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Arriba! North West husband-and-wife duo to launch cycling business in Spain

Mark and Zoe Lancaster are ditching their corporate lives in Great Manchester to launch a luxury cycling retreat near Alicante, in Spain.

The duo, from Harwood in Bolton, have quit their jobs and sold their £400,000 house to fund ‘Cycle Retreats’, the new venture set to intake its first guests in October later this year.

The business, which will run from a luxury hillside villa near Alicante, is something the pair have ‘talked about for years’.

Mark, technical director for DXI Regeneration, in Leigh,and Zoe, MD of a private healthcare company, say they hope to tap into the growing market for foreign leisure holidays.

Zoe said: “Cycle Retreats has been our dream for a long time. We realised there are very few first-class experiences for keen cyclists. So we created one.

“Our daughter is happily settled into university and neither of us relish staying on the corporate treadmill for ever.

“We are both keen cyclists and we took some time to ask ourselves what it is we really wanted to do. So we just decided to go for it.”

Mark and Zoe, both aged 43, are now putting the final plans in place before flying out to Spain later this year for Cycle Retreats’ official launch.

Bookings are currently being taken for the first retreat, which takes place in October 2017.

Zoe has the small matter of organising Riding for Change, a charity bike ride that will take 50 riders from London to Paris over four days while raising money for local charities

“Cycle Retreats will be the cyclist’s equivalent of a luxury ski lodge, combining spectacular rides with first-class food and luxurious accommodation”, added Zoe.

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