About Us

    

    1. Our Niche - Cycling tours in South West France

    2. The Company

    3. The Guarantees we offer you
          - your privacy
          - your payments
          - your bicycle

    4. Our terms and conditions

1. Our Niche

When we first considered offering cycle tours around Bordeaux we were aware there were ample other opportunities to enjoy the great adventure of cycle touring through France. So we knew we needed to combine the best features of other quality self-guided cycle tours to earn our place in the market.

• We researched routes, tested and mapped them, and then returned to write up the sorts of commentaries that make the country come alive.
• We scheduled time to greet our guests in person on their arrival day, offer a walking tour of the city, ensure they are comfortable with the bikes and answer any queries they might have.
• We invested time in research so that we never need recommend a chateau, brasserie, cathedral cloister, beach, picnic spot, market, oyster shack, or summer wine tasting unless we knew it was worth it.
• We committed ourselves to go that extra mile - small example? Every cycle tour company supplies a puncture repair kit. How many of them think to include some latex gloves and liquid soap so you don’t have to set off again with grimy hands? (Another? you probably would enjoy a picnic somewhere on your route so we include the essential items for dining al fresco).
• We undertook that on our cycle tours you will only ever be a phone call away from help - whether that be deciphering a menu or buying an english newspaper. If we need to come out to you and simply sort it, we do just that.

Some of our cycle tours use quite simple accommodation - small country hotels/auberges and some great Chambres d’Hotes and we consider visiting these to be amongst the best features of exploring rural France on a bicycle. But, if you wish to try something more elaborate, we can usually fix that too.  Have a look at any of our tours on the right before you get in touch.

That ability, to tune your cycling tour to your preferences, is key to understanding what we offer. Small-scale, enthusiastic and competent is how we hope you will remember us - if you remember anything other than simply a great cycling adventure in France. That’s our ‘niche’.

2. The  company - Bordeaux Cycle Tours Limited.

The company was established by Graham Davidson - your host in Bordeaux - after a mis-spent middle age in community development and an early retirement hosting cycle tours in Austria.  His love affair with the city of Bordeaux and all things Bordelais had begun almost 40 years before when he first stumbled upon the city while on his way to pick grapes in the Sauternes area (at least that part of his youth wasn’t wasted).

Four seasons of early mornings and sticky fingers did not dull his enthusiasm, or deter him from returning in later years on various decrepit bikes for cycling tours and to ‘check the quality of the summer wine’. Nowadays while the bike is new, it’s the legs pushing the pedals that are decrepit. (Perhaps, too much sampling of the summer wine?).

Making up the Bordeaux Cycle Tour's team are Kate who looks after the back office and accounts and Jodie who takes care of our marketing.


                              Bordeaux Cycle Tours Limited trading as Cycle Bordeaux

Incorporated as a private limited company in England and Wales with the number 6767998 Registered address of 20 Avenue Road, Kings Heath, Birmingham, West Midlands B14 7TH 

Website: http://www.cyclebordeaux.co.uk/       
Email: contact@cyclebordeaux.co.uk
 
Telephone (UK) 0121 288 1950  - this is a skype number that we can receive in Bordeaux. If we am out of the office please leave a message and we'll get back to you as soon as we can  (But much better is to just email (use the Contact Us page), include a landline and tell us a good time to call you). 

3.The guarantees Bordeaux Cycle Tours offers its guests

 
Your payments

Bordeaux Cycle Tours is a provider of a holiday package as defined by the Package Travel Regulations 1992  so all payments by clients are held in a trust account until your holiday is completed.*

We have no interest in selling you insurance but it is a condition of the purchase of the tour that clients have insurance **. That legislation also requires that we "must provide the consumer with information about an insurance policy to cover the cost of cancellation by the consumer or the cost of assistance, including emergency repatriation, in the event of illness which the consumer may, if he wishes, take out in respect of the risk of those costs being incurred." (See regulation 8 (2) (d).). Whether you include with such insurance, cancellation cover is entirely up to you.

 Your Privacy

Bordeaux Cycle Tours has a simple privacy policy with regard to information we collect from guests or indeed any visitors to the site. This can be sumarised as: We guarantee to respect your privacy by not passing that information on to any third party (with the exception of essential contact details in case of accident or ill health or those few items e.g. vegetarian diet that we may have to disclose to your hosts), without your express permission. That is the summary. The full statement can be read at 'Our Privacy Policy' which is at the foot of every page. 

Your Bicycles

The bicycles we provide are hybrids (fairly upright riding position with ’normal’ handlebars best suited to gentle cycle touring on surfaced routes) with 18-21 gears that easily deal with the usually minor gradients found on our routes. They includes recent or current Giant and decathlon models. Children’s bikes can be provided (our family cycle tour is suitable for some children as young as 8). Of course you may choose to bring your own bikes and naturally we will offer all the assistance we can, but spares might be a problem if the make or model is not popular in France.

Our Champagne Promise

We have absolute confidence in our bikes so we have no hesitation in saying that if you have a problem and we cannot fix it right away when we come out to you we will put you on a replacement bike and give you a bottle of champagne to help you ‘recover from the trauma‘. The only ’small print’ in that promise is that you sort out punctures yourself. Be assured they don’t happen often. Never changed an inner tube? We give you a quick tutorial and supply a spare inner tube.

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It would be a shame to ruin your eyesight with all this fine print before you have had a chance to look at some of our cycle tours, so if you haven’t already identified the sort of tour you want you may be better off having a look at Our Cycle Tours page  to get an idea of what’s available. The terms and conditions will still be there when you get back.

4. The terms on which we do business

The terms and conditions are set out in a document ('Terms & Conditions') that can be accessed by clicking on the link at the bottom of any page.