Working on the program for 2018, made me looking back at last year and everything that has happened so far. I started BikePlanet first of all to create new experiences: enjoying regions and bike paths where we have not been before as our perspective always has been focused on the possibilities of our barge and the waterways it can sail. With the aim of enriching our proposal, offering more options and combinations.

Well, so far so good! 2017 is our first year of starting the hotel tours and we had some disappointments but also highlights and are happy we can start with two out of the three tours we offered. Our Holland and England tour is not going to action, unless miracles happen. Such a shame, I was sooo looking forward to all these great English villages, longing for a scones, cream and jelly. Will certainly find a way to go there, but it will not be on a guided bike tour. Well…that’s a lesson we learned now: too expensive probably and not appealing enough to go biking.

Looking forward: the Bike Holidays

There is so much to look forward to! Our Rails to Trail tour is certainly going to be great. Guide Wouter will do the last preparations in April and everything else is arranged for. Just the weather is, as always, the thing we can’t arrange for.

And our Pre-Tulip Tour (which is a sightseeing tour previous to the Amsterdam to Koblenz Bike & Barge on the IRIS) has a few bookings now, and will be great touring (by car, not by bike) and showing, amongst other highlights, the Keukenhof. We are looking for some more guests there, although the combination with the IRIS is no longer an option because we are sold out there.

And then the combinations with the Berlin-Dresden-Bamberg hotel tour! More preparation there with guide Thomas in March, for our last preparational tour was in December, and we could not bike because of the snow. I know…chances were high. We could bike in Dresden, so it’s back to Berlin to make sure we know exactly where to take our guests! We still have openings there!

Because we are now skipping a tour for 2018, we could start some research on a new one. And we choose one that is again possible in a 2 week combination: one week on the IRIS, one week on a new tour.

So happy we can start preparing for the Romantic Road. Taking us from the heart of Germany along old trading roads and the Roman period to the foot of the Alps in the south of Germany. We will go there again in February to look at the inns I already selected and look at part of the bike paths. This will be a gem of a tour. More about it later.

Looking back: the first cycling trips

I was looking back…. said the title of this blog! We had a great season, with again very many happy guests! I was able to go cycling for days on a row because the crew was doing a great job and I was “redundent” on the barge. What a joy. Felt like I was on a holiday myself. Great chance to hear how our guests feel about their trip. And a great way of seeing what we offer on our bike tours.

End of the year I decided to go pedal to the metal with BikePlanet and started offering you to book the IRIS through BikePlanet. This was not an easy decision to take, but the best one for me now! I will also stay part on the Eurosail Tours, so no radical changes there.

So all in all: I would give this past year a 9 out of 10. It has given me the boast I was looking for. The change I need to keep fully committed to what I am doing. And if it would not work out, I will never regret having started this.

“Life is what happens to you, while you’re busy making other plans.” (John Lennon)…. or “Life is a journey, not a destination” (Ralph Waldo Emerson) Both so true for me.

I enjoy every minute of it. Well…I try! And I hope you will enjoy all we are offering. Because that’s our ultimate challenge: to give you great tours full of biking and experiencing our great bike paths!

Our ultimate challenge: to give you great tours full of biking and experiencing our great bike paths!

SAFE TRAVELS – SAFE BIKING!

Lutzerath, Februari 10th 2017,  Lenny

 

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