FAMILY CYCLING HOLIDAYS

What sort of family cycling holiday do you want with your children?

Our children all grew up with cycling holidays, and we learned the hard way what worked best, but also how fabulous cycling with the family was. Now we are unique in offering cyclecamping, gite and hotel based cycling holidays for families, which you choose is obviously down to you and your children, but the following may help. Remember that the one big difference here is that the French love children. Not only do you not get asked to leave bars, or to quieten your children, but quite the opposite - you'll find children are often a positive advantage (especially if they are cycling) as people will smile and get into conversation with you, no-one gets snooty in restaurants, and people will coo! over your children every time they see them.

There is no better holiday for children than a week cyclecamping. The family goes out together, cycling on quiet safe roads, and explores the countryside see how we used to do it ourselves. At the end of a day there is a grassy campsite, with acres for the children to run around in, lakes to swim or canoe in, play areas etc. and you can quietly relax over a bottle of wine until the children are exhausted, and collapse into their tent and sleep the night away. I don't exaggerate, last year we had two families who came cycling and had five year-old children who had never slept through the night who had to be woken up in the morning! I'm sure it's the fresh air as well as the cycling that does it! Remember that your family can do fixed-centre camping, or a moving-on tour. The advantage of the former is that your family can be supplied with a mix of equipment such as tandems and small bikes so that your children can take the best combination for any particular day tour.

This year we had a young lady who was determined to show that putting up our tent's was chld's play and went on to prove it by making the video below - many thanks Millie (aged 5)

Hotel based tours

As mentioned above the French are very welcoming to children and this includes hotels. The hotels we use are carefully chosen to be in places where there is space for children and things for them to do. There is always somewhere to eat near or at the hotel and children will always find something they like. Personally, if you have small children then the one snag is that ultimately you only have a hotel room rather than the wide open spaces of a campsite where they can hurtle around and play without anyone minding. This very much depends on what your children are like - your choice:-) If you don't fancy either camping, or the limitations of a hotel then the obvious alternative is the Gite based week which is perfect for families with young children.

ROUTES FOR KIDS

Choosing a route when you have children can be a bit daunting if you don't go cycling regularly with them. You have to try and find the balance between having to drive them to cycle far further than they are happy with, or just as bad, to find they've cycled the whole route in 30 minutes. The easy way to avoid this dilemma is to choose one of the fixed centre cycle tours either camping or Gite based. The rides in the area are easy with lots of cycling on cyclepaths so ideal for children on their own bikes. The 'Fixed Centre' at Gouarec camping in one of our frame tents or in our Gite guarantees the company of other families at the campsite in the school holiday, most weeks it being a small village of families with smaller children. Remember that with this option you have the larger Fixed-Center tents. If you want a moving-on cycle cycle tour we have several routes ideal for families of all ages with roads that are quiet, or mostly cyclepath The campsites have play areas and lakes to swim in - we're happy to advise you. It's worth remembering that if you choose cycle camping then the route can be altered as you go along as you find the limits of your children's cycling ability. On hotel cycle tours you have to get from one pre-booked hotel to the next and so they don't have this flexibility. The best thing is to try some day rides with your children before you make a final decision on the route so you have an idea of what they are happy with.

Also see Dave Preston's page which has lots of information/anecdotes/photos from the families involved in the 2001 led trip!

WHITSUN FAMILY WEEK - week beginning 28th May.

As you know we have larger 'fixed centre' tents based at Gouarec. At Whitsun we reserve these for families cycling with young children only, so that for this week a group of like minded families get together and have fun, the Gite is also only 200m and so any family there will find it easy to get roped in!

EQUIPMENT FOR CHILDREN

We have every conceivable facility for cycling with children: Baby seats, 1 and 2-seat baby trailers, trailer bikes, small touring bikes and perhaps best of all 8 tandems small enough at the back for 6-year old children. All of this is the best possible quality including the trailerbikes which are Burley 'Piccolos' - the best and by some distance the most expensive you can buy. We also have sleeping bags for children of all sizes. No-one does more for children... To see how we did it ourselves…