Bicycle Italy with BikeRentalsPlus!

Italy is one of the friendliest bicycle destinations in Europe.  Plus, it's full of Italians and has some of the best food for cyclists.  Handmade pasta anyone?   BikeRentalsPlus! has its headquarters in the heart of Emilia-Romagna, not far from Bologna.  The founders have been bicycling this area since 1972.

So, whether you need a self-guided tour from Venice to Florence or just a tour on the flats of Emilia-Romagna, give them a call today.  They do self-supported tours, where you carry panniers, or they can do a partially supported tour, arranging for hotels and luggage shuttles daily.

Take a look at the 7-night tour of Emilia-Romagna at this link.

How to Pack for your Self-Supported Bicycle Tour

A picture is worth a thousand words. So have a look at some of the photos here of the annual Winter Ralleye Bike Tour out of Fort Collins, Colorado into the Rocky Mountains. Normally (what's normal any more?) the weather is pretty cold with snow on the ground. But this year the 30 or so thirty-somethings had fifty plus degree weather for the winter overnight bike tour to Ansel Watrous campground on the scenic Cache La Poudre River twenty-five miles out of Fort Collins.

We publish this note here so those of you who are dreaming of a self-supported, loaded bicycle tour can see several examples of B.O.B. trailers, panniers, and combinations thereof. Have fun looking at these photographs!

Loaded or Self-Supported Bicycle Tour

Among the tours you can take, a self-supported or loaded tour is certainly the most traditional. Among the decisions you'll have to make is how to carry your gear. That, of course, is impacted also by whether you camp and cook for yourself or if you sleep in local accommodations and eat in restaurants. This couple is cycling the panhandle in northern Corsica, France. They are camping most nights but are traveling very lightly with small, low-rider front panniers, one handlebar bag, rear panniers, and a BOB trailer pulled by their tandem.

Getting your tandem and your BOB and panniers to Corsica from outside of Europe is not an easy task. At Bike Rentals Plus we rent tandems, panniers and BOBs to make the logistics easier.

Our Single Most Important Piece of Advice: Begin Planning NOW!

If you are experienced at bicycle touring you know that planning ahead, especially for an overseas trip, is critical.

I'll never forget in 2001 when we were in Italy for the summer and were headed to Ireland to develop a new escorted bike tour. We flew into Shannon Airport and had been in touch with a bike shop in Ennis to rent bikes. I had been talking with this fellow for two weeks and was satisfied that he could provide good quality bikes for our ride.

We arrived in Ennis with panniers, as usual, and a duffel bag with shoes, helmets, locks, tools, and so on. When we got on our bikes the duffel would be strapped astride the panniers to collect the daily flotsam and jetsam you tend to collect: jackets, lunch, maps, and on.

We shuttled to our hotel, spent the night and headed off to the bike shop. "Oh that's right," says he. "You were coming today, now weren't you?" The bikes weren't ready. "Come back after lunch," says he. After lunch, the bikes weren't ready. We finally got them about 5 p.m. and lost an entire day of riding.

The moral, of course, is: make sure you can depend on your rental suppplier OR make sure to bring your own bikes. But if you bring your own bikes you need to:

1) Know where you are arriving and how you'll get to your inbound base (by train? by car? van? or will you pedal?)
2) If you pedal, where will you leave your cases or bike boxes?
3) And if you are pedaling, how's the route from the airport? Is it doable?

In short, think ALL of this through before you get on the airplane.

One last story: We had an acquaintance here in Colorado who had found three weeks to fly to Rome and do some cycling in October one year. We talked at length about his plans. He would: fly to Rome with his own bike, begin pedaling right at Leonardo da Vinci Airport, head north, and then maybe take the train back to fly home.

His bike didn't arrive on his flight. And it didn't arrive the next day. He waited four days for his bike to arrive and he was so paranoid that it might come in and he wouldn't connect with it that he spent a bundle of money staying in a hotel near the airport shuttling back and forth twice a day to see if it arrived.

He was so demoralized with having spent so much money in the hotel and for having missed out on four days of cycling that he changed his ticket and came home on day 5!