When planning a biking vacation for yourself, family or friends, one of the first questions that you will have to ask yourself involve the where to go and the guided versus self-guided question. Many of the more famous areas and spots for bicycling will offer guided bicycling trips and tours. Some travel agencies even specialize in long distance guided bicycling tours. When you are planning your vacation, you need to figure out which one is the best option for you.
After finding the location you want to make your bicycling trip to, you need to decide on guide or no guide.
A guide can be a great addition for your trip. In general, the guide will be very well versed with the area you are bicycling in and have lots of information for you that you might have never found out about without a guide. A guide safes you the trouble you might have by reading signs along the biking path, special bicycling maps and keeping on your path without getting lost when traveling. Bicycling maps are available for almost every route and paths that there is on the planet, but just as with a regular map, a certain skill is needed to read the maps as well as knowledge of signage used in bicycling areas. With a guide you will most likely never get lost or get of the proper path.
When booking a guided tour, the hassle of finding over night stays is usually falling away. Guided tours are preplanned and all the hotels, motels, inns and hostels are already booked for you and your group. Besides all the added benefits, the guide probably will show you important historic and others important sites for the area and should be able to tell you about their history and other background information. Also good to know is that when you do d3ecide to have a guided tour, the worries about your baggage are not worries any longer. Guided tours often offer an accompanying vehicle that will transport all your baggage from one place to the next and is also available to help in case of emergency such as a blown tire, a fall or sudden exhaustion of one of the group members.
So after you heard of all these benefits, you might be asking why anybody would ever choose to do a self-guided tour.
Well, there are just as many reasons for self-guided tours as there are for guided tours. The first major reason might be money. Money rules the world and guided tours are more expensive than a self-guided tour. The money that gets added for guided tours pays the salary of the guide, fees for the company that plans and offers the tours as well as other added fees. Choosing a self-guided tour saves you the fees for the company that planned the tour, but therefore you will have to reserve all the hotels and pick the places you want to stay overnight on your tour. There is also no salary for the guide that has to be paid. You will need just yourself, a map and maybe a travel guidebook. If you never had problems finding a place using a map, you will be able to guide your own tour.
Some people prefer not to have a guide and enjoy the ride without people they do not know. Sometimes you just wan to be with friend or family.
Another very good reason why you might want to plan your own self-guided bicycling vacation is the places and sights that you want to see on your tour can be chosen by you. Guided tours are preplanned and some sights might not be included in the one that you chose. Self-guided can bring you to a place you chose to see and it also means you do not have to adhere to a planned schedule. You make your own schedule and pace as you cycle along.
Tags: Bicycles, cycle tours, cycles, Cycling, Mountain Bike