France Luxury Bike Tours

“We loved our custom bike trip we did with friends in the Loire River valley in France! Most of trip was on dedicated bike trails and one-lane roads shared with the occasional car. The 4 star hotels exceeded our expectations. The route was well organized and we found we could easily stay on the selected paths. Overall, it was a great experience and we want to do something like it again!” Less

“We knew the standard of the trip was going to be high considering what we paid for it but most hotels exceeded our expectations as they were really the best of the best. The exception was only Maison Philippe Le Bon in Dijon, which was very quaint but was definitely a step down from the other hotels when it came to the room and breakfast standard. They also seemed totally unaware of the deal with activetours until we showed then the voucher (didn't happen anywhere else).
The electrical bikes worked great but I would recommend to bring a cushioned seat cover if you're not used to biking regularly. If you are planning to bring a small bag to put on the rack behind the saddle, I would consider bringing en elastic strap or two to secure it on the bike as the straps on the bike are very tight and probably not elastic enough to hold anything bigger than a purse or an extra jacket.
The navigational app was quite a hassle to get used to (we had not used it before) and we could not get the resume function after we had breaks but had to restart the whole route for the day every time and then "reconnect" to the route. Also, we would have appreciated a heads up that the routes provided were not exact. For example:
1. The stops at wineries on the way were not exactly ON the route but in some places required quite the map reading skills to access. Even google maps struggled to find the right way.
2. They did not always show the route to our hotel but to another hotel in the city. For example in Dijon we were about 1km off. We checked the routes before leaving but if we would have gotten a heads up to check our destination as we approached our destination, that would have made our lives a lot easier.
3. Sometimes the routes were very illogical and for example when we biked along the Canal de Bourgogne it once wanted us to go to the other side of the canal for a few kilometres (a road with cars) instead of just continuing straight ahead on the walking/biking path, which we ended up doing. Getting out of Dijon we also struggled a lot as we had to go through, to bring up the most extreme examples, an alleyway that barely were wide enough to fit the handlebars of the bikes and an overgrown dirt path that was close to a stone wall on one side and had branches on the other side. Close to Chagny, a bridge we were supposed to cross didn't exixt anymore and was possibly under re-construction. This makes me question when these routes were last tested by the company.
All in all though, we highly enjoyed our adventures but I'd encourage the company to send someone out to test the routes before ech season and also to be more clear when you present the routes that they don't exatly lead to the door step of either the wineries or your next hotel. Especially the route to Domain Duchemin needs a thorough description (don't trust google maps!).
As for the difficulty level, some days were easier than expected and some harder. The route from Domaine de Rymska to Sainte Sabine is very long and we had a hard headwind for the last 20-30 km which made us almost empty our bike batteries that day. We are in average/good shape but appreciated A LOT that we had opted for e-bikes instead of traditional bikes.” Less