France Bike + Boat Tour Reviews — 1 to 30 of 768

We had a great time once again on the Iris. The crew and guides were the best. Train travel on the weekends can be tricky but not impossible because of scheduled track maintenance. Electric bikes are always the best choice no matter what.

What a fantastic trip! The food was delicious and the crew was great! Japka and Carol were the best guides!

We loved the experience of living on the barge with its incredible team that ensured a comfortable, clean, professional and friendly atmosphere. The cycling guides were A-one, very helpful and gave interesting historical information on the sites visited. There were seven people in our travel group. It was fun meeting and socializing with the other travellers. I will definitely recommend this trip to friends and family.

Francois was an excellent cycling guide. E-bikes were quite comfortable

The boat is beautiful, the staff/crew are first class.
The food is amazing.
The guides were wonderful, they have planned the routs with care to show us how beautiful the countries are with great care for the safety of all.
I greatly recommend this tour.

One of the best bike tours I have taken! The Magnifique X ship was superb and spacious, the staff was so friendly and helpful. Our tour guides were amazing and the itinerary was fabulous! We saw and experienced so much of the culture and history of the Netherlands and Belgium. The bike paths were enchanting and each day there was variety of activities planned in our itinerary to see and do to experience the real Netherlands and Belgium.

Francois and Martin were absolutely fabulous. They provide a wonderful holiday. They showed extreme patience and deserve full points. We were a little disappointed with the ships meals. The last meal of the trip was very good. We were expecting that quality for the trip. When you are in France you expect French food.

This tour was changed last minute to Auvers to Moret due to drought conditions. It wasn’t as scenic as original. But the Claire de Lune was clean (our cabins were small but air conditioned!), her crew AMAZING, and our guide full of energy & enthusiasm. The chef was excellent x delicious food! The group on our tour was great, we all bonded quickly. Riding thru Paris was a little insane & scary but also invigorating and challenging - we all survived! Lol. My only complaint is the bikes have no bottle cages so you can only drink water when we stop, I sip constantly so that was a struggle. But overall, I would do it again!

Although the trip was rerouted to The Netherlands I thoroughly enjoyed the biking and exploring the various cities that we rode through. All of the staff were wonderful.
It would have been nice to at least cruise an hour or two on the barge. If you biked every day this did not happen. Other than that it was a wonderful experience.

Best tour ever highly recommended them. The tour guide was very professional, friendly & knowledgeable, about local area. Thanks

The views of France, and the wonderful staff Lucy,Annita,Peter and Josh.
The food was excellent.

The bike riding was amazing! Mariana and Cristina did an amazing job guiding us and keeping us safe. We bonded with all the other bikers so well. I would highly recommend this trip to my friends.

Biking was more strenuous than anticipated. Didn’t realize there was so much van transportation from boat to biking locations. Very disappointed in Normandy and American Cemetery experience. Only 35 minutes allotted. Should have spent at least two hours there. Guides were excellent. Boat service was excellent.

The guides and staff were excellent. Food was wonderful and the scenery picturesque. After viewing the trip I am glad we choose starting in Metz because Cochem was an ideal place to end. The AC was a little challenging. This year the temperature were extremely high and the upper deck common area didn’t have AC. The stateroom’s AC also couldn’t quite keep up. Overall a really wonderful experience

The Grand Tour was the perfect tour for our family. From booking with the fantastic agents at Tripsite to our final day in Amsterdam, everything was streamline. I wanted an easy introduction to biking for our two 20 something yr old sons and their partners. They are not avid bikers like myself so it was important to do a tour that was fun, easy and would promote the sport of cycling. I got them e-bikes. This tour did it all! The Magnifique X was beautiful. We had rooms on upper deck. The sliding window let in an incredible amount of light and made the room appear a bit larger. The beds and pillows were cozy with a nice size bathroom considering being on a barge. There was a lot of room on boat to lounge around and enjoy the scenic views. The Magnifique X staff were the best. They went above and beyond to ensure our comfort and safety. Our chef was Sidi. Some of the best food we’ve ever tasted came from this amazing Chef! It was the best food on entire trip including Paris and Amsterdam. The BBQ evening and chocolate Mousse were our fave’s. Our bike guides Eva and Caroline were knowledgeable. Safety was always a priority. We had daily updates on the following day’s itinerary. I highly recommend this Family Friendly tour.

We just returned from the Amsterdam to Bruges bike-and-boat tour, and it exceeded every expectation.

The entire experience was exceptional from start to finish. The crew and guides were outstanding—friendly, professional, and genuinely focused on making sure every guest had an amazing time. The service aboard the boat was first-class, yet relaxed and welcoming.

The boat itself was fantastic: comfortable cabins, beautiful common areas, and the perfect place to unwind after each day’s ride. The food was another highlight. Every meal was delicious and thoughtfully prepared, and we looked forward to dinner every evening.

The cycling was exactly what we hoped for. The routes were scenic, well planned, and mostly on incredible bike paths through charming villages, canals, farmland, and historic towns. The bikes were high quality, comfortable, and well maintained, making the rides enjoyable for cyclists of all abilities. The itinerary struck a great balance between riding and exploring.

One of our favorite parts of each day was stopping in small Belgian and Dutch towns for a beer and a cone of fresh frites before continuing on. Those little moments made the trip feel authentic and unhurried.

If you’re considering a European bike-and-boat vacation, this is an easy recommendation. Beautiful scenery, outstanding staff, excellent food, great bikes, a wonderful boat, and an itinerary that lets you experience the Netherlands and Belgium at the perfect pace. We’d book another Tripsite tour without hesitation.

