Cycling past fragrant lavender fields in France… Pedaling the challenging inclines of the Dolomites… Enjoying views of the beautiful Dalmatian coast in Croatia and smelling the salty sea air…. These and more are all bicycle tours to Europe offered by Backroads, experiences that can be yours.

European destinations are some of our most popular routes here at Backroads, and the way we travel lets you see Europe in an entirely different way. Forget bus tours and car trips and get out into the fresh air. We promise you there’s no better way to see this ancient part of the world than pedaling under the blue skies.

Simply being outdoors as you journey from destination to destination awakens the senses and open doors you would have missed inside the tour bus. By bike, you can stop at that delicious-looking café whose sweet smells are wafting into the air, or stop and have a chat with a local selling produce by the side of the road. Enjoy both the sights and the sounds of each unique town and country.

Traveling Europe by bike lets you become a part of the culture, and not just remain an outsider looking in. Plus, our wonderful trip leaders will guide you every step of the way, sharing with you the history and eccentricities of each locale.

With Backroads, all you have to worry about is the journey. Our team is there to handle any issues with your bike, provide you with a snack when you need a little more fuel for the ride or even if you need to take a moment to relax and want to head back to the hotel. Maybe you’re inspired to take a longer journey and our trip leaders will give you an alternate route so you can pedal to your heart’s content.

Plus, we have the trip planned out in all its details from the wonderful restaurants where you’ll dine to the hotels and inns where you’ll rest your head at night.

What’s your dream place to bicycle Europe?

Need more information? Request a catalog or call us from 7 a.m.- 5 p.m. Pacific at 800-462-2848. Start dreaming of your bike tour to Europe today!

If you haven’t checked New Zealand off your Bucket List, Backroads touring company highly recommends moving it close to the top! New Zealand is one of the most majestically beautiful countries in the world, and that’s why we want you to see it Backroads style: out in the open air. Choose from our trips that include hiking New Zealand, biking New Zealand and New Zealand multisport.

Have you seen the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy? Those sweeping vistas that take you to the magical world of Middle Earth are actually New Zealand! They almost look too fantastical to be real, but we promise you they do exist and we want to take you there. Peter Jackson also filmed the prequel to “Lord of the Rings,” the popular book of many a childhood, “The Hobbit,” in New Zealand and that film is due in theaters later in the year. Hike past some of the beautiful scenes from the movie!

On Backroads’ adventure tours through New Zealand we take you to our favorite spots , including the wine region of Hawke’s Bay, Lake Rotoiti, the giant tree ferns of Coromandel Peninsula, and Cathedral Cove with sandstone, beaches and gorgeous bright-blue waters.

Have your fill of waterfalls, hot pools, geysers, thermal springs and percolating mud pots at Waiotapu. And just like Frodo, get ready to have the adventure of a lifetime, crossing suspension bridges, discovering a gold mining tunnel, feeding emus and if you dare, even a chance to bungee jump! The good news is Gollum is not waiting for you at the bottom!

The inns on this magical journey include the Mangapapa Petit Hotel, which is a lovely country mansion with lush gardens; a private chalet in Puka Park Resort, a secluded wilderness hideaway in the New Zealand bush; Amora Lake Resort with a pool and tennis; and Millennium Hotel, more modern and located on Lake Taupo.

So how will you see stunning New Zealand with Backroads? If you bike New Zealand, you’ll have varied routes each day, some more gentle and others more challenging if you choose. If you’d like to hike New Zealand, get out your hiking boots and get ready for the walk of a lifetime! Some like to mix it all up with our New Zealand multisport option, which includes hiking, biking and kayaking.

Which will you choose to cross off your Bucket List? Call us at 800-462-2848 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Pacific, and we’ll help you decide!

While it seems like we just started school and Halloween’s not even here yet, before you know it the holidays will be upon us. We have lots of families who enjoy spending their holiday break on a Backroads adventure vacation and many choose warm weather destinations for a quick break from winter’s cold. Whether it’s biking in Bali or traveling through the Panama Canal, now’s the time to plan a holiday vacation.

