Europe on Two Wheels

Bike tours and cycling tour travel companies

Cycling is the best way to see Europe at your own pace. You can rent at train stations or private agencies in just about any city or town and in some countries can pick up a bike in one train station and drop it off at another.

In parts of Germany, Scandinavia, and especially the pancake-flat Netherlands, biking is a way of life, and the opportunities and resources for pedalers are extensive, from specialized bikes paths even on downtown city streets to free bikes for anyone who wants them.

Organizations like Prague Vienna Greenways (www.pragueviennagreenways.org)—some 250 miles of bike trails linking Prague and Vienna—have sprung up to help lay out and maintain trails and advise riders.

Avid cyclists who plan to tour a whole region by bike, however, will probably want to bring their own bicycle. Some airlines charge extra to bring a bike; many count it as one of your pieces of checked luggage. Either way, your bicycle must be properly boxed—remove the pedals and front wheel; buy the box at a bike shop or the airport for around $10.

You can take a bike onto just about any train in Europe, but on many you have to pay a fee ranging from nominal to ridiculously high (up to 75% the cost of your own ticket).

Neophytes might want to try a short trip at home first to learn the basics and figure out the essential gear. Perhaps the best way to do it the first time is to hook up with a cycling tour:

Bike Tour companies and resources

You can find a long list of bike tour companies around the world at www.bikeleague.org, but they merely list them in alphabetical order, so you'll have to click and click to figure out which ones run tours to the desitnation in which you're interested. far eaiser is to go directly to the bike tours section of InfoHub (www.infohub.com) for hundreds of cycle tours arranged by country and state.

A few favorites I'll single out are Italy specialist Ciclismo Classico (www.ciclismoclassico.com)—which also runs tours in France, Spain, Austria, and New England—and Bike Tours Direct (www.biketoursdirect.com), a sort of middleman that can hook you up with smaller, local bike tour outfits across Europe, which are often much cheaper than the big international agencies and tour companies.