Companies peddling lower-cost bike tours

IF you like the idea of bicycle touring but hate the cost, there’s a budget way to ride the world’s highways and byways that you might enjoy: the self-guided tour. It has become so popular in locales from Vermont to France that tour companies are reorganizing their schedules to add more self-guided vacations.

If you’ve ever tried to book a standard, escorted bicycle tour, you know it’s normally an expensive proposition for the passenger and the company operating the trip. Such tours are often accompanied by at least three paid staff members -- two to ride alongside the group, the other to drive a “sag wagon,” a vehicle that carries luggage from place to place and provides seats for riders too tired to cycle.

Add the salaries and room-and-board of those three employees to the cost of hotel arrangements, meals and bicycles for a group of 10 to 20 persons, tack on the expense of the sag wagon, and the per-diem cost of the tour goes way up.

Bicycle tour companies such as Butterfield & Robinson or Backroads have been known to charge as much as $600 a day, per person, for tours in the United States and Europe.

The solution? Eliminate the paid employees and the sag wagon.

Instead of carrying luggage from place to place in a vehicle accompanying the group, self-guided tour companies arrange for the innkeepers housing the group to ship the luggage by ordinary commercial means to the next stop. Instead of hiring tour escorts to guide the bicyclists from place to place, they are equipped with a well-marked map to navigate their own way.

The result: affordable tour prices averaging $200 per person, per day, including shipment of luggage, accommodations, meals, bicycle, a telephone number for English-speaking assistance and carefully mapped-out itineraries.

One of the oldest self-guided bicycle tour companies is Randonnee Tours of Winnipeg, Canada, (800) 465-6488, www.randonneetours.com. Owner Ruth Marr spends time in Europe each year planning itineraries for a largely American clientele. “There is no guide, no sag wagon and no group to hurry you along or slow you down,” she said recently. “You travel independently, but you are not alone. There is English-speaking assistance just a telephone call away.”

Marr’s destinations are predominantly French (Burgundy, the Dordogne, Loire Valley, Provence, Normandy), but she also operates tours in Italy, Ireland, Switzerland and Netherlands. Tours are five to 12 nights and often are around $200 a night, depending on accommodations.

A bicycling program to Canada is almost as extensive but surprisingly costs more than in Europe. This spring Randonnee, for the first time, will operate self-guided cycling tours of California wine country, Utah and the Big Island of Hawaii. “Our routes will take you to the best scenery,” Marr said, “and we avoid difficult hills.”

Another source for self-guided bicycle tours is Discover France, (800) 960-2221, www.discoverfrance.com, which operates four-, five- and seven-night packages.

Thus, on a four-night self- guided tour of coastal Normandy and the D-day beaches from May through September, you start in Bayeux (seeing the renowned tapestry), then follow a mapped itinerary to Omaha Beach and other D-day sights and the U.S. military cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, completing the trip in Caen, the capital of Normandy. The price: $795 per person, including four nights’ accommodations, breakfast and dinner daily, baggage transfer, cycling itineraries, maps and local English-speaking support.

A five-night land tour of Provence is a bargain at $959 per person, as is a seven-night cycling trip through the Burgundy wine country, for $1,659 per person.