Here are our top picks for winter escapes:

• Biking in Costa Rica – How many different animals can your family spot on this Costa Rica holiday adventure vacation? Look for sloths, monkeys, lizards and more as you venture through Manuel Antonio National Park. You also get to white-water raft the Rio Savegre, swim and surf on white sand beaches and maybe even get in a game of soccer or two!
• Hiking the Andes & Exploring the Galapagos – This trip gives you a little snow and lots of education. Kids will love seeing all the animals on this famous Galapagos adventure, including blue-footed boobies, giant tortoises, white-tipped reef sharks, fluorescent fish, sea lions, lava lizards and possibly penguins. You’ll also get the chance to hike the snow-capped Andes through a eucalyptus forest, volcano vistas and pre-Incan ruins.
• Hike the Jungles of Panama – Get ready to head to the jungles of Panama active adventure to see lots of wildlife, including plenty of monkeys, coffee plantations and a cloud forest. Snorkel the second largest coral reef in the Pacific and enjoy the Panama Canal, a 99-year-old marvel of epic proportions. This trip also includes canoeing and biking.
• Bali Biking – Get in a tropical mood on this incredibly beautiful Bali biking tour. You pedal past temples, teak trees, rice paddies and peaceful villages. Ever cycled up a volcano? You’ll get your chance, passing lava flows from a 1963 eruption. There’s also plenty of time for relaxing at a spa, in sacred pools and in the Blue Lagoon.

How do families spend their holidays with us? Some surprise their family on Christmas with a trip departing the next day! Some gather their extended family together for a group holiday adventure. Others plan their trip far in advance, getting everyone excited for a unique holiday experience.

If you could travel during the holidays, where would you want to go? If you’d like some advice, give us a call 7 a.m.- 5 p.m. Pacific at 800-462-2848. Here you can also view our complete list of winter active vacations.

Happy holidays!

Here are Backroads, we are a very kid-friendly company offering family adventure trips to destinations around the world created with both adults and children in mind. While we have plenty of parents travel with their children, we also see plenty of grandparents travel with their grandchildren – we’re the experts in multigenerational family travel.

Backroads hiking tours and family bike tours are a great way to celebrate big milestones in life, and grandparents often choose to reward their grandkids with one-on-one multigenerational adventure vacations. We’ve seen groups celebrating Bar Mitzvahs, graduations, major birthdays and more. It’s an opportunity to expose kids to different cultures around the world and enjoy together a life-changing experience they will remember for the rest of their lives.

Traveling with Backroads is ideal for grandparents, as we plan every detail to let you truly focus on your amazing destination. We provide a dedicated Kid Coordinator, whose sole job it is to entertain your troop and keep them happy! If you choose, children can dine separately during some meals and enjoy activities designed just for them while grandparents may experience a wine tasting or other adult event.

We find one of the greatest benefits of our family adventure vacations is the lifelong friendships the kids develop. Over the course of five to seven or more days spending the bulk of the day together, budding friendships blossom into lifelong pen pals or perhaps Facebook friends J.

Backroads family adventure holidays are also a wonderful educational experience. Not only will your teen, preteen or school-age grandchild get to experience a new culture, our Expert Trip Leaders will sneak in some extra educational information in fun and exciting ways!

Here are some of our recommended trips for grandparents and grandkids:

• Family Iceland Hiking Tour
• Loire Valley Biking Tour for Families
• Hawaii Family Multisport
• New Zealand Family Biking and Hiking Tour

See all of our available family adventure vacations.

Would you consider taking your grandchild with you on a walking tour or biking tour? Where would you travel?

Book your getaway today by calling us 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Pacific time at 800-462-2848.

Here at Backroads, we think a good book can make a perfect adventure vacation even better. Maybe you want to read up on the area before you arrive. Perhaps you want to take a novel based on the region to read under a sun-filled sky during your bike tour. Or you may be so inspired by the destination after your walking tour that you want to read everything you can get your hands on when you return home. We’ve seen it all!

That’s why for each of our hiking tours, biking tours and walking tours to incredible locales around the world we’ve given you some of our favorite reading to go alongside — all with help from our friends at Longitude Books.

For example, on our Tuscany biking tour, Longitude provides you with a host of delectable reads. Selections include: Too Much Tuscan Sun, Confessions of a Chianti Tour Guide; Tuscan Country: A Photographer’s Journey; and A Culinary Traveller In Tuscany among others.

Or on our Napa Valley bike tours, we recommend perusing A Tale of Two Valleys, a travel narrative of Napa and Sonoma, Napa: The Story of an American Eden or Great Wine Made Simple: Straight Talk From a Master Sommelier. Often, if you buy the entire recommended set, Longitude will provide them at a discount.

