And if you must have a group tour, scroll to foot of page for a couple of group tour operators whose trips offer many of the benefits of Self-Led Touring.
Packaged self-led tours are becoming increasingly popular, especially among inexperienced cyclo-tourists. A packaged self-led tour is actually a cross between a group tour led by an experienced guide and a completely Do-It Yourself trip in which you do all the planning and carry out the entire trip on your own. Self-Led tours may also be called Self-Guided Tours while group tours may be referred to as Led-Trips.
When you join a group tour, everything is taken care of by the tour operator, including planning the route and hotel reservations, and each day the trip is led by an experienced guide. Your baggage is usually carried in a support vehicle driven by a bike-mechanic which can also pick up sagging riders and make emergency bike repairs.
When you join a packaged self-led tour, eveything is also taken care of by the tour operator BUT there's no leader-guide and, often, no support vehicle. You're given a map and cue sheet for each day's route and you simply follow it out on your own.. Within limits, you can start out when you like and you enjoy much of the independence and flexibility of Do-It-Yourself touring. At each night's stop, your hotel room is reserved while breakfast and dinner are usually included in the price.
While this saves you from buying maps and guidebooks for planning your tour, and spending hours poring over routes and making hotel reservations, you pay for the tour operator's service. By and large, if the rates for a fully supported group led-tour are $300 a day, a similar Self-Led tour might run $150. But you could do the same trip on your own for $100, or for $80 or less if you stayed at economy hotels.
A packaged Self-Led tour planned by an experienced tour operator ensures you will ride through a scenic and interesting region on low-traffic backroads. Yet in seeking out operators of Self-led tours, we found few that offered a real cycling experience. All too many limit their "tours" to 3-5 days, just a long weekend. So we've tried to focus on those that offer at least a weeklong tour. In some cases, you can join two weeklong tours together to form a tour of 14 days. Only Ireland's Iron Donkey Tours has a trip of 1,500 miles (2,400 kms) lasting 29 days and and even then, overnights are spent in only eleven different towns.
Which brings up the difference between Circuit Tours and Base Tours (aka Hub and Spoke Tours). On a Circuit Tour, each day's ride takes you to a new overnight stop where you stay one night before continuing the following day to the next one-night stand.
On a Base Tour, you simply stay 2 or more nights at the same overnight stop. Each day, during this layover, you take an out-and-back day ride in a different direction, all the while unencumbered by baggage which you leave in the hotel. Then you continue on your tour, perhaps to another Base Touring town.
Base Touring is becoming popular--even by Do-It-Yourself tourists--because it minimizes the number of hotels you must book at, and the chore of actually locating each hotel on arrival along with a supermarket, restaurants and the bicycle route for exiting the town. After arriving at a town, it often takes 20- 30 minutes to actually locate a hotel at which you have reservations. However, most Self-Led tour operators provide a street map showing your hotel location and the bicycle route for entering and leaving town. .
Many tours nowadays are a combination of Circuit and Base Touring. This can be an attractive idea but if you're staying at only 2-3 different overnight stops on a week-long tour, it's a fairly simple matter to book that many hotels on your own.
Most Self-Led tours are designed for leisurely riding and typically cover 25-40 miles (40-64 kms) per day. This is a bit too easy for many energetic cyclists. Actually, most routes stay fairly close to the tour company headquarters. If your bike breaks down, this allows you to phone in for help and most firms will have a replacement bike delivered to you by car within an hour. Thus most Self-Led Tours do not take you roaming too far afield.
Too, if you have the time to plan your own trip, you will learn far more about the region or country than if someone else plans your tour. Most Self-Led tours cater to single riders or to couples or small groups of friends or family. You don't have to share the trip with a large group of cyclists from your own country, nor do you need to share a room with a stranger.
A Final Caveat from Breton Bikes: Only you can judge how fit you are. Please don't assume a level of fitness when you have not taken any exercise for years. Try a few rides before you leave. A few years ago, we had a group of fit-looking young people who found the route they had chosen much too hard. Yet the following week, an 8-year old girl 4 feet 4 inches tall , cycled the same route on a fully-loaded kid's bike--heavier than an adult bike--without difficulty. If in doubt, practice first to see what you're comfortable with.
SELECTED OPERATORS OF SELF-LED TOURS
Listing here is for information only and does not imply our endorsement. However, these operators come well recommended by others and appear to be well-established. We receive no commission or other compensation should you take one of their tours. If you find other Self-Led Tour Operators who offer tours of at least 7 nights or more, please send us their names and website URLs and we shall consider listing them here.
Most of these websites are also packed with priceless info on every aspect of bicycle touring. They're well worth reading, even if you don't use their services. Almost all Self-Led tours are on paved roads, usually in Europe or New Zealand, and most operators rent well-maintained 21-24 speed road or hybrid bikes at extra charge to tour participants (though sometimes bikes are free).
Tulip Cycling's tours of the Netherland's top 3 biking regions offer easy riding with baggage transfers included on typical upright European 8-speed bikes (or bring your own). Daily distances average 45km (26 miles) with trips as long as 12 days available. (www.tulipcycling.com)..
Randonnee Self-Guided Vacations (www.randonneetours.com) Self-led tours in Canada, USA, France, Ireland and Italy, averaging 30 miles per day with overnights at comfortable 2 and 3 star hotels, bikes included or bring your own. Their itineraries for Southern France are particularly good and are similar to some of Norm' Ford's Do-It-Yourself bike tours.
