Mini Tours

[PaulB]

Hi

As my wife has now retired it looks like i have a few long weekends and weeks to myself whilst she goes off on walking tours etc, so as this forum is a hot bed of knowledgeable people i am looking for ideas for 1,2,3 and even 4 day (cheap or budget) tour ideas as there is so much info and they can be quite costly, any way and ideas welcome thanks

[AlanW]

As I will be retiring at the end of this month, this thread will also be of interest to me

[George]

I'm off on a mini tour in a couple of weeks. As you say, Paul, these trips can get quite pricey, unless you follow Si Woodward's example and go wild camping. In the last few years, even quite modest overnight accommodation has become expensive. Not many places have single rooms, not many offer single occupancy rates on twin/double rooms, and (depending on where and when you go) you have to look around to find a B&B offering a twin room for much less than £100. Factor in food and beer, and the cost of a long weekend soon starts heading up towards £500. Nevertheless, if you look around using multiple search methods (plain googling, scouring Google Maps, booking sites and sites of organisations such as YHA) you can find relatively cheap accommodation. I'm off to Pembrokeshire for a four-day (three-night) trip, and originally managed to find two independent hostels and a pub (private rooms in all cases) all for £40-£50/night. In the end, route planning considerations led me to drop one of my original choices and opt for a more expensive B&B, but even so I've got all my accommodation for about £160, so the total trip cost might end up being £250. If you were riding with a friend and/or you did your own catering and/or you laid off the beer ( ), you could probably get that down to more like £150.

[PaulB]

thanks George

Agree and you can get some cheap pubs/ B&B's, i alwsys look for ones with breakfast inc and free cancellations which you can get for £50 or so.

I'm planning a mini tour from 14 to 19 June as wife on her teavels then, won't be every day but to start i might do 2 1 night overnight trips as Cycle Travel have a brilliant overnight tour planner so might do one heading south and one heading East or West.

The next biggest problem is weather so going to check weather a week before and if its fine see if i can book B&B at a reasonable price, if not then lesson learned and ill do train day trips, lets see.

[PeteNorman]

Hi Paul check out our tandem tour August 2021 on Strava, staying two nights in Coalbrookdale, b&b or YHA,

Bromsgrove to Ironbridge, iron bridge much wenlock, church Stretton iron bridge, coalbrookdale home. Mainly on Sustrans routes.

Other mini tours from Ludlow, Rhayader, Corbridge on Strava, though we’ve used motor assist to get there as no one allows tandems on trains!

[PaulB]

Brilliant Pete

Thanks a million for that, will check it out
It seems that i was not following you for some reason so just requested and then ill have a look thanks

[PeteNorman]

I thought I’d done something to upset! Actually you’ve requested on a number of occasions and I’ve always accepted!

[PaulB]

Dunno

i have had


few problems with Strava lately, lost a few friends i was following, maybe because i went ftom premium to free

And no, you haventt upset me

[Helen]

On the subject of accomodation costs, there are a few other options that might be worth looking at.

Obviously, if you happen to have friends dispersed around the country, riding between their houses makes for a cheap and very pleasant trip! If you don't happen to have such a network of friends, or you have some gaps in that network, you could have a look at https://www.warmshowers.org/ - Warm showers is a community of cycle tourists who host other cycle tourists for free. You need to pay a small amount to access the network but you'd make that back with one night of not paying for accomodation.

Camping, whilst higher in equipment requirements, can still be done in a very light weight & compact set up if you have the right kit and if you're happy with eating out or eating cold food (cake!) then you can cut right back on cooking equipment. If you're only going to go if it's a good forecast then you're taking away a lot of the downsides of camping - especially if it's in a warmer part of the year. Even the poshest of UK family holiday campsites don't tend to be more than £25/night which is still an awful lot cheaper than a B&B. If you do enough research beforehand (I am bad at doing this but recommend ukcampsites.co.uk) you can often find campsites for about £10/night still, and there are some now with "backpacker" rates which are extra cheap pitches for people who are travelling by foot or bike. Scotland was especially good for having backpacker rates available but many of their campsites now don't accept tents so it wasn't a reliable way of finding a shower day to day. Wild camping, whilst free and therefore budget friendly, does require more kit than campsite camping! (And a willingness to slum it.) Bothy's are also worth a look, but the ettiquete is that you should be prepared to sleep outside and therefore have a tent / bivvy bag with you just in case it's full.

RE routes - I have just finished riding both Lon Las Cymru (4 days) and the Caledonian Way (~5? days) and would highly recommend both of them. For long weekend tours I think it's quite nice to ride out along a train route and then get the train back at the end so it doesn't have to be a loop - if you got bored of the birmingham train lines you could drive to the start of another one and do a similar thing to get the trian back to your car. Alternatively any of the sustrans routes would be a good base for a short tour aswell. King Alfred's way is a fantastic route, but some of the off road sections would be better done on a mountain bike than a gravel bike. I'm sure you could turn the Offa's Dyke line into a bike route that's easiliy accessible by train at either end.

[PaulB]

Wow, Thanks Helen

Really good info there thanks, i know you have a lot of experience and will take on a lot of your advice and i am insistent on not using my car but as you say in your recent Strava post our public transport system is broken and very expensive and unreliable.

Looking at doing loop tours starting at train ststions is a nightmare for taking your bike as you can have 1 or 2 changes with the threat of cancellations etc so always a worry.

I am contemplating getting a good fold up bike to reduce the nightmare of getting a bike on a train and doing smaller 50 to 80 kms tours so that is another option.

Thanks for taking the time to give me valuable advice and will look inti them

[Helen]

The public transport system is ridiculous, but if you are planning to tour using it then picking an individual rail line or touring between rail lines is a good compromise. You can guarantee that the journeys then won't involve changes and even if you get mucked around with cancellations etc, it just takes you a bit longer to go home, which if you're retired I imagine is less of an issue than when I have to get back to work on Monday morning! If you're worried about bike space, you could also plan to be returning from a station which is the start of a train route (e.g. Hollyhead, Aberystwyth etc) making it much easier to get on the train in the first place as it can't already be full.

My concern with touring with a fold up bike is being able to carry my luggage when the bike is folded up. If you're not camping this may not be an issue for you though.

[PaulB]

thanks Helen

invaluable advice which is very much appreciated
Changing trains and train companies is a nightmare so I'm trying not to do that.

In connection with folding bikes, if i got one it would only be for 1 or 2 night rips so not much luggage as would probably be in a B&B

[AlanW]

Having recently sold my Brompton, personally l wouldn't even contemplate doing light touring on it. Yes l know people do, lm saying it's not for me.

Don't get me wrong, the Brompton is a great bike for commuting and riding along the sea front etc, but anything else, l will pass thanks.

[PaulB]

Hi Alan

I do tend to agree with you Alan, its like Marmite