Frequently Asked Questions
If you have any questions that aren't answered below, please contact us.
This varies slightly from tour to tour, but as a rule, all tours include a high level of accommodation and breakfast. As a rule, all rooms have en-suite facilities and are selected for their comfort and personality. We provide all evening meals with the exception of one ‘Independent Dinner’ when you are sent forth alone on your own culinary journey. Also included are two or more first-class guides, van support, all shuttles, private tours and tastings, picnic lunches, original itineraries on the road less travelled, trip literature, super snacks during the day and luggage transfers. Each itinerary also includes highlights specific to that particular tour, from wine tastings to cultural site visits. The specifics for these are included in the detailed itineraries for each respective tour. Since most things are included, an easier way to answer this question is to look at what isn’t included.
• Airfares
• Insurance
• Bike Hire on Epic Adventures
• Personal items when you are on the tour
• Wine and alcoholic beverages
The short answer: YES. Travel insurance is essential for all our tours. Here’s why:
- Travel insurance is more than health insurance: While health insurance may cover medical emergencies abroad, it doesn’t protect you from unexpected travel disruptions. Travel insurance includes coverage for trip cancellations, delays,
lost luggage, and more. - Emergency medical evacuation: Many of our tours explore remote areas where advanced medical facilities may not be readily available. Good travel insurance ensures you’re covered for medical evacuation to the nearest suitable hospital and, if necessary, provides support for a companion to travel to you or arranges your transport home.
- Protection for personal belongings: Travel insurance covers valuable items like your bike in case of loss, damage, or theft. Giving you peace of mind on the road.
- Acknowledging tour risks: Before the tour, you’ll be asked to complete a medical questionnaire and sign a risk waiver. These ensure that everyone understands the inherent risks involved in bike tours and reinforces the importance of having comprehensive travel insurance in place.
- Cancellations and unexpected costs: We strongly recommend purchasing travel insurance as soon as you book your tour (after paying your deposit). This way, you’re covered for potential costs if you need to cancel, including airfare and tour expenses.
- Our recommended providers – We’ve found these travel insurance providers are popular among our riders:
Global Rescue, Tin Leg, AXA, Travel Guard, Covermore, Allianz - Having the right coverage means you can focus on enjoying the adventure, knowing you’re protected against the unexpected.
One of the benefits of keeping the group size small is that it enables us to stay in the smaller, family-run establishments that add to the authenticity of the travel experience we hope to provide. We carefully select where we stay based on the place’s ‘personality’ and the hospitality of the hosts, and we regularly stay in castles, monasteries, and unique properties. Be it Paradores in Spain, Manoirs in France or Agriturismi in Italy, we seek to connect you with the places we travel in through the accommodations we choose. As a rule, all rooms have en-suite facilities.
By their nature, our Epic tours involve daily changes of accommodation, which can make choices sometimes limited. However, we strive for interesting, unique accommodation, and you will not be disappointed – some of the places we stay are truly epic!
We suggest that you arrive at least one day prior to the tour start, which will enable you to adjust to the time zone and minimize the risk of missing the trip start due to flight related delays.
We have a lot riders who come back and ride with us year after year and we really appreciate this. We also want you to feel valued as a Ride and Seek returning rider. This is why we have setup our ‘fideli’ loyalty program.
Our grading system is designed to act as a guide to help participants choose the tour best suited to their cycling abilities. Please be aware that a certain degree of subjectivity is inherent in attempts to classify difficulty levels and therefore we generally suggest that you underestimate rather than overestimate your capabilities. That said our van support is second to none and there is no shame in hitching a lift if you need to.
The cut off point for paying the balance on all tours is 90 days. Prior to this, in order to secure your place on a tour you simply need to fill out the booking form and pay the deposit. 90 days marks the point at which the balance needs to be paid in full though and hence tours booked within this period require full payment at the time of booking. Our full Terms and Conditions can be read here.
We are happy to advise on travel arrangements to and from the tour, as well as offer tips on where to go before and after the tour itself.
Once you have paid the deposit for your chosen tour, you will receive our Tour Essentials PDF with your payment confirmation. This document will help with your pre-tour preparations. You’ll find the travel details on each tour page of our website. We will send the balance invoice email, which includes a survey form and medical declaration that need to be completed at least 12 weeks before the tour. We will send the hotel and guest lists before the tour’s departure.
All our tours start and end at the hotels where we begin and end them. Please refer to the Travel Essentials on the tour page of our website for details.
ARRIVAL: Guides will meet you at 18:00 in the hotel lobby unless otherwise instructed. The first night includes an aperitif, a tour introduction, and a welcome dinner. The following day, you will complete registrations, bike fittings and the warm-up ride. Unless otherwise stated, you are responsible for travel to the hotel and for ensuring you arrive in time to meet the group.
DEPARTURE: The tour concludes after breakfast on the last day. Unless otherwise stated, you are responsible for your onward travel once the tour ends. The guides can help advise on the best way to get to your nearest travel hub. Hotel staff can assist with booking transfers and taxis.
We really try to immerse you in the culture of the areas we visit, and this is very much reflected in the menus that we present on tour. We seek to incorporate the regional flavours into the meals you’ll eat while also offering as much variety as possible. In some cases you’ll eat à la carte whereas in others there is a set menu or a multi-course buffet. However, the food is presented we can assure you will be blown away by the range and quality of the food on offer.
As well as putting a lot of time into selecting great menus on the tour, we are also passionate about the wines that accompany them. It is a strange coincidence that many of the iconic cycling areas of Europe are also great wine regions, it is certainly the case with our tours. As such, we are always keen to present to you a range of the finest wines each area we travel in has to offer.