Bringing kids along with you? There’s no better way to get them excited for their upcoming family adventure vacation than a good book. How about the Kids Italian Picture Dictionary or Starry Messenger, an homage to Galileo, or The Diary of Melanie Martin: How I Survived Matt the Brat, Michelangelo and the Leaning Tower of Pizza for your Italian walking tour? We promise they’ll be raring to go explore the “back roads” after a book or two.

Whether a child or an adult, nothing beats a good book … except maybe a really good vacation! Combine the two and you’ve got a winning combination.

What’s the best travel-related book you’ve read? Is there a book that inspired you to visit a specific place?

For more reading recommendations or questions about Backroads tours, please visit Backroads.com or call us 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Pacific time at 1-800-462-2848.

Photo Credit: Warren Zelman

When you come along on a Backroads trip, your focus should be your destination and the local experience. We don’t want you to have to worry about anything else! That’s why here at Backroads we have focused on making our service unparalleled in the active travel industry. When you join one of our Backroads adventures, you can rest assured you’ll be taken care of like royalty! Here are just a few examples:

Three Exceptional Trip Leaders

When you travel with Backroads, we provide you with the most experienced trip leaders, who can create a truly life-changing experience for you. We give our trip leaders the most training and the most resources to guide their travelers toward an unforgettable vacation. Never ranking lower than a 9 out of 10 on our guest satisfaction surveys, they are often cited as what truly sets Backroads apart from other active travel companies.

On our Family Adventures, we also provide a dedicated Kid Coordinator, whose sole job is to make sure your children are entertained and having fun. Don’t you wish you could take them home?!

On most trips, we also provide you with three trip leaders to make sure they have ample time to be with all guests on a bike tour or walking tour. Most other bike tour or walking tour companies provide no more than two per departure and often they are subcontracted locals.

Here’s just one of many amazing comments about our trip leaders: “The quality of your guides never ceases to amaze me. They are friendly, have a great sense of humor, roll with the punches and are resourceful and delightful. Thanks for hiring such fantastic people.” — Suellen White – Stockholm, Sweden

Read more comments about our trip leaders.

Two Vans Are Better Than One

On almost all Backroads trips, we provide our guests with two vans to ensure the highest-quality service. The vans ride along the route, whether you’re walking or biking, to help you with anything you might need.

Perhaps you need a snack or your bike needs a tune up. The van is there to help! Or you may have decided you’re ready to hop off the bike and head back to the hotel. No problem. One van can take you back while the other stays with the route. Is your spouse a speed demon while you prefer to take it slow? One van can stay with the faster walkers/riders, while the other stays with the slower group.

Having two vans allows us to be truly flexible and cater to all of our guests. We promise you’ll notice the difference over other companies who send only one van per trip!

Our Guests Agree

Sure, we can talk all day long about our great service, but can we back it up? You bet! HALF of our guests have traveled with us before and choose to travel with us again. AND 30% of people who travel with us have been referred by a past guest. We think that speaks volumes.

Here are a few more comments from some of our guests about our service:

“Over the last 30+ years, I’ve taken 96 biking trips all over the world. Anyone can print a brochure or put up a website promising a great active travel experience. Only Backroads delivers exceptional performance—not just promises—every time.” — Richard Seltzer – Wynnewood, Penn.

“Taking a Backroads trip is like enjoying the sweetest part of the watermelon, the planners and trip leaders trim away everything but the sweetest core of the trip. They worry about the logistics, the problem solving, so that as a guest, the most you worry about is what to order at dinner and how far to go on each daily option.” — Jeff Tanji – Davis, Calif.

“I am so impressed with Backroads – your company is the most customer friendly and supportive travel company I have ever had the opportunity to interact with. You deserve off the chart marks on all levels of your service from calling to sign up to the actual trip quality and quality of leaders…” — Patsy Gleason – Green Valley, AZ

Come try a Backroads vacation and experience our service for yourself. Call us 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Pacific time for more information or to book your next adventure trip. You can also request a catalog from us so you begin dreaming of your getaway.

While we’ve all been trained to explore the world by the Web, sometimes it’s just nice to have a catalog in hand to browse and earmark the things that interest you. Can’t you see yourself curled up on the couch on a crisp fall evening dreaming of where you will travel next spring?

That’s why we urge you to request a catalog from Backroads in addition to browsing our full-service website, which offers not only an easy to find list of all our biking trips and walking tours, but a wealth of trip preparation information, including recommendations for travel gear, travel health advice and Rail Europe, as well.

