The format is the same across the catalogue: you choose a tour and a start date, French Bike Tours books your hotels, delivers a bike (or arranges your own), gives you up-to-date route notes and maps, and transports your luggage between stops so you only carry what you need for the day. Nobody rides with you. You set your own start time each morning and stop where you like.

Routes are graded easy, easy to moderate, moderate, moderate to strenuous or strenuous, and tours run from 3 to 17 days. Some are linear — point to point, such as the Loire Valley 'relaxed' trip from Tours to Angers over 6 days, or the 9-day Canal des Deux Mers route from Bordeaux to Carcassonne. Others are centre-based, round trips or short breaks, so you can stay in one place and ride out from there each day.

The regions covered are wide: Alsace, the Atlantic coast, the Bordeaux area, Brittany, Burgundy, Champagne, the Dordogne/Périgord, Occitanie, the Loire Valley, Normandy, Provence and the French Riviera, and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. The Loire Valley trip follows the Loire à Vélo from Nevers through the châteaux country to St Nazaire. In Provence you ride quiet backroads past lavender, vineyards and olive orchards, with hill-top villages to stop in. Brittany has more than 1,700 km of waymarked routes along the Channel and Atlantic coasts.

The team is local and designs the routes themselves. They describe the trips as slow tourism that supports the local economy — you eat and sleep in the towns you pass through rather than being bussed past them. The company is Travelife-certified for sustainable tourism and has been part of the European S-Cape Partners network since 1989.

Custom trips are possible: you can ask for a route or itinerary adjusted to your needs, and the team will answer requests by phone or email. The app is the main support tool on the road — it shows the day's route and points of interest, so you can follow it on your phone rather than folding a paper map at every junction.

What's included

- Accommodation booked for the length of your tour - Bike rental - Itineraries and routes designed by the local team - Up-to-date route notes and maps - Luggage transport between accommodations - Access to the mobile app with daily routes and points of interest

What's not included

- Travel to and from the start and end points of the tour - Meals, unless stated for your specific tour - Travel insurance - Personal expenses - Anything not confirmed for your chosen tour