Originally published in Forbes | Sep 5, 2024
Cycling was growing in popularity even before the pandemic, with growth pushed by entirely new categories such as e-bikes and gravel riding. But along with just about every other form of active outdoor recreation, participation exploded with COVID-19.
Today these gains seem to have stuck around, and just about every top tour operator specializing in cycling vacations has seen record bookings. Many are scrambling to add new itineraries and more departures to existing ones, with some trips selling out up to a year in advance.
Why You Might Like A Cycling Vacation
I have long been a huge fan of cycling vacations. I do at least one a year, and it’s what we chose for our 20th wedding anniversary. It’s just a great way to travel, with trips available in all corners of the globe, including perennial hotspots like Italy’s Tuscany, France’s Burgundy and California’s Napa Valley, as well as more exotic options such as Vietnam, South Africa and Argentina.
These trips are great for foodies, and because you are working out every day, they are a fun way to feel less guilty about all the decadent eating, wine and gelato stops along the way. Active traveler pioneer and luxury tour operator Butterfield & Robinson coined the phrase “Slow Down to See the World” for its white glove bike trips, and this is spot on: cycling is just the perfect pace at which to explore a region and see the world around us. You cover a lot more ground than you can on foot, but at a speed that lets you see everything along the way, things you miss from a car or bus or train window, and you can stop whenever you want, as often as you want.
What’s New In Bike Travel
The top active travel tour specialists are not just adding new trips and new places to ride, the latest trend has been adding entirely new ways to do cycling vacations. This started several years back when cycling companies discovered how well European river cruise ships worked as floating hotels, kicking off a whole new and very popular segment of active cycling cruises. Fans love the option to simply unpack and pack once on a weeklong trip, while using the ship to cover more ground and still having the same experience off the boat, full days cycling and tours. That concept has continued to morph with smaller ships, sailboats, oceangoing ships, and more creative itineraries, but there are several other new ways to enjoy a two wheeled vacation. Here are five that struck me as standouts.
Gravel Riding
It’s become widely known as “gravel grinding” because there’s more friction, more weight and thus a little more work involved in moving along dirt roads on a gravel bike than pavement on a road bike. But that nickname has a negative connotation that is clearly erroneous, given the enormous overnight popularity of this cycling niche. In fact, for the past few years gravel riding has been the fastest growing segment of cycling, and last month there was an endurance gravel event in my neck of the woods, rural Vermont, that quickly sold out with a thousand cyclists tackling the back roads of the Green Mountain State.
Gravel riding is closer to road cycling than mountain biking, with drop handlebar road-style bikes beefed up with fatter tires, lower gearing and sometimes shocks. They are basically road bikes redesigned for unpaved roads, while mountain bikes are for off-road trails and technical single track. You don’t need the handling skills of mountain biking, and you don’t have the higher rate of falls that goes with it. In fact, in many ways gravel is the mellowest kind of cycling, at a slower pace and with less cars, the big appeal to many road cyclists. There are very few busy dirt roads. You also get to venture a little further into nature and off the beaten track, and in places like Vermont, where more than half the state’s road miles remain unpaved, it really opens up the choices.
But for the most part, the biggest luxe cycling tour operators have ignored gravel riding despite its growth. There have been a handful of exceptions, and suddenly I am seeing more and more companies offering gravel options. Popular hotspots include New England, the American West, Iceland, and just as Tuscany is sort of the Bucket List for road cyclists, Italy’s ”White Roads,” also in Tuscany but covered in crushed white stone rather than asphalt, are the new Holy Grail of gravel. One company that I have traveled with and can highly recommend offers a couple of annual White Roads of Tuscany gravel trips is Tourissimo. The Turin-based Italy specialist that knows the country inside and out but caters to the U.S. market.
The Cycling House is a Montana-based tour operator that has been doing cycling trips for two decades and has a good reputation, but I don’t have first-hand experience. They have jumped with both feet into gravel, and currently offer 5–7-day trips in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Montana, the Spanish Pyrenees, Spain’s legendary cycling Mecca of Girona, and yes, the White Roads of Tuscany. Wilderness England is a UK-based active travel company specializing in the British Isles that just announced new gravel itineraries for 2025 in England’s Lakes Region that include part of the Gralloch, a gravel world series race route.
Mountain Biking
Major tour operators have stayed even further away from serious mountain biking than gravel, in part because the logistics of guiding trips are harder, as support vans cannot run on mountain trails, bikes break more, and accidents can be more common. There are plenty of very avid mountain bikers, but until recently for the most part they have had to go to key mountain biking destinations and seek out local small operators, especially in spots such as Italy’s Dolomites and New Zealand.