Backroads offer three catalogs – Biking and Multisport, Walking and Hiking, and Family Trips – which you can request here.

Each catalog details:

-          The type of experience you’ll have (biking, hiking or multisport), and explains that your active vacation will be as “active” as you’d like. Bike, hike or ride in the van – or all three! It’s totally up to you.

-          Our trip leaders and their qualifications. Our leaders are a defining difference between Backroads tours and a trip with another company. Our leaders are amazing, talented, passionate and have lots of experience. They really know the places they’ll take you, and that makes your trip a very unique one. Plus, they’ll be as engaged as you like, providing you with lots of local info, or giving you as much space as you need.

-          The connection we have with locals in each location. This relationship enables us to provide you with insider knowledge, as well as local leaders and experts. You’ll truly get to experience the destination as the locals do.

-          The service we provide. Backroads allows you to focus entirely on your trip, letting us handle all the details. Two vans travel alongside most trips to give you a break from the bike/hike if you need, provide snacks, fix bicycle problems and more. We also take your luggage from location to location and have all accommodations and most dining planned for you. Our trip leaders can also customize trip experiences for your unique needs and desires.

-          The trips, of course! We designed the trip catalogs to feature lots of information and highlights about each biking tour and hiking trip. We’re betting you’re going to dog ear a bunch of pages.

Our catalogs also offer details on lodging, cuisine, family adventure vacations, singles-solos trips and private trips. You’ll also learn about the customized equipment Backroads provides.

They say a picture’s worth 1,000 words and Backroads agrees! That’s why we’ve also filled our catalogs with breathtaking photos for each of our featured adventure trips. Backroads truly goes to some of the most beautiful places on earth and our catalogs capture bits and pieces of these areas – just enough to whet your appetite and want to make a reservation so you can go see these places for yourself!

To request one of our catalogs, please visit our website, fill out a brief form and we’ll send one to you as soon as possible so you can start making those vacation plans. Got questions in the meantime? Please call one of our trip consultants 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Pacific time at 800-462-2848.

Photo Credit: Martha Ginsberg

We’re sure you won’t want to forget a single thing about your once-in-a-lifetime Backroads biking, multisport or hiking adventures, so why not keep a travel journal?

A travel journal is the perfect place to record your daily activities on your Backroads trip and to help you capture your most amazing experiences and memories along the way. We promise your trip will not only be an active vacation; it will be one that inspires.

For example, you’ll want to record moments like this one from our Myanmar Biking Tour where in Yangong, you’ll take part in a candle-lighting tradition at the Shwedagon Pagoda. You’ll soak up the powerful ambience of this sacred Buddhist site. Better to write down your thoughts about the ceremony before your mind moves on to the next adventure.

You’ll also want to remember visiting a hummingbird sanctuary during your Costa Rica adventure where you may feed these amazing (and fast) birds by hand!

Surely you will want to record your awe-inspiring routes on our New Zealand Bike Tour where you’ll ride the TranzAlpine Train over Arthur’s Pass and then pedal to ocean “geysers” in Punakaiki.

Here are a few tips on how to create a travel journal for your Backroads adventure:

• Before your trip, purchase a notebook or journal and some nice pens, a few pencils and even some crayons (more on that later). You may also want to purchase a small notepad and pencil to stash in a pocket so you can jot down notes while you’re out and about. (A pencil works great because if it gets wet, it won’t run.) You can use the notes on the small notepad as inspiration for a more detailed journal entry after your adventurous day or simply rip out the pages from your notebook and affix them in your journal.
• When you write, don’t forget to record the date and your location. However, don’t worry about writing everything in exact chronological order. The point of the journal is to get the information and inspiration down on paper when it’s fresh (or at the very least, when you remember it!).
• Keep in mind, a journal doesn’t have to be “just words.” It also can be a great place to collect postcards, a story from the local newspaper, a menu, a sketch, a label from a great beer or even a pressed flower.
• Consider asking one of the local people you meet to write in your journal a sentence or two about their country or town. You might also consider bringing along some crayons and asking a local child to draw a picture in your journal.

The places Backroads takes you are off the beaten path, truly “back roads travel.” We pride ourselves on offering you a unique experience and encourage you to record the events of your trip so you can look back and remember.

Need help booking your adventure vacation? Visit our website to peruse our latest trips, including winter escapes! Or call one of our trip consultants 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Pacific time at 800-462-2848