Anybody can ride thirty kilometres. The trick is picking the right thirty.
Which Mekong day actually gets you off the bus. Whether the Ubud descent needs any skill at all. What a Tuscan vineyard loop costs once there is a motor under you. Reviews of the bike tours you can book, wherever the riding is the reason to go.
Four rides worth building a whole week around.
A limestone valley, a volcano descent, a vineyard loop and an old railway line. What each costs, and what the riders who took it say.
01The Vietnam classicNinh Binh Day Trip: Hoa Lu-Trang An/Tam Coc-Mua Cave-Cycling-BoatLimestone towers, a sampan through the caves and flat lanes to link the two. Almost nobody comes home talking about anything else.
02Bali without the sweatElectric Cycling Tour of Ubud with Free Hotel Transfer and LunchA motor on the hills means the afternoon is spent looking at rice terraces rather than at your own knees.
03Tuscany, nobody guidingPrivate Self-Guided E-Bike Ride in Tuscany with Vineyard VisitA charged bike, a route on the phone and a vineyard at the end of it. The pace is entirely yours.
04The rail-trail dayOtago Central Rail Trail One Day Wonder Cycle tourAn old goods line graded for steam engines, which is why the gradient never bites once, all afternoon.
Vietnam is flat, green and built for a bicycle.
Rice paddies at sea level, a river you can put the bike on a boat to cross, and cities that empty into countryside inside forty minutes. Three kinds of Vietnamese riding day, what each costs to join, and where it starts.
What a day on a bike actually costs.
Sorted by what it costs, from a two-hour city loop to a week with a van carrying the bags. A morning on two wheels is one of the cheapest good days in travel, and the ceiling is lower than most people expect.
City loops, half-day countryside runs and most of Southeast Asia, bike and helmet included.
The full-day standards: volcano descents, vineyard rides with lunch, guided e-bike days.
Private guides, rail-trail logistics and the multi-day trips that carry your bag for you.
An e-bike turns a hard climb into a long lunch.
Assistance flattens the one thing that stops people booking: the hill in the middle. It also means a mixed group finishes together, which is why the electric versions of the classic routes now outsell the muscle-powered ones.
Volcano descents, singletrack and the road nobody should ride.
Some of this catalogue is not gentle. A truck carries you up Batur or the Bolivian altiplano and gravity does the rest, and there is a whole subculture booking the descent from Death Road on purpose. Brakes, gloves, and a guide who has counted everybody at the bottom before.
Six countries where the cycling is the reason to go.
Paddy lanes in the north of Vietnam, volcano roads through Bali, Tuscan gravel between vineyards, the Japanese island route, Andalusian back roads and a whole American continent of rail trails. Six places to start, and the best day out in each.
The bike tours more travellers take than any others.
Every ride in the catalogue →Five continents, one shortlist. These are the rides that fill up first, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Ninh Binh Day Trip: Hoa Lu-Trang An/Tam Coc-Mua Cave-Cycling-Boat
Spend 11 to 12 hours exploring Ninh Binh from Hanoi by shuttle bus, bicycle, bamboo boat, and on foot. Visit Hoa Lu temples, ride through the countryside, eat a Vietnamese buffet, pass through Trang An grottoes, and climb about 500 steps at Mua Cave. Guides such as Max, Liam, and James have earned strong praise.
From · $43
Read our review →
2
Cai Be Mekong Delta Tour: Cooking Class, Cycling & Craft Villages
from $39
3
The Grand Bicycle Tour by Cycle City Tours
from $96
4
Countryside Bike Tour from Amsterdam: Cheese, Clogs & a Windmill
from $59
5
Electric Cycling Tour of Ubud with Free Hotel Transfer and Lunch
from $41
6
Epic Electric Bike Tour by Cycle City Tours
from $118
7
Tokyo Great Cycling Tour
from $99
8
Rottnest Island Ferry and Bike Day Tour
from $87
Guided, self-guided or electric. Decide that first.
Every ride, all three formats →
The three formats ride the same roads and sell completely different days. A guide stops you missing the village bakery; a route on your phone lets you sit in it for an hour. The motor decides who in your group is still smiling at the top.
Somebody at the front who knows the turns
Small groups, a mechanic on the road and the local knowledge that turns a loop into a story. The default for a first ride in a country whose traffic you do not read yet.
A route on the phone, nobody waiting
You get the bike, the GPX and the booked bed at the far end. Best where the route is obvious and signposted, which is exactly what a rail trail or a canal path is.
