England

Amazing views, great guides but so glad we went with e-bikes this trip😅

Wonderful guides and so well organized. My 3rd VBT trip and looking forward to more to come!

This was our fifth VBT guided bike tour and it was another great experience. Our guides Jago, Lucy, and Dan were exceptional each in their own unique way. Despite and unusual heat and general lack of air conditioning in this part of England the accommodations, were all interesting and charming. The scenery was beautiful and the local pubs were great fun. We chose to ride road bikes and the tire size and gearing were appropriate. The tow path section would have been better suited for a hybrid or Ebike but we feel most comfortable on road bikes. In general I would rate the riding difficulty of this trip a notch up from our other easy/moderate trips due to the road conditions and climbs. Our training before the trip paid off. As has always been our experience the others in our group were incredibly nice and interesting folks.

The Cotswolds are incredibly beautiful! Small villages with golden stone buildings almost don't look real. All of our hotels were top notch and the food was excellent. Biking on the left hand side of the road was a bit scary at first, but the drivers were courteous and gave us a wide margin; and most of the roads we biked had minimal traffic.

My husband and I did this self-guided tour in early September and absolutely loved it. Country Walkers did an impeccable job taking care of every detail--booking hotels, moving our suitcases between hotels, and, best of all, the "route notes" book was so detailed and had everything we needed from step-by-step directions and restaurant suggestions to history and ideas for things to do. It felt like a wonderful adventure following the famous paths through sheep pastures and little forest thickets, past gardens and ancient churches, and climbing over or around all the different gates. It was often overcast and misty in the mornings, but the mid-day sun burned it all away. Our highlights are choosing to stop for an hour to check out the Hailes Abbey Museum and rubbing elbows with some locals at the only pub in a tiny village. So many great memories! We liked the intimate experience of doing a self-guided trip and the independence (without the planning!) that it provided. We spent some extra days in London at the end of our trip...that was just icing on the cake.

What a fantastic trip this was. This was my 6th time going to England, but my first for the Cotswold region and what an extraordinary time it was. The food was fantastic, everywhere you looked the views were spectacular. It was fantastic trip which I would do again in a heart beat.