November 8, 2007 – Patricia Dawn Severenuk, a 39-year-old Canadian journalist and travel writer living in Madrid, Spain, has been chosen as the winner of the 2007 Spanish edition of the Saab – Salomon Women Will contest. Her project, called “The Trans-Iberian Express Route”, is a five-week trip across the Iberian Peninsula.

The Saab – Salomon Women Will contest is an international initiative founded by Salomon Sports, aimed at women throughout the world. Throughout the spring and summer of 2007, women from all over the world sent in their proposals. The proposals were evaluated by judges, on behalf of the brand, and both the national and international winners receive prizes that allow them to carry out their dream adventures.

“The Trans-Iberian Express”: Combining adventure and green activities

The winning expedition proposed by Patricia contains a mix of two elements appreciated by the judges: it has a good dose of adventure, as well as promoting bicycle use — and, therefore, sports in general.

The Trans-Iberian is a bicycle route which links the town of Irún, one of Spain’s most northerly towns, with Tarifa, the southernmost community in Western Europe. As the project stands now, Patricia will be riding the route by herself, but is welcoming anyone and everyone who’d like to join her on the ride, be it for a couple of hours or a couple of days. She hopes to promote bicycle use among new and potential cyclists while creating and marking the first cross-country cycle touring route by uniting infrastructure which already exists, such as transhumance routes and rail trails. She’ll be sending out information to local cycling groups and clubs to invite them to join her on the trip.

Patricia’s trip also has its green side, too, since the key idea of the project is to use the bicycle as an environmentally-friendly way of travelling. Not only does she want to show that it is possible to cross Spain on a bike, she also wants to demonstrate how it is possible to move yourself (and your bike) with Spain’s public transit system. She’ll be taking advantage of the country’s bus and train connections to get to and from the route, as well as using six different Vías Verdes (rail trails). Thanks to the generosity and hard work of the Fundación de Ferrocarriles Españoles (Spanish Railways Foundation), the country now enjoys a system of 1,200 km (745 miles) of rail trails — a number which continues to grow, year after year.

Patricia is planning to push off from Irún on Easter Sunday — March 23, 2008 — and estimates that it will take just under five weeks to complete the trip. To help her make her dream come true, Salomon will be providing her with €2,000 in clothing and gear, as well as up to €4,000 in expenses to carry out the trip.

You can follow Patricia’s progress by checking out her blog: http://trans-iberian.blogspot.com

More prizes
The other two winning trips, as chosen by the jury, were proposed by Neus Mateu of Mallorca and Teresa Garcia, who lives in Segovia. Neus, 39, took second place with an interesting project: crossing Finland from north to south by kayak, going through some of the country’s 190,000 lakes in the Scandinavian country. Neus’s second prize consists of an adventure-filled weekend in Scandinavia and €600 in Salomon clothing.

The third-prize project, submitted by twenty-five year-old Teresa Garcia, consisted of a trip to Peru that combined adventure travel with extending physiotherapy treatment to some of the country’s poorest communities. Teresa received a prize of €250 in Salomon clothing, as well as the use of a Saab Biopower Car for one weekend.

Spain Well Represented
Of the 1,000 projects that Salomon received (via internet) at its head office in France, some 300 proposals came from Spain, Andorra and Portugal — a fabulous response from women adventurers across the Peninsula. Salomon España is currently working to present the 2008 edition of Saab – Salomon Women Will next spring.

www.salomonwomenwill.com