Europe. Diverse Directions (www.diversedirections.net). Owners Stephen Taylor and David Parker of Chicago will do all the planning and will coordinate all aspects of a Self-Led Bike Tour at half or less the cost of a comparable group tour. They offer a choice of scenic and rewarding tours through the Netherlands, Belgium and France.
Ireland--England. Iron Donkey Tours (www.irondonkey.com) Based in Ireland, this company offers a variety of Self-Led Tours of Western and Northwest Ireland, and others in England's Cotswolds and Wessex regions and also in Italy. Each tour lasts 7-11 nights and includes at least one Base Town stopover. The two English tours can be combined into a single 11-day tour of the West of England. And the Irish tours can be combined into a single 1,500-mile Long Distance Tour of Ireland lasting 29 days in all.
Ireland--Irish Cycling Tours (www.irishcyclingtours.com). Based in Connemara, Irish Cycling Tours offers a choice of Self-Led Tours through the extravagent scenery of Kerry and Connemara, favorite bike-touring regions on Ireland's West Coast. Most itineraries are for 6-7 days but two of these tours can be combined into a longer 14-day adventure trip. Cannondale hybrid bikes for rent.
Freewheeling Adventures Self-led tours for active cyclists through Canada, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary and Crete; also Costa Rica. (www.freewheelingadventures.com)
France--Brittany. Breton Bikes (www.bretonbikes.com). Operated by an English expatriate couple, this firm offers a variety of Self-Led tours through Brittany (France) with either tent-camping or hotels for overnight. In either case, you carry your own bags. Distances are easy-to-moderate and tours average 7 nights in length. A choice of routes take you exploring every corner of picturesque Brittany as well as along the coast. It's often possible to take a 14-day tour by cycling two connecting 7-day routes. Great rental bikes!
Discover France Self-Led tours of Southwest France, Dordogne, Brittany, Burgundy, Loire Valley, Champagne, Cognac-Poitou, Languedoc, Normandie, Provence-Alpes and Rhone-Alpes. Baggage transfer included, rental bikes available. Call Discover France at 1-800-960-2221 (USA) or click on www.discoverfrance.com and scroll down to "Self-Guided Touring" for details.
Central Europe by Topbicycle Tours (www.topbicycle.com/selfguided.htm). For an exciting self-led tour through the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Austria or Germany--all rewarding off-the-beaten path regions that few Cyclists have yet to pedal through--you can't beat this Czech-owned bike company's self-led tours through the heart of Central Europe. Topbicycle provides route descriptions, maps and even GPS navigation to help you follow their programmed routes and they arrange hotel reservations, luggage transfers and support services. Most tours are for 7 or more days . Topbicycle also arranges one way bike rentals ( pick up at one place, drop off at another). Click on their website for a mouth- watering description of tours through a unique part of Europe that few other cyclists have yet to discover.
Europe--New Zealand. Pure Adventures (www.pure-adventures.com). Pure Adventures offers Self-Led tours of all grades through France, Britain, Ireland, Italy, Belgium and Spain and also through New Zealand. Also rides over Tour de France passes. Rental bikes available.
Wales. Cycling Sideways (www.kc3.co.uk/~bicycle/sideways) This website about cycling in Wales is also associated with Beano Tours which offers a 7- night Self-Led Tour of the mountainous Snowdonia region of Wales and a longer tour across Wales on the Welsh National Bike Route. Beano Tours features vegetarian meals.
Italy On Line (www.initaly.com/ads/biktour/tuscany.htm ) Self-led tours for groups of 2-6 cyclists through ancient hill towns like Assissi, Siena, Orvieto and Perugia in Italy's scenic regions of Tuscany and Umbria. Van carries luggage, rental bikes available, rather pricey.
New Zealand. Nature's Highway Ltd Tours. (www.natureshighway.co.nz) Self-Led cycling safaris for individuals and small groups leaving monthly to tour South Island. Bikes supplied.
New Zealand. Independent Cycle Tours New Zealand. (www.cyclehire.co.nz) Extensive coverage of spectacular South Island by a variety of self-led bike routes with rental bikes available. Anyone interested in exploring New Zealand by bike should read this informative website.
For other Self-Led packaged tours, look under Tour Operators in the current Cyclist's Yellow Pages published annually by Adventure Cycling and also free online at their website www.adventurecycling.org/
Group Tours For Do-It-Yourself Cyclists
If you just can't find the Self-Led Tour you're looking for, try one of the very affordable and expertly-led group tours listed below.
Since 1994, Suzie and Roger Knable have been personally hosting their very affordable tours in the U.S., Canada and Europe. "My husband and I happily found your DIY Bicycle Touring website quite by accident,"Suzie wrote." We are an advocacy group of the League of American Bicyclists and have been hosting bike tours through our own company since 1994. But we still maintain our non-profit mission to encourage people to travel on two wheels. And we do so by offering them trips that are very reasonable and are personally hosted by us. "
Their website describes a mouth-watering list of exciting tours on both coasts of the U.S., and in Canada while their 11-day trip from Prague to Budapest through the Czech Republic, Austria and Hungary is as rewarding as you'll find on any Self-Led Tour.
The BAC offers a series of highly-recommended, non-profit hotel-motel tours in the U.S., and overseas for adults: volunteer leaders, sag-supported, top hotels, unbeatable value at one-half or less the cost of most commercial bike tours. Club membership is $50 per couple the first year, then $25 annually.
.