Bike travel companies. Faves?

[makoti]

Originally Posted by rogerspam

1) I don't have any personal experience with European operators but you can find my earlier post about one in Japan which was great (Bike Tour Japan)

2) highly recommend e-bike for non-bike enthusiast partner. Might actually make them become one or at least make it more enjoyable for them Don't get mad if they drop you on the climbs.

Trek offered/offers e-bikes, and the trip I took I'd say 50% of the people used them. There is no way most, if not all, of those people would be on that trip without them. They were very casual riders, and the e-bikes let the join in.

[quattro]

Originally Posted by Turkle

I don't want to derail the thread, but I do have a question.

My partner is very supportive of my cycling habit, and we ride together a bit, but she is definitely an extremely casual cyclist and is not very comfortable on busy roads. (We mostly ride together on a car-free path here in VA.)

She expressed tentative willingness to join me on a cycling trip in Italy this year or next, but I don't know if it would be too much for her. The good news is that it looks like most of these tours / hotels offer e-bikes, so she would likely be just fine from a fitness perspective.

Have any of you dragged your casual-cyclist spouse along with you on one of these trips? Good idea or not? Should I just spare her and go alone somewhere?

Thanks, and apologies if this is a threadjack.

My wife and I and another couple went to Italy last summer and stayed at Garda Bike Hotel for five days. Located in northern Italy right on Lake Garda. We had an excellent time, very well run, excellent customer service, the guides are great, food is wonderful, area is beautiful. My wife rented a Pinarello e-bike and I rented a Pinarello F12, top shelf! I highly recommend Garda Bike Hotel if you want to do shoot out and back rides. There are plenty of things to places to visit from the hotel If you don’t want to ride, and the train station is a block away. PM if you have any questions.
quattro

[Bob Ross]

The missus and I did a tour of Sardegna back in 2011 with ABCycle, and I would recommend that company in a heartbeat, except it looks like they've recently partnered with VyviGo (probably because Angelo and Ann Marie of ABCycle are getting on in years) and I know nothing about what VyviGo brings to the operation.

We brought our own bikes, they did not supply anything except routes, guides, SAG support, and food/lodging. But it was a wonderful trip, great riding (lots of climbing), great vistas, amazing lodging. Two snaps in a Z formation.

I also did a Mallorca vacation in 2015 with Stephen Roche's cycling camp (which if I'm not mistaken is no longer extant? or is bogged down in some legal snafu). That was all out&backs from a single location. We brought our own bikes, but Roche supplied very nice road bikes to anyone who didn't bring their own. Again, fabulous routes and scenery, good guides, nice lodging, but crap food.

In 2 months we'll be heading back to Italy to ride the Amalfi Coast with Ciclismo Classico. First time we've used that company. This time we are not bringing our own bikes, they'll be supplying Trek or Bianchi road bikes. Will report back if I have any feedback on routes, guides, lodgings etc. after May.

[BumbleBeeDave]

. . . for Domestic US tours and also do off-season tour logistics and development. I’ve been working for them since 2021 when I guided 13 tours in the NY Finger Lakes, Central Vermont, Main coast, southern Adirondacks, and a three-day gravel tour out of Deerfield that was a mashup of the longest D2R2 routes. In 2022 and 2023 I only did 5-6 each year because their customers headed back to Europe after the pandemic. I also guided tours last year for Great Freedom Adventures in the Hudson Valley and Martha’s Vineyard.

This coming season I'm guiding five tours here in the northeast for Ciclismo Classico, three in the Finger Lakes and two in central Vermont in the Brandon/Middlebury area. They also have a couple of tours in Quebec that are guided by a contractor there. They started in 1988 and the majority of their tours are in Europe with a focus on Italy.

If you’re going on a Euro tour the owner just spent a pant load of money on a hundred new bikes from Officina Mattio. Figure a hundred bikes at least $3k each and do the math. Big investment. Custom carbon, SRAM Rival AXS, all the bits. They’re nice. She also has people working for her there who are local residents, and some have been guiding for her for over 20 years, so extensive local knowledge and all the relationships with lodging, dining, etc, are long established. So things run pretty smoothly from all I’ve heard so far. The chances you’ll have a bad experience are very low and she has a large contingent of repeat customers. During the pandemic when Europe was closed, I hosted many of them and had one lady who had been on 23 Ciclismo tours and another who had done 18.

Lauren (the owner) tells me that at least half of the people who contact her about tours ask about ebikes, and on my tours I have local vendors we rent from. They’re all hybrid style bikes because nobody offers drop bar bikes as rentals. I also always get an extra battery for each bike so nobody gets stranded halfway through one of our rides. We have rental road bikes here, but they’re nothing special because most domestic tour guests bring their own bikes. Our rentals are BMC bikes with Sora components. But they do the job for most folks and have a bottom 34-32 gear.

Much of my work over the past three years has been in fully developing the domestic tours we are offering. That consists of route development, revision, and scouting trips plus developing relationships with vendors including lodging, dining, bike rentals, and various local attractions. I’ve found that the actual cycling fitness is only a small part of the job. Local knowledge is king, plus logistics and project management skills combined with interpersonal communications and customer service. But there’s very few difficult people on these tours.

I’m happy to answer any questions about the tours I guide or Ciclismo in general.

You can see some pis from my tours HERE.

BBD