Of the top luxury tour operators I have traveled with and know are excellent, such as Backroads and Butterfield & Robinson, only DuVine—a winner of Travel + Leisure Magazine’s World’s Best Awards again for 2024—has made the leap. They just added their first ever scheduled group mountain bike trip, an epic 6-day itinerary in South Africa. DuVine has always had a culinary and wine centric focus, hence its name, and this ride is no exception, with a deep dive into South African wines and vineyard visits. It starts in Cape Town, a wonderful tourism city, rides through the nearby wine country, and hits some of the nation’s most revered singletrack. They didn’t skimp on gear, using a fleet of high-end Stumpjumper Expert dual-suspension bikes from Specialized.
I’ve been to South Africa several times and love it, so I get the many appeals, but DuVine founder Andy Levine had never been until his team put together this itinerary. He went to check it out and told me simply, “South Africa hits home runs in so many levels. This trip is world class, over the top. For what we do—bike, eat, drink sleep, it’s a 10+++.”
On a larger and less luxurious scale, Escape Adventures, an established tour operator based in Las Vegas, is another company I have first-hand experience with (via road bike) that offers guided mountain bike trips—a lot of them. The variety includes trips specifically for more skilled enthusiasts and others suitable for physically fit first timers. Each trip they offer is clearly rated for technical ability and fitness level, and on many, e-mountain bikes (with electric assist motors) are offered as a less demanding alternative. They have several options in the red-hot mountain biking destination of Bentonville, Arkansas, as well as the famed White Rim Trail in Moab, Utah, several other rugged Utah tours around the Moab and St. George regions, plus Arizona, New Mexico, Durango, CO, Lake Tahoe, Idaho and more.
RV Based Cycling
If river cruise ships work so well as a moving hotel for cyclists in Europe, why not use recreation vehicles (RVs) or motor homes to access the best of the Western U.S. wilderness for mountain bikers? That’s the logic behind these first of a kind trips from Escape Adventures (see above) in partnership with Blacksford Luxury RV Rentals, a company that rents a variety of different sized high-end recreational vehicles from Winnebago and Thor in Las Vegas, Phoenix and Bozeman, all hubs for major National Park regions.
By utilizing these rentals, Escape Adventures claims to be the first and the only active travel tour operator to offer an elevated cycling experience bringing the comforts of home into some of the most beautiful natural settings. The vehicles will be used for both road cycling and mountain bike trips, and the first itineraries are six-day multi-sport trips around Moab, UT including Canyonlands and Arches National Parks. The trips include hiking, rock-climbing and rafting as well as your choice of road or mountain biking, and tours start at $4,274 per person including the RV rental.
All E-Bikes
In recent years most major active travel tour operators have added the choice of riding an e-bike as an option on most itineraries. E-bikes have electric motors that assist in pedaling and allow the rider to do more with less physical effort. This has done a lot to broaden the appeal of biking trips by allowing more people to do them. It also facilitates multi-generational travel by suddenly allowing grandparents to keep up with younger generations and empowers couples where one is a more avid rider. I’m all for getting more people on active trips, but I have to admit I was surprised the first time a much less experienced cyclist passed me on a long mountain climb thanks to an e-bike. I’m happy riding my own ride and looking at it from a live and let live perspective, but it turns out not everyone feels the same way—on both sides of the issue.
Some less accomplished riders who want e-bikes feel embarrassed by the motorized assistance, and some just do not want to be on trips with a bunch of avid cyclists, some of whom can tend to get competitive on group rides. So, the biggest tour operator in luxury active travel, Backroads, introduced a more laid-back category of trips called Dolce Tempo, which it calls “Easygoing Active Tours,” with options for cycling, walking and multi-sport. Within this category they have several all e-bike cycling tours, where everyone on the trip is on one, eliminating any awkwardness. These trips are offered in the same great destinations as classic trips, including Tuscany, France’s Loire Valley and Provence, Nova Scotia and more.
Or… No E-Bikes
They say everything old is new again, and some travelers yearn to return to the days when there were no e-bikes. It turns out just as some e-bikers don’t want to ride with more “enthusiastic” cyclists, some traditional bikers feel the same way about sharing the trip with motorized assistance. Apparently, some Backroads customers let their feelings be known via the post trip customer surveys the company conducts. In response, founder, president and CEO Tom Hale announced a new series of “Unplugged” trips, using just mechanical bikes, and wrote, “E-bikes introduced a new kind of magic, and many new guests, to the world of Backroads and we continue to be grateful for that. At the same time, like you, we’ve become nostalgic for that old Backroads spirit and the camaraderie that comes from experiencing a ride with all its ups and downs, together, under our own power.”
Backroads has a huge catalog of active travel and does nothing in a small way, so more than 80 new Unplugged trips around the world were just announced for next year, with the first departure in California Wine Country in May, 2025.
DuVine doesn’t make a separate category for it, but only offers e-bikes on its category 2 and 3 rides. The highest Category 4, or “Challenge,” is described as “Epic Feats for Serious Cyclists.” Those wishing to avoid e-bikes can choose from a coast-to-coast traverse of Italy, or extra tough climbs through Switzerland, the Dolomites, the Pyrenees and the French Alps. For example, the latter has an average daily ride of 55 miles with 8,734 feet of climbing. Enjoy!
