Meet Amy Hudson: the amateur cyclist who rode the men's Tour de France route – plus transfers – to raise a huge amount of money for a mental health charity

It’s been a whirlwind year for Amy Hudson. In July, she rode every stage of the 2025 men’s Tour de France route – transfers included – to raise money for mental health charity Shout. She covered 6,554km, with 74,863m of elevation, and raised £76,767 in the process. Her story caught the public’s imagination and was featured on the BBC when she reached Paris on 26 July, a day before the pros.

“It’s been crazy,” says Hudson, having won the public vote in our 2025 Rider of the Year Awards, supported by Lezyne, from a shortlist of nominees that included none other than Tadej Pogačar. “I’ve not fully processed it. Ever since I’ve been back from France, I’ve not stopped. It’s been full-on, but I’ve got to do what I love to do, which is ride my bike.”

Hudson started her French challenge with a £10,000 fundraising goal and had double that in mind as an ambitious target. Six months after arriving in the French capital, she describes the public response as “unbelievable”. “You can’t really compute that amount of money,” Hudson says. “Hopefully, it’ll help a lot of people. That’s why I did it.”

Turning point

Shout, a 24/7 text-based mental health service, is a charity close to Hudson’s heart. “You can text in, if you’re struggling,” she says. “It’s really easy to access. It can be hard to pick up the phone and call someone, but it’s really easy to send a text.”

Hudson is extremely open about her own mental health journey. She experienced a “complete breakdown” in 2021, while working as a nurse for the NHS through the Covid pandemic, supporting people with eating disorders. She started cycling after her husband bought her a Carrera bike.

“He thought it would help,” she says. “I used to run a lot, but I struggled with an eating disorder myself, so I used to run to burn calories and burn food, which wasn’t a healthy relationship.”

Having left her job, cycling became a hugely positive force. “It really helped me clear my mind,” she says. “You can’t really worry about stuff when you’re going up a hill in the Peak District.

“Away from cycling, I still felt really low – I didn’t want to be here, really – but I had the bike to keep me going.

"It’s helped me so much because I knew I had to eat more, to get stronger. I can eat out without worrying anymore, which is something I couldn’t do before. Now I’m a healthy weight, I’ve got my periods back, and I’ve got myself back.”

The power of cycling

Cycling has transformed Hudson’s life. The Instagram account (@amy.cycling.adventures) she set up after she left her job now has nearly 100,000 followers; the YouTube channel she started in 2023 has more than 43,000 subscribers.

“I get messages all day, every day,” she says. “People tell me that I’ve helped them, or that they’ve started riding because of me, which doesn’t feel real, that I can have that effect on someone’s life. That’s why I do it, but it’s hard to comprehend.”

It's a long way from Hudson’s first big adventure on the bike – riding the North Coast 500, a 516-mile route around the north coast of Scotland, with her dad in September 2021. “That’s where I really fell in love with it properly,” she says. “I still wasn’t very well – I’d left my job at this point – but we just went and did it.

“I didn’t have Lycra or cleats, just my trainers and massive panniers, with way too much stuff. I didn’t have social media then – it was just me and him, with no responsibility, just nature. We got absolutely drenched, had to walk in 50mph winds, and I got blown off my bike twice.”

Land’s End to John o’ Groats with her husband followed, complete with a gym bag strapped to a pannier rack. “You make it work,” Hudson says, “but I’m glad I’ve now got all the gear. It’s a lot nicer having dry kit.”

Vive la France

These UK-based adventures provided the first stepping stones towards Hudson’s Tour de France challenge. She was inspired by watching a documentary about Lachlan Morton’s ‘Alt Tour’, in which the boundary-pushing pro rider took on the route of the 2021 men’s Tour de France, self-supported and including transfers.

“I watched it and thought, ‘I’d love to do that’,” Hudson says, even if she didn’t believe at the time that she could complete the challenge. Riding the 1,200km Paris-Brest-Paris audax gave her the confidence to leap into her biggest ride yet.

Two years later, she set off from Lille. Clearly, Hudson was no stranger to long-distance cycling by this point, but a ride on this scale comes with its own unique set of challenges.

One morning, for example, she woke at 4.30am after barely sleeping in a sweltering apartment. Outside, torrential rain hammered down. She was exhausted and had more than 300km to ride with heat rash.

Another dark moment came on the Col du Tourmalet. “I was really struggling,” she says. “I had three more mountains to go after that and doubted whether I could do it. But halfway up, I told myself, ‘Come on, Amy. You’ve chosen to do this, so you can’t moan'."

There were magical moments in the mountains, too. She climbed the Col d’Aspin three times, even though it only featured on the Tour de France route once. “The first time I went up, it was really early in the morning on my own,” Hudson says. “It was just me and the sound of cowbells.”

Mont Ventoux and the Alps followed before Paris arrived, and the finish line came into view after 29 days in the saddle. “I came over the brow of a hill and saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time. It all started to feel real. Before that, I was just thinking about eating, sleeping and riding every day,” she says.

The final 46 miles in Paris were “horrid”, though, she says, because she had to contend with heavy traffic while riding four laps of the Tour’s traditional finish on the Champs-Élysées, followed by three laps of an extended circuit that included the new city-centre climb of Côte de la Butte Montmartre. “But I had to do it properly,” she says.

Next steps

What’s next? Attempting to break the record for riding around the world as a married couple, she says. The current record stands at 205 days; Amy and her husband are planning to do it in 150 days. “I’m excited, nervous… but mostly excited,” she says.

She’ll be raising money for Shout once again. Despite ever-bigger adventures, Hudson doesn’t lose sight of the importance of cycling in her recovery and the work Shout does to help others.

Her advice for anyone struggling with their mental health? “Talk to people, don’t keep it in,” she says. “I left it way too long to tell anyone I was struggling; I managed to hide it quite well. Don’t give up hope, because although it might feel really bad now, it will get better, and it doesn’t last forever. The happy days do come back.

“Just keep going and try to find something that brings you joy. I’ve never regretted a bike ride and always feel better for it.”