International Bicycle Tours
Biking the Loire Valley
Tour Operator: International Bicycle Tours
France
12 days
Active
Quiet roads, On-road
Guided
Supported
Prices from
Guided
US$ 2590
Overview
Tour Operator International Bicycle Tours
If you like bicycling on quiet roads, if you like châteaux, if you like French food
Are you with me here? Thought so. Nothing to object to. A long-time favorite returns to the season line-up with this Loire Valley tour.
We'll stay two nights in Chinon, where the local ch√¢teau once was home to Plantagenet kings and both Rabelais (wickedly French satirist) and Joan of Arc (saintly French martyr) are immortalized in bronze.
This is châteaux country, pretty as a picture and within easy reach of Paris, so a natural choice for the ruling classes country homes. Some homes. We'll pass Château d'Ussé, a romantic mélange of styles that inspired the 17th-century writer Charles Perrault to invent the story of Sleeping Beauty. At Azay-le-Rideau, we'll visit the famous château where Henri IV's beloved mistress, Gabrielle d'Estrées, lived when she wasn't with the king.
Cape Cod - Nantucket, Massachusetts
Tour Operator: International Bicycle Tours
USA
7 days
Easy
Guided
Supported
Prices from
Guided
US$ 1675
Overview
Tour Operator International Bicycle Tours
Spring and fall are good times of year that deserve a special trip. It's probably not hot, it's probably not cold. Naturally, you want to enjoy all this on a bicycle. IBT's Cape Cod and Nantucket tour is an admirable answer to this need.The Cape Cod tour, some years ago expanded to include Nantucket, is a classic IBT offering with a long history. This is country that understands the bicycle (note the well-known Cape Cod Rail Trail) and is quietly ready to entertain visitors, having had so many of them down the years. Aside from pleasant accommodations and meals that reflect the area, as well as satisfying biker appetites, there are museums and visitor centers.
At the Salt Pond Visitor's Center the curious water supplies of a finger of land surrounded on three sides by ocean are explained. The Cape Cod Museum of Natural History introduces you to special habits of nature and marine life in this unusual area; at the Nantucket Life Saving Museum daring deeds are recorded, and at the Brooks Academy Museum you'll learn how the cranberry industry on Cape Cod functions. You've been passing salt marshes, cranberry bogs and salt ponds and will find these visits answer questions that have come persistently to mind as you pedal through this very special landscape.
Central Florida Lakes
Tour Operator: International Bicycle Tours
USA
6 days
Easy
Some hills
Guided
Supported
Prices from
Guided
US$ 1650
Overview
Tour Operator International Bicycle Tours
Our Florida tour is based in Howey-in-the-Hills in the hills? What hills? In Florida?
And we go more than once to the town called Mt. Dora. A mountain? Actually, Mt. Dora is located on what other parts of the United States might call a plain, somewhat higher than surrounding areas, and the hills of Howey aren’t percipient. This central area of the Sunshine State is hospitable to bikers in many engaging ways.
Gentle terrain makes for easy pedaling, frequently alongside the lakes that mark the landscape and horse farms that are another feature of the area. The weather is likely to be inviting. And while Mt. Dora doesn’t actually have a mountain, it does have a flea market to write home about. The flea market is called Renninger’s and is set out among oak trees hung with Spanish moss. It includes produce stalls and clothing shops along with other stands classified simply as “oddity vendors.” Oddities can encompass surprising things. We will visit Renninger’s on our first morning.
You might not expect an outstanding German bakery in central Florida, but there it is, in the town called Yalaha. The Yalaha German Bakery makes Old World tortes and pastries along with traditional German breads and prides itself on using organic natural ingredients for all its products. The bakery includes a deli/restaurant, featuring traditional recipes. We will have lunch there the first day we’re out on the bicycles.
Coast and Villages of Connemara
Tour Operator: International Bicycle Tours
Ireland
8 days
Active
Guided
Supported
Prices from
Guided
US$ 2075
Overview
Tour Operator International Bicycle Tours
We've tweaked our Irish tour just a bit insuring that the special charms of Connemara are fully enjoyed.
This lesser-known western coast area (the Irishman's Ireland) has place names that sound like poetry - Galway, Carna Bay, Oughterard. In fact, Oughterard is where the bus from Shannon will take you, to an inviting hotel for your first night in a storied land.
The next day's biking is an immediate plunge into history: a visit to Aughnanure Castle, dating from around 1500, a time when a family who could afford it built a castle-like tower to live in because anything else might be dangerous. The O'Flahertys, the family who built Aughnanure, have come down in history as "ferocious, mountainous and wild people," but like others of the local nobility wanted a secure place to call home. A wholly different atmosphere will be found at Brigit's Celtic-Inspired Gardens, where we stop for lunch and to enjoy the flowers. The afternoon takes us ever closer to the sea, ending at the seaside itself and the town of Furbo. Our hotel has a swimming pool; the ocean has a beach.
Seine & Loing Rivers
Tour Operator: International Bicycle Tours
France
12 days
Active
Quiet roads, On-road
Guided
Supported
Prices from
Guided
US$ 2300
Overview
Tour Operator International Bicycle Tours
Although you come to bicycle the Île-de-France and neighbor regions, enabling the happy combination of biking and barging. Our France Seine & Loing Bike and Barge trip gives you idyllic days of biking crowned by a full day in the City of Light.Home for the trip will be your barge, a neat little craft designed for the smaller locks and canals of French waterways. Cabins are below, on the lower deck, each has twin beds (no bunk beds) with private bath, while the upper deck houses the salon, a roomy lounge, cozy bar and the sun deck. These practical and comfortable vessels are well designed for their tasks. You will relish coming back to the same cabin each night, unpacking once rather than daily.
Arriving at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, you'll be met and taken by bus to Montargis, where your barge will be moored. Is it enough to say that pralines were invented in Montargis? In the following days our bicycling routes will takes us through forested areas, to medieval towns like Château-Landon and through the lovely countryside with stops at places like Château de Fontainebleau and a museum of antique bicycles.