What’s our story!?
Andrew kicked off ACTIVE NEW ZEALAND in 1996 by running an adventurous hiking, biking and sea kayaking tour around New Zealand with our first two clients! It’s been a magnificent journey ever since. As ACTIVE grew, Andrew employed like-minded people to help out (us lot), and together we’ve taken over 13,000 people on adventure trips in New Zealand alone. We haven’t taken over the world since we began, preferring to stick to what we’re good at, so we just operate in places we know and love. We run hiking trips for hikers, biking trips for bikers, and active trips for active people – we don’t do everything for everyone – but what we do, we do really well!
Andrew on his morning commute, with Amelia. |
Andrew Fairfax
Lives in Queenstown, New Zealand.
Role at Active New Zealand Cycle Tours - Chief pedalhead.
Biking Habits - Rides 30kms to work each day, rain, shine & snow, with his German Shepherd, Amelia, bounding alongside. In winter, he switches to a more luxurious but slower recumbent trike.
In the garage - As a typical obsessed cyclist, his bike fleet includes a specialist German touring bike, a full suspension GT mountain bike for the tougher stuff, a Terratrike recumbent trike for the winter, and a Scott Speedster S40 for when he needs to get to work quickly.
Proudest Biking Moment – After suffering serious injuries in a spectacularly bad plane crash in 2001, he cycled 4000kms from Istanbul to London as part of his rehabilitation. And it worked wonders! But, as he says, it was haaaaard. With a capital ‘H’.
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Lynette on her way down the Crown Range. |
Lynette Warmington
Lives in Queenstown, New Zealand.
Role at Active New Zealand Cycle Tours - Trip designer, organiser and guide.
Biking Habits - Obsessive! You'll find her in the saddle most weekends, riding the local mountain bike trails or tackling mountain roads on her road bike.
In the garage - A beautiful Specialized Ruby Comp Triple for the road and a gnarly Giant Reign X1 for the trails.
Proudest Biking Moment – Making it from Queenstown to Wanaka over the Crown Range for the first time without stopping (almost!). Those thigh burning switch backs are a killer. Second favourite moment was going on a biking holiday with friends and trying to explain to security why she had pedals and fairy wings in her hand luggage. That’s our girl!
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Ange speeding up the Crown Terrace. |
Ange West
Lives in Queenstown, New Zealand.
Role at Active New Zealand Cycle Tours - Operations Coordinator – the glue that holds everything together.
Biking Habits - another one that’s obsessive! She turns up most mornings with her road bike, ready to take off along Queenstown’s deserted back roads in the evening. Or you'll find her on her mountain bike, uphill and downhill, using the local trails to their fullest and startling the people she overtakes!
In the garage - A bright green Strada on the road and Giant Reign 1 (with matching helmet) on the trails.
Proudest Biking Moment – Standing on a wine barrel (that’s NZ bike races for you – finishing up at a winery!) to accept her second place medal after the Tour de Wakatipu off-road bike race. And smashing her expected time at the Motatapu off-road bike race this year too.
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Paul on his trusty mountain bike at Wanaka |
Paul McDonald
Lives in Queenstown, New Zealand.
Role at Active New Zealand Cycle Tours - Once you’ve booked your trip, Paul will make sure you have all the information you need.
Biking Habits - Paul has biked all over the place in both the North and South Islands, and fondly remembers the bike trips he did with his Dad growing up. These Kiwi kids are tough! Ok, so he’s not exactly a kid anymore, but at 27 he’s the young ‘un on the team.
In the garage - Giant Yukon, ready to take on the trails or ride to work.
Proudest Biking Moment – mountain biking the world’s most dangerous road in Bolivia, down Cotopaxi Volcano in Ecuador and making it the whole way along the Otago Rail Trail in New Zealand in two days!
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Jodi, mid-race, on the Motatapu. |
Jodi Narbey
Lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Role at Active New Zealand Cycle Tours - answering your questions, helping you decide on a trip and giving you all the information you need.
Biking Habits - Jodi’s spent her life biking, hiking and running in the New Zealand outdoors. She has three big brothers so knows how to keep up!
In the garage - Specialized Myka
Proudest Biking Moment – She’s a competitor at heart and trained extremely hard to place highly in the Motatapu Off-Road mountain bike race, and boy was she proud of herself at the end! That race is hard! It gives a whole new meaning to the word ‘undulating’.
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So that’s the core team in a nutshell, and we have a few more at ACTIVE HQ too! Basically we’re a bunch of normal* people, who like biking and the outdoors and are lucky enough to have it all in our backyard. Like our clients, we are all ages, shapes, sizes and levels of fitness. But we all get out there and get amongst it (as we say in NZ). There are a few other people poking around here as well, should they happen to answer when you call, as we’re also running ACTIVE NEW ZEALAND, ACTIVE SOUTH AMERICA and ACTIVE HIMALAYAS trips from our beautiful Queenstown HQ overlooking the Shotover River, but we’re all cross-trained, and we don’t bite :-)
*As in normal, we mean, you know, as normal as you can get for a bunch of people who run adventure trips for a living instead of getting a proper job.
“The bicycle is a curious vehicle. Its passenger is its engine.” ~John Howard
If you’re feeling inspired, but not quite ready to call up and lock in dates, request your free cycling guide so you can put it on the coffee table until you’re ready to request leave.
Our Biking Guides
We also have a bunch of smiley enthusiastic biking guides ready to jump into their lycra and onto the road when you arrive. At the moment they’re in hibernation for the winter, resting up for the season ahead.
