Tour de Lavender Partners
The Tour de Lavender is only possible because of great partnerships and local community support. The Peninsula Trails Coalition is proud to present this event each year with the incredible assistance of our partners and the thousands of hours of volunteer labor without which “TDL” wouldn’t happen at all.
Dan and Janet Abbott, the owners of Washington Lavender, came up with the idea of a bicycle ride as a way to promote the Sequim-Dungeness Valley’s lavender farms among cyclists and encouraging cycle tourism on the North Olympic Peninsula. As members of the Sequim Lavender Farmers Association, they solicited that organization’s support and the first great partnership was created, laying the foundation for a unique cycling event and deeper local community involvement in cycling.
The City of Sequim signed on early and enthusiastically as another key Tour de Lavender partner. Each year the City has provided financial support in the form of grant awards. The City Manager and staff in various municipal departments have coordinated closely with Tour de Lavender volunteers to ensure the event is safe and secure. The partnership between the Tour de Lavender and the City of Sequim exemplifies what it means to be a “bicycle-friendly” and “cyclist-friendly” community.
The Olympic Peninsula Visitor Bureau has been another key partner from the start back in 2013. With a shared goal of attracting tourism to the area and sharing the extraordinary beauty of this place we who live here are privileged to call “home,” this has been a great collaborative effort. One result of that collaboration has been the continual increase in the number of Tour de Lavender participants—even as other cycling events in the Pacific Northwest have seen their ridership decline.
Local cycling groups, such as the Spoke Folk, Women on Wheels, and the Sequim Easy Riders, comprise another set of cornerstone partnerships without which the Tour de Lavender would not be possible. Collectively they embody a tight-knit community of cyclists who bring invaluable knowledge, experience, connections, warmth, and humor central to improving the Tour every year.
Businesses in the Sequim-Dungeness Valley, most notably Pedego Sequim and Olympic Springs Water, are core partners as well, providing a wide range of logistical and financial support. They have been instrumental in making the Tour de Lavender the premier cycling event on the Olympic Peninsula.
We are grateful to the Sequim Irrigation Festival for their infrastructure support.
Thank you all!
Become a Partner?
We’re always on the lookout to share our growing success with local and regional businesses as well as other cycling organizations. If you’re interested in becoming one of our partners in sponsoring the Tour de Lavender, we’d love to hear from you. Give us a call at 360-775-5395 or you can you use the handy form on our Contact page to send us a message.