Four types of bicycle touring
From rolling out your back door with just a water bottle, to riding around the world with your house on your bike, there is a huge range of different ways to see the world on a bicycle. But no matter how you do it, bike touring is one of the best ways to explore new places and have a great time. In this article we’ll discuss four different styles of bicycle touring and talk about the pros and cons of each.
Day touring
This is the simplest form of touring on a bike. Each ride starts and ends at a central location, which can be your home, a camp site, or a hotel in some far-off city or country. Since you are sleeping in the same place every night, you don’t need to carry much with you during the day—just enough clothing to handle the weather that day, a small kit of tools to handle minor repairs if necessary, and either food and drink or enough money to buy them if you get hungry.
Pros: this is the most common kind of touring because it is the simplest. Any bike will work (depending on how far you want to ride) and you don’t need much more than the bike, a helmet, some comfortable clothes, and some idea of where you are going, to have an enjoyable day tour. Even the most elaborate cross-country tour often includes a day or two of relaxed rides that starts and ends at the same location, as a change of pace.
Cons: the amount of countryside you get to see is obviously limited by having to return to the same location at the end of every day. Unless your base is in the center of a large set of bike-friendly routes, you are likely to start repeating yourself after a few days. If your main goal on the tour is to see a lot of scenery while on the bike, this is not the best way to do it.
Fully supported
This is touring with a support vehicle to carry your luggage. Every morning you pack up your extra clothing and sleeping gear and load it on the luggage van. During the day you ride to your next destination on an unencumbered bike, carrying just the clothing, food and water you would carry on a day tour. At the end of the day you’ll find the luggage van waiting for you, and if the tour is luxurious enough perhaps you luggage will even be waiting for you in your room!
Pros: this is the most comfortable way to cover a lot of ground on a bicycle tour, since someone else is hauling most of your gear. If you are travelling with a touring company, they will have worked out the route for you and made most of the decisions about where to stay, where to eat, maybe even what sites to see along the way.
Cons: this can be an expensive way to tour, since you are paying someone else to do a lot of work. The tour organizer has picked the route and distances for each day’s ride, so you have to stick to that plan. You are normally limited to popular destinations and seasons for your tour, since the organizer needs to combine multiple riders into one group to make the tour profitable. If you want to ride in an unusual location, or off-season, or away from groups, you might be out of luck.
Credit-card
This refers to multi-day tours where you travel alone or in an independent group, eating at restaurants and sleeping in hotels along your route. There are two major differences from fully supported touring: the first is that you are carrying your spare clothing and equipment with you on the bike; the second is that you are more free to change your route and distance ridden each day (although your freedom might be limited by advance hotel reservations).
Pros: by always staying in hotels and eating at restaurants, you need much less gear with you than if you were camping and cooking. You don’t need to buy tents and cooking gear, and you don’t have to haul that gear with you on the bike. Compared to fully supported tours, you have much more freedom to pick where to tour and when. You aren’t limited to whatever organized tours are offered. You only need to pick locations that have places to eat and sleep close enough together.
Cons: this can be the most expensive way to tour, since you aren’t getting the benefit of bulk discounts that professional organized touring companies might have arranged for their groups. Planning and making arrangements (such as hotel reservations) can be time consuming for this type of tour, although some people don’t make advanced arrangements and just plan to be flexible, and some other people enjoy the research, planning and anticipation that leads up to a tour almost as much as the tour itself.
Self-sufficient (Unsupported)
This is full-bore, hard core bicycle touring, where you ride by day and camp by night, carrying all your gear with you. Unsupported touring had its biggest wave of popularity in the United States in the 1970s, when the “Bikecentennial” trail was marked and thousands of people followed it across the continent. While the mass numbers of camping tourists have dwindled somewhat since that era, unsupported touring is still very popular here in the United States, in Europe, and around the world.
Pros: this is the most economical way to cover large stretches of territory, once you have made the original equipment purchases. Unsupported touring gives you the most freedom to alter your course and schedule, since you are less dependent on services along the way. Unsupported touring is the only way to go if you want to tour off road or in unpopulated areas that don’t have frequent spots to buy food and schelter.
Cons: unsupported touring puts the most strain on your bike and body. Your bike needs to work well when loaded with 30 to 50 pounds of gear or more, and you need to be in good enough shape to pedal that load. The decisions about what equipment to use can be daunting (although again some people really enjoy the process of learning about this gear and aquiring it).
Recap
No matter what type of bike you have and what part of the world you want to visit, there is some form of bike touring that will show you that world in a fun, enjoyable way. Our discussion divided bike touring into four categories, but of course the real world doesn’t work exactly that way. Most tours will combine some elements of most or all those styles of touring. Many organized, fully-supported tours will have a session or two of “day-touring” included in the schedule. Many credit card tourists carry minimalist shelter with them in case bad weather or a full hotel happens, and most camping bike tourists eat the occasional restaurant meal and enjoy the occasional hotel bed. The best answer is for you to pick whatever combination of touring styles fits your desires, your equipment, and your destination, and just ride!