One way to ensure getting hooked on bicycling is to take an easy-paced group tour designed for beginners.
As John Freidin, founder of Vermont Bicycle Touring once told me: “Everyone in good health can enjoy recreational bicycling. Nearly half of our bicyclists take their first bicycle trip with us. After just a weekend, they’re hooked!”
Anyone who can ride 30 miles a day can qualify for a variety of comfortable bicycle adventure tours. Today, over 100 organizations offer group tours ranging from a weekend to a week or a month or longer.
In New England, California, or Europe, both younger and older bicyclists enjoy touring on scenic routes from one elegant country inn to another, with fine dining, and a support van (called a sag wagon) to carry the luggage and pick up stragglers.
In fact, bicycle touring has become trendy. You can choose from deluxe bicycle tours that take you first class all the way, with part of the tour on a schooner cruise or at a beach resort in Hawaii, with cocktails before dinner, and with sumptuous dining every night. Some bike tours include summer theater, tennis, dancing, swimming, or music festivals as part of their trips. Group bicycle tours are organized primarily for beginning and intermediate riders, not for ironmen, and emphasis is on having a great time outdoors. However, purists who want to pedal nonstop all day are not over looked. Most tours offer three optional routes on each day’s ride.
Beginners can take the easy route, averaging 20 - 35 miles; more seasoned riders can take the intermediate route, averaging 35 - 50 miles; and advanced riders can take the high road through challenging terrain for 60 - 80 miles or more. In late afternoon, everyone arrives at the same hotel or inn for refreshments and dinner.
Regardless which route you take, you go at your own pace. You can ride on your own, or with a friend or a small group. On the average tour, participants are strung out for miles and no one has to “keep up.” If you like frequent stops for snacks or sightseeing, you can choose the short, flat route that allows ample time to dawdle at antique shops and art galleries. In fact, some people ride only as far as the lunch stop, and go the rest of the way in the sag wagon.
A tour group enjoys a break in Wyoming’s Grand
Teton National Park.
Active Tours for Dedicated Bicyclists
Meanwhile, more experienced riders can ride a more demanding route that really challenges their bicycling abilities.
Certainly, the trend today is away from long camping tours to shorter ten-day tours with comfortable accommodations where you can pay for meals with a credit card. But opportunities for more rigorous, and slightly more spartan, tours at lower cost are still there. Outfits like Bikecentennial offer a choice of superb camping tours that take you roaming for two or three months completely across the United States or the length of the Pacific Coast, or from Montana to Alaska.
Meanwhile, American Youth Hostels offers an exciting World Adventure Program that includes long bike tours through the Canadian Rockies, New Zealand, Europe, and all over the United States, at rock bottom cost. Several hosteling tours are open only to riders over 50, while adults of any age can join any of their tours which are classified as “open” or “adult.” Some of these tours have had leaders who themselves were age 65.
Among the advantages of joining a group tour is the opportunity to meet other bicyclists. Nothing breeds camaraderie more than a shared experience, and an extraordinary closeness soon develops among a cycling group. Numerous friendships are almost guaranteed. On one Vermont Bicycle Tours trip, a couple met and were married and the rest of their tour became their honeymoon.
Insouciant Touring
Joining a group tour also relieves busy people of the chores of planning routes and making reservations. All reservations are con firmed months in advance while the tour operator takes care of all details and guarantees a successful trip. All you need do is to relax and enjoy the ride.
Almost all medium and higher cost tours provide sag wagon support. The van carries luggage, spare parts, tools, and refreshments. It will pick up anyone wishing to cycle only part of the day, or who feels tired. Later, the van will sweep the route for stragglers. However, sag wagon support is usually confined only to easy and intermediate routes. Advanced riders are expected to be self- sufficient, although the van will always go out and pick up anyone who phones to the overnight stop for help.
On commercial tours, the leaders or sag wagon drivers double as mechanics, and they’ll keep your bicycle running in the event of mechanical trouble.
All this doesn’t come cheap. In 1990 rates for a deluxe tour, with overnights at historic inns and sag support, averaged $90 per day in the United States, and ranged up to $150 per day for overseas tours, including air fare. Single-occupancy rates can add 15 - 35 percent more. While these costs cover accommodation, breakfast, dinner, maps, taxes, sag support, and the services of a professional leader, you could easily halve these rates by touring on your own at the economy level.
Adventure Tours at Lower Cost
Meanwhile, if you enjoy camping or hosteling, or are willing to ride without sag support, not-for-profit organizations like Bikecentennial or the AYH, plus other outdoor clubs and organizations, offer well-organized adventure tours at rates far below those of the commercial tour operators.
In this not-for-profit category is the Bicycle Adventure Club, which operates adult-only group tours in the United States and overseas, with sag support and comfortable accommodations, but you pay only what the tour actually costs. Leaders are volunteers and each has scouted the route beforehand.
Which reminds me of a caveat: often, an enthusiastic bicyclist will offer to lead a group tour through an area that he or she has not scouted, nor even been to before. While the majority of such trips are offered through local bike clubs and are not-for-profit, the leader is often rewarded by being given a free trip. Most of these trips are well-intentioned and may use sag support and comfortable accommodations with advance reservations. But the leader is virtually going blind. I have seen such trips follow poorly planned itineraries that missed the best roads and scenery. Too, inexperienced leaders can encounter difficulties, such as unexpected national holidays, which can completely upset the group’s plans. So make sure your tour leader is familiar with the area and has made the trip at least once before.
