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Bike Touring By Barge In Holland
By spokesman | April 6, 2008
At the Adventures in Travel Expo last week, there were several bike tour companies including Bike and Barge Holland. They offer a unique type of tour. A barge serves as your hotel and restaurant for the tour. You spend each night on the barge for the entire tour. The barge has cabins with private bathrooms. There is a cook on board who makes breakfast and dinner. In the morning, you get up, eat breakfast, pack a lunch and then hop on your bike. There are 2 different length routes each day. The shorter route is about 30 miles and the longer route is about 40-50 miles. Each group is accompanied by a guide. Both groups travel at a leisurely pace and do lots of sight seeing along the way. When you arrive at the destination, the barge is already there. You eat dinner on the barge and then can go into town to explore. I had done a similar trip with one of their competitors, Van Gogh Tours, about ten year ago.
When I asked the Bike and Barge Holland representatives about the difference between them and Van Gogh – they pointed out several differences. First, they claim that their barge is nicer. None of the cabins on the Bike and Barge Holland tour have bunk beds. I believe the Van Gogh has a larger fleet of barges and not all of them are identical. The barges from both companies are not cruise ships. The accommodations are basic. Check the pictures in their catalogs and on their websites to get a better idea of the accommodations. Second, they claimed that since Van Gogh works with a European company, the mix of people on the trip is different. Bike and Barge Holland has more Americans and Van Gogh has more Europeans. That was not the case on my trip. On the trip I did with Van Gogh, the majority of people were American but there was a German couple and a Canadian couple. Meeting the German gentleman was one of the highlights of the trip. He was nearly 70 years old, but in his prime he would ride over 5000 mile per year. He was still a strong rider and was the first person I ever met from East Germany.
These tours are unique in the way that they use the barge. The many rivers in Holland make it possible to do this type of tour, although both companies also have similar tours in parts of France and Germany. The biking in Holland is easy and these tours are reasonably priced compared to other supported tours. The use of a barge instead of a hotel and dining on the boat reduces the cost. On my tour the food was good, but did not match the quality of high end restaurants that are used on other tours. The Bike and Barge Holland tours are longer than the tours with most tour companies, so when you compare prices, consider the length of the tour. These tours also have the advantage that you don’t meed to pack each day, since your room with your belongs meets you at the destination each evening.
I had done my Holland trip years ago and while I enjoyed the experience, I prefer harder biking. In addition to the two companies already discussed, there are three other companies that offer barge based tours in Holland – Vermont Bicycle Tours, Bike Tour Holland and Cycletours .
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Topics: Touring |
April 16th, 2008 at 7:23 am
Dear Mr Spokesman,
I found your nice story searching the internet.
I wonder did you join a tour with our company because you booked through van Gogh Tours.
And is there a possibilty to add our site to your comment. wwww.cycletours.com
Hope to hear from you.
Best regards,
Jeffrey van Beek
Cycletours Holland