A glorious tour on an amazing ship with super awesome comfy bikes. Can't say enough about the food, staff, scenery, plus there was a festival in every town in Belgium the week we were there which only added to the fun. Thanks to all the staff for giving us a fantastic week!

The terrific barge is owned by a Dutch family and the entire crew was Dutch. That was a plus, they were all excellent and perhaps this factor brought in several other English speaking mountain, e.g. UK, New Zealand and Australia.. This trip surpassed our expectations!

The terrific barge is owned by a Dutch family and the entire crew was Dutch. That was a plus, they were all excellent and perhaps this factor brought in several other English speaking mountain, e.g. UK, New Zealand and Australia.. This trip surpassed our expectations!

Beautiful bike rides through fields of sunflowers and ripening wheat, coffee stops in lovely little villages, wonderful meals prepared by chef Frank, great support leadership and witty information by guides: Wim and Harold, great navigation by captain Erik and staff Milton and Moh.

Boat was well organized, food was delicious Staffs were cheerful,knowledgeable and helpful in all aspects. At the end of the tour staffs and guests were like family, happy bunch.

We loved the guided bike rides, fabulous scenery and an organized attentive guide, thanks Dick.
The food was amazing and plentiful. We were very well looked after by our chef, Lucie.
We were lucky to have a small group, which meant we were individually well looked after by the crew of 4. Thanks also to our experienced Captain, Chiel and Joanna who ensured all our needs were met.

Hard to say a most memorable!
The fabulous crew and leader, Sara, Lisa, Didi and Micky really made this a special trip but so did the group I cycled with. It is a fabulous adventure.

The cycling was phenomenal: beautiful scenery, wonderful paved designated cycling paths. Our guides were friendly, experienced, just excellent. Our boat, the Magnifique X was beautiful and very comfortable and the excellent staff prepared delicious food and took great care of us.
Definitely one of our best bike and boat trips - this was #9! Hopefully more to come!

I had a good time but I think a lot could have been done better. I was concerned about the health and safety of those participating, including the guide. The weather during the tour was very hot, yet the guide said there was no heat protocol in the company. I worry about the next group that would have been cycling in +40 C temperatures. There was a bit of discussion every evening about the heat and consequent route modifications, and everyone was offered an e-bike because of it, but the young people in the group (and some of the older ones) mostly wanted to take the preestablished route. That meant that I spent half of the trip on the boat. Why wasn't there a system where the cyclists could leave considerably earlier to avoid the afternoon heat? There were various arguments given why this couldn't happen, but none of them seemed very convincing. On one day it took the barge a long time to get to the destination, so the argument was that we'd be waiting at the other end in the heat for the boat. But from a health perspective, waiting in the shade for the boat would have been safer than cycling through the very hot afternoons. Other days the boat got to the next destination early. We could have done our circuit and gotten back to it early.

The company should have had systems in place to deal with the heat. The only one they offered was an e-bike (I had already paid to hire one, so this wasn't a modification for me). The tour guide was a nice guy but his favourite expression seemed to be 'what can you do?'. I would have much preferred someone who took charge, recognised the dangers, and was more forward in suggesting modifications. Overall I felt quite unsafe.

As an example of feeling unsafe, on one day I was left behind by the group because I faced a large deal of traffic. Even the 'sweep' went ahead of me. Eventually the sweep saw me and waited, but we had lost the group. I was amazed that the sweep didn't have the phone number of the guide or the ship. Why wasn't it mandatory that we all write this down/create a contact, before we embarked on the first day. The tour guide said his number had been on the board since the beginning, but had never urged us to write it down. It would have been such a simple thing to do.

There was also poor route planning. On one day the route took us up a very steep potholed path (to the Sancerre village), and three cyclists came off their bikes, each with considerable bruises and cuts. My friend was one of them. The tour guide washed her wound at the top, but wasn't aware of the catastrophe on the route till we all pushed our bikes to the top. He was quite hard of hearing, so I'm not sure if he didn't hear from others what had happened or was himself too exhausted to descend to give help. On this matter, he wasn't young, and I worried for his health having to ride in the very punishing heat too.  SHOW MORE 

Great guide (Paul). Food and cabin only marginal. Dinners were almost always cold.

This was my ninth bike / barge trip and I have enjoyed all of them, but this one was my favorite thanks to the dedicated crew which worked hard to ensure the success of the trip. Diana, Mickey, Virginia and Jeoffrey were all top notch.

Except for one day of peddling through a very industrial area, the scenery along the Rhine was beautiful. For the most part off road on dedicated wide cycle paths. Each evening the tour director/convenor provided an orientation for the route the following day. The food on the barge was excellent. No complaints at all. Very good value.
Note: The cabins at the back of the barge seemed a bit more cramped and noisy.

The staff and the tour guides made this trip awesome. I would have given it a 5, but we were stuck on the boat in Auxerre for the week due to a broken lock on the Yonne river, so I can't rate what we didn't see. That said, our tour guides developed a beautiful series of bike rides based in our near Auxerre (all on the fly). The staff on the boat were awesome too - working together as a team and making relationships with all the guests. I can say with certainty that all 22 guests had a fantastic week.

Everything on his trip was wonderful! The boat was the best one we have been on, the cabins were large and they had sliding doors that opened to the river, the food was gourmet quality. The rides took us to wonderful cities which we walked through and toured from canal boats. The scenery was delightful and changing every day from river views to farmland and small towns. When we got to Paris one of the guides stayed there and was so helpful in getting us to the places we wanted to see.Like our own personal concierge.