Your Fellow Tour Members
On the typical light bicycle tour half the participants are aged over 40. In fact, the longer and more expensive the tour, the higher the average age level. That’s obviously because younger people can’t take the time off from work for tours of three weeks or longer, nor can the majority afford it. While most commercial tours are open to anyone 21 or over, participants on long thirty-day tours of New Zealand, Nepal, Europe, or the Soviet Union are likely to be mature adults who have the time and finances to go. Statistics show that ages on the typical tour range from 22 to 66 with many riders in their 60s and some in their 70s.
The average group tour numbers 15 - 25 participants and represents a mix of singles, couples, families, and friends. On shorter tours as many as half the participants may be singles, with women often outnumbering men. Most tour clients are affluent, college- educated professionals who are active and fit but more into recreational bicycling than racing.
Several organizations have offered tours exclusively for women (Womantrek, Outdoor Women’s School, Calypso Excursions, and others) while Michigan Bicycle Tours has operated trips exclusively for vegetarians.
If you’re a purist, and prefer to ride all day and go fairly long distances, you’ll find a number of operators who specialize in fairly strenuous tours for real bicycling buffs. Frequently, the conversation is all about bicycles and equipment, and many of the riders are experienced veterans who have toured all over the world. Bicycle Adventure Club tends to be in this league.
Pre-planned Independent Tours
Most tour operators will also arrange a completely planned independent tour in which you can ride on your own, or take along a group of friends. The tour operator does all the planning and makes all reservations. All you do is follow the routing instructions and keep to the schedule. If your group is large enough, you can also have your own sag wagon with driver. Costs are about the same as for the operator’s standard group tours.
In section 12, I recommended bringing your own high-performance bicycle if you can. But to avoid the hassle of flying with a bike, many tour participants rent bicycles from the tour operator. Rental bikes supplied by tour operators are usually dependable, well- maintained machines with rates that run about $15 a day. Some operators also rent mountain bikes for around $90 per week.
I’d avoid renting from anyone but a tour operator or mountain bike rental firm. Meanwhile, if you can drive to the starting point of your tour, I still recommend bringing your own bike.
kop-14-177.jpg At the Three Stallion Inn, Randolph, Vermont. Vermont is one of the most popular destinations for escorted inn-to-inn tours.
Locating Bicycle Tour Operators
Several organizations publish source lists of all bicycle tour operators at least once a year. Among the best sources are:
• League of American Wheelmen. By joining the L.A.W., you receive the bimonthly Bicycle USA magazine, the March-April issue of which gives details on virtually every bicycle tour operator plus operators of youth tours, self-guided tours, and mountain bike tours.
• Bikecentennial. As a member you receive the Cyclist’s Yellow Pages, which also gives brief listings of all leading bike tour operators, with addresses and phone number, and tells where they go.
Several bicycling magazines also feature a run-down of tour operators in early spring issues while their back pages are often filled with ads by leading tour operators.
To give you an idea of the kinds of tours available, here is a brief listing of some of the largest bicycle tour operators and where their tours go.
Leading Bicycle Tour Operators
• American Youth Hostels . Adult or Senior membership entitles you to an extensive choice of semiadventurous hosteling tours through Alaska, New England, Europe, the Canadian Rockies, the Pacific Coast, the Northeast, Colorado, the South west, and New Zealand.
• Bicycle Adventure Club, P.O. Box 87483, San Diego CA 92138 (619-273-2602). A not-for-profit membership touring club for adult bicyclists with tours to New Zealand, France, Germany, Eastern Europe, New England, Northern California, the United Kingdom, and many other areas.
• Bikecentennial . Offers a series of inexpensive, self-contained camping tours that typically include a 90-day, 4,500 mile Across America trip; a 70-day 3,200-mile tour from Montana to Alaska; a 48-day, 2,150-mile tour from Oregon to Colorado; and many others. Bikecentennial also offers top-notch tours for mountain bicyclists, and also for road riders preferring indoor accommodations. All road rides follow the National Bicycle Route Network.
• Bike Vermont, P.O. Box 207TK, Woodstock VT 05091 (802—457—3553). Specializes in tours of Vermont.
• Back Country Bicycle Tours, P0 Box 4029, Bozeman MT 59772 (406-586-3556). Mountain bike tours in Montana, Yellowstone, the Tetons, Utah, and New Zealand.
• Backroads Bicycle Touring, P0 Box 1626, San Leandro CA 94577 (415-895-1783). Deluxe California wine country tours plus 30 different itineraries through North America, Europe, and the Pacific including Hawaii, Bali, and New Zealand. Stresses creature comforts, gourmet food.
• Butterfield and Robinson, 70 Bond Street, Toronto ONT Canada M5B 1X3 (in United States 800-387-1147; in Canada 800-268-8415). Top-quality bike tours through France, Italy, Eng land, Ireland, Germany, Denmark, Austria, Spain, and Portugal.
• China Passage, 168 State Street, Teaneck NJ 07666 (201-837-1400). Tours of China when available and of Thailand, with sightseeing.
• International Bicycle Tours, 12 Mid-Place, Chappaqua NY 10514 (914-238-4576). Tours through the U.S.S.R., Denmark, Holland, Yugoslavia, and Bermuda, most personally led by president Frank Behrendt.
• Vermont Bicycle Touring, Box 711 , Bristol VT 05443 (802-453-4811). Inn-to-inn tours of 2-21 days for beginners, inter mediate, and advanced bicyclists through rural New England. Also operates tours through Britain, Hawaii, and New Zealand.
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