering them.

We findthe roads.You ride them.

From a few friends in the Alps, to two continents.

Tanya & Michael Sommer.

Remarkable places. Properly approached.

Six decisions we keep making the same way.

A few of the routes.

Most people have questions before they decide. We're good at answering them.

We find
the roads.
You ride them.