Taking a bicycle holiday sounds tempting to everyone, however planning the actual event is not as easy as some may think. You’ll have to think about where you eat, where you sleep, where you take pit-stops for food and drinks, what sights are there to see, plan ahead the entire track and so forth. Definitely not an easy job! Well if you don’t want to bother yourself with stuff like this, there’s always the option of hiring a professional event manager team that will set up your cycling tour to the last detail.
Usually there’s even more to the cycling tour than just helping you out with choosing the right track and setting up where you eat and where you sleep. Some companies offer t-shirts inscribed with the event’s name and off-track activities such as contests and prize give-aways.
Most such companies that offer cycling tour services have a fixed schedule for each event. For example, the Appalachian Wine Country tour in North Carolina takes place in October only, while other events are set in more than one month of the year, such as the Paris Bicycle Tour that takes place in France in August, October, June, May, April, July and September. Thus, if you want to participate on a specific cycling tour you might have to plan ahead and make a reservation if you want to catch a free spot when it takes place.
Also, besides the classical inn-to-inn road tours, you’ll also find companies handling mountain bike tracks. Some popular mountain biking locations include Peru (Andes), Spain (Canary Islands), Nepal (Himalaya), USA (California, Colorado, Montana) and many more throughout the world. Mountain bike cycling tours are usually shorter than road cycling tours, mainly because of the fatigue that most people get after a few days of heavy mountain biking and because of the fact that the track is simply not meant to be of the same length as a road tour for example.
Besides these organized, small-group cycling tours that abound in the USA and Europe, there are also “traditional” cycling tours where hundreds if not thousands of bikers gather up at a specific date and ride a preset track. Sometimes these traditional tours don’t have a prize for the winners, but rather focus on the importance of being there in the first place. Such cycling tours take place all over the United States, some of the most popular being the “cycling escapes tour” series taking place in Utah (May), Colorado (July), California (June), Oregon (July-September), Arizona (October), the Tour de Georgia (April). Europe also has some magnificent cycling tours such as the Dordogne River Valley tour in France, the Rome to Nice tour in Italy, the Cappadocia Village Tour in Turkey and the list could go on and on forever.
The price range of these cycling tours depends heavily on the location and of course, on the length of the track. Most event managers will include a guide that will permanently stay with you instead of just setting your track, your resorts and meals and letting you handle the track on your own. This guide’s inn will probably have to be paid by the group. And of course, there’s always the possibility of not paying for the standard menu (if the cycling tour event manager offers one whatsoever) and get your own food which is oftentimes a wiser choice, since you can’t know for sure if you’ll like the food they give you.
This said, I invite you to look up a cycling tour event manager or search the Internet for traditional cycling tours that you can take place in and try one out. It’s a wonderful experience and you’ll soon find yourself traveling around the country, making new friends and attending monthly cycling tours, since it’s a very catchy and stimulating experience.
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