The hill stops being the question
A motor levels a group of mixed fitness and puts twice the distance inside the same afternoon. Worth it anywhere the map has contour lines close together.
In Bali the good ride starts at the top of a volcano.
A van takes you and the bike up to the Batur rim before breakfast, and the next three hours are downhill through rice terraces, temple gates and villages that wave at you. Ubud is the base; the descents run daily and finish in time for lunch.
- 1Electric Cycling Tour of Ubud with Free Hotel Transfer and Lunchfrom $41
- 2Downhill Cycling with Volcano, Rice Terraces and Mealfrom $36
- 3Half-Day Ubud Electric Cycling Tour to Tirta Empul Water Templefrom $49
Three rides that make no sense in a coach.
Plenty of places are better seen slowly. These three are only reachable at cycling speed, on a surface no minibus is going down.
Descents somebody drives you to the top of
The purest version is the old Yungas road in Bolivia: sixty-four kilometres of cliff ledge dropping from the altiplano at 4,650 metres into cloud forest twenty degrees warmer, with almost no pedalling in it. Batur in Bali and the Hawaiian canyon rims work the same way. A van up, full-suspension bikes down, and a guide who counts everybody at the bottom.
- 1Waimea Canyon Downhill Bike Ride★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 650 reviews
- 2Downhill Cycling with Volcano, Rice Terraces and Meal★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 536 reviews
- 3Mountain Bike Down the World’s Most Dangerous Road★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 386 reviews
Ride a bank, cross the water
The delta is a grid of channels rather than roads, so the day alternates: an hour on farm track between fruit orchards, then everything loaded onto a wooden boat for the crossing, then another bank. Coconut candy workshops and floating markets sit on the route because that is genuinely where they are.
- 1Ninh Binh Day Trip: Hoa Lu-Trang An/Tam Coc-Mua Cave-Cycling-Boat★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,886 reviews
- 2Rural Cycling Tour to Village with Basket Boat Ride★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 174 reviews
- 3Funny day cycling, Buffalo riding and Basket boat★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 141 reviews
Railways with the rails lifted
New Zealand turned its dead branch lines into the country’s best riding. The Otago Central Rail Trail runs 152 kilometres through schist gorges and viaducts on a bed graded for steam locomotives, so it never exceeds a gradient a train could pull. Riders take four days with the bags driven ahead, or bite off the best single stretch in one.
- 1Half-Day Self-Guided Mountain Bike Journey through Whakarewarewa Redwood Forest★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 124 reviews
- 2Self-Guided Bike Ride on the Arrow Bridges Trail★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 96 reviews
- 3Great Escape Self-Guided Scenic Cycle Winery Tour from Napier★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 75 reviews
Four rides that will not wait for you.
Most of this catalogue can be arranged the night before from a guesthouse porch. These four run on ferry timetables, seasonal permits and a fleet of bikes that is simply not big enough for everyone who turns up.
- 01Rottnest Island Ferry and Bike Day TourThe bikes come off a ferry with a fixed sailing time and a hard cap on numbers. Miss the boat and there is no second one that gets you back.
- 02Mountain Bike Down the World’s Most Dangerous RoadOperators run one convoy a day and cut it entirely when the cloud closes in. Wet-season mornings are cancelled, not rescheduled.
- 03Otago Central Rail Trail One Day Wonder Cycle tourThe trail is a linear route, so the day depends on a shuttle and a bed booked at the far end. New Zealand summer weekends go months out.
- 04Neuschwanstein Castle by Bus Incl. Bike Ride or HohenschwangauEntry to the castle is timed and the bike leg is built around that slot. The ticket, not the bicycle, is what runs out.
Ride at seven in the morning, or the day rides you.
Tropical Asia is unridable from mid-morning to late afternoon between March and May, which is precisely why the Ubud and Chiang Mai departures leave in the dark. Southern Europe flips the same way in July. The answer everywhere is the same: start early, take the shade, and give the middle of the day to something indoors.
A city is the right size at bicycle speed.
Walking gets you one neighbourhood a morning and a taxi gets you none of them. Amsterdam, Tokyo, Singapore and Warsaw all built the lanes, and the guided loops use them to string four districts together before lunch.
Every city ride →
By country and city
By kind of riding
Hanoi to the Mekong, and the bike days that link them.
Hoi An
Ho Chi Minh City
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