Whilst on tour, all your travel needs are covered by us. This includes transfers, road support and any extra shuttles that may be required. Obviously, your bike will be your primary mode of transport whilst you are on tour, but you will be given van support each day, which will serve to keep you fed and watered, as well as providing you with a lift if you need it.
The choice is yours when it comes to deciding what your trusty steed on tour will be. We appreciate the deep affinity that a person can feel towards their own bike, and particularly on the tougher tours, it is always nice to rely on ‘old faithful’ rather than break in a new bike. That said, please have a look at our bikes, as they are of the highest quality and are geometrically fairly neutral, so if you choose to hire a bike, we don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
Bike rental insurance
If you are renting a bike through us, you are responsible for it whilst on tour, and therefore liable for any damage incurred or theft due to negligence on your part. The bikes are given to you fully serviced, and the guide team will cover any incidental mechanicals and wear and tear such as tyres and brake pads. However, for anything more substantial, the responsibility lies with the rider. To cover this risk, you can purchase comprehensive bike insurance for 150 Euros per tour. You can add this to your booking. Some guests have found that they have insurance coverage for a rental bike as part of their household insurance so this is also an alternative to cover liability for substantial damage (please advise us at office@rideandseek.com prior to the start of the tour if this is the case).
As subjective as this question is to answer, we have tried, through our difficulty gradings, to provide a degree of objectivity.
Our Epic Adventures are geared towards riding from A to B and cycling over whatever stands in the way, on the best cycling roads available, of course. Van support is still available, but these tours are generally geared toward cyclists who train regularly and want to challenge themselves. We also provide excellent E-Roadbikes for hire if you are looking at a tour that feels a little beyond your comfort zone and want to take the edge off while still riding the full tour.
One suitcase (23kg) and one day bag.
Like an aeroplane, we have limited space. Your suitcase will travel in the back of our van or in the trailer and will be available once you check into the hotel. Your day bag will travel in the front of the van for easy access during the day. The day bag is on us. All guests will receive a branded drawstring bag designed to comfortably fit everything you might need during the ride day.
Your guides will appreciate your cooperation more than you know when they’re playing luggage Jenga every morning. Thanks for helping us keep things running smoothly.
The day bag is on us
All guests will receive a branded drawstring bag designed to comfortably fit everything you might need during the ride day and will be stored in the back of the ride support van. If you have received one of our Scicon bags previously, you are welcome to bring this along as your day bag.
We can only accommodate foldable bike cases on our tours. Those rigid hard cases might offer great protection, but they’re absolute space hogs in our vehicles, and honestly, shipping them ahead has become a logistical nightmare these days.
The good news? There are some seriously impressive foldable bike cases on the market now! Brands like Evoc, Scicon, and Bike Box Alan make soft cases that offer excellent protection during travel but then collapse down to a fraction of their size once your bike is built up. These genius designs give your bike the safe journey it deserves without commandeering half our van space for the entire tour.
Some of our favourites include:
The Evoc Bike Travel Bag Pro (collapses to about 1/3 its original size)
Scicon AeroComfort 3.0 (folds into itself when empty)
Pika Packworks EEP (folds flat for easy storage)
If you have questions about specific bike case models or need advice on the best option for your ride, just give us a shout before your trip.
Unfortunately, there is, because the places we stay in charge a set amount per room rather than per person. We are keen not to ‘penalise’ single travellers, though, and seek to simply cover the extra costs rather than add a margin, which means that our single supplement is lower than that of most other tour companies. The single supplement varies from tour to tour, so please consult the relevant tour page and the dates/prices tab for the details. If you would like us to try and find you a roommate to avoid this cost we are certainly happy to liaise with other single travellers in the tour party on your behalf. Obviously, by sharing a room, you avoid paying the single supplement.
So long as you let us know in advance we are able accommodate all food requirements. Some of the areas we visit are not perhaps overly familiar with the essence of say, being a vegetarian, or what a gluten free diet entails. We have become adept though at ensuring that the places where we eat are both sensitive and imaginative in catering for special dietary requirements.
The answer to this is a very enthusiastic yes! With over 15 years’ experience designing tours around the world, we are adept at customising tours to our customers’ requirements. In some cases, this customisation relates solely to running one of our established tours as a private tour for a group. Please contact us for details on how large a group needs to be before we can run a private tour; this varies from tour to tour. For more original custom tours, we are confident we can conceptualise and run tours anywhere and everywhere. We’d love you to put us to the test.
We generally recommend ATMs as the best way to access cash while on tour. On all our tours, you will see ATMs along the way, so access isn’t a problem, and they generally offer the best exchange rates.
Of course! Your guides are all accomplished mechanics and generally no job is too big or small for them to sort out on the spot. In the event that we don’t have the tools in the van to fix the problem though we are used to using our language skills to get the problem fixed at the bike shops that we know along the way. Feel free to ask us any questions whilst on tour about bike maintenance as we are always happy to share our knowledge.
Obviously, the best fit you can usually hope for is your own bike, as that is what you are most used to. That said, we are confident that our choice of quality bikes and experience of fitting people to bikes is such that you won’t be disappointed. We fit people to their hire bikes based on their height and measurements, which you will provide in the lead-up to the tour. We also carry headstems of varying length and angle so we can make further adjustments to suit each rider’s needs.
The simple answer is that it is your holiday, and you can choose to ride as much or as little as you like. That said, some of our tours are better geared for non-riding days than others. Our higher-rated tours often require daily hotel changes, so non-riding options are less obvious, even though a lift in the van is always available.