4 Star France Tour Reviews — 211 to 220 of 220

Loved the trip and the Merlijn. Hoping to do another tour in 2017.

The guide was not well prepared with maps and the boat kept changing docking locations. The Rhine is very industrial from Basel to Mainz. The rides were not very interesting or long. It was not one of your better offers.

The bike part was more challenging than in the discription. You have to be a strong biker used to hills. There are many hills and one very challenging hill. So I would not consider this an easy tour as in the description. However it was well worth the effort if you are well trained. Our guide Wiro was awesome and kept us together and on time which was very much appreciated. I would recommends this trip in spring or early summer. By the time we went end of August the vegetation was all dried up and there were no flowers because they had such a hot dry summer. I prefer a comfort plus boat as you have more space in your cabin. These cabins were very small. However all in all it was a beautiful, historic and worth while tr which I would recommend to avid cyclists.

The guides are young and very athletic. People who sign up for this level of bicycling aren't usually top bikers, unless they are doing it to be with friends or spouse. I think a bit more thought could be put into the introductory ride the first day, bridge crossings, sudden merging into traffic, sudden turns to go steeply uphill. I've done much longer bike rides, but at this age, I didn't want that much challenge.

The boat itself is nothing remarkable, but quite comfortable and clean. The staff was amazingly friendly. Route descriptions were sparse in some sections so there was some guessing involved. The maps themselves didn't have any road names on them if you did get lost they were of no use. We honestly didn't rely on the maps/route descriptions as much as the info from our daily meetings with the tour guide. There were good and bad days as far as scenery on the rides, a few days were pretty boring with not a lot to look at, while others were quite beautiful. We docked within walking distance to town on all days except one (where you had the option of one lonely restaurant). On board you are provided with maps and flyers for each overnight town. The bikes were super heavy and cumbersome (not bikes I am used to) but this is the norm in Europe. The food on board was excellent. I would recommend this trip as I know the routes are being reviewed and descriptions/maps updated.

There seemed to be tension between the owners of the barge and guy doing the cooking, cleaning and maintenance. The guy was trying to do the job of more than 2 people by himself. One day when he needed help with a cranky generator the captain was in a bar. We did not get clean towels half way through as promised. I have been on 2 bike and barge trips and this had the worst staff. The guide was good but left slower riders at several critical junctures. It did not happen often. Seems the system works best when the owner is captain. Means he is present and accountable.

Garrit, our bike tour leader, was a novice on this route as well as a poor communicator to the english speaking clients. The docking area changed at each stop from the printed instructions, and the maps and turn-by-turn instructions were only partly correct! Everyone got lost at some point in the trip!! I had asked for GPS routing for my bike Garmin GPS but was told the route was to new and that it was not available! I think some accurate preparation would have made the trip more pleasant.
Second - the route along the Rhine is not scenic (as on the Danube) with few small towns to stop and look/snack on the way. The most notable sights were gravel pits and cement manufacturing. Of course, that is not the fault of the tour operator, however, they should have provided a detailed description of the small towns on the way (although not on the river) to give us the option of exploring the interesting ones and forgetting about the towns with 3 streets and no interesting sights.

Boat staff need to learn how to be more polite and friendly. The management seems to be in the military service.

We found the map directions confusing at times--i.e. Cross bridge and 3 streets and turn right. Sounds easy enough, but actually it meant 2 major streets and a round about. We usually solved this by using Google maps. But it added stressful tens of minutes to resolve. It pretty much meant that we slightly dreaded arriving at even a little village, due to the almost guaranteed confusion. Having the route available as a google map path would have been much much much better.
It's the service we pay for, not the specific route. It also made it feel like the route had not been retested for a while. Getting a bit lost wasn't all that bad, and we found some nice paths near Arles. The bikes were state of the art and high quality. None of our group liked the automatic transmission on the Bosch drive. It would frequently incorrectly shift in the middle of a climb and caused a bit of needless suffering. All in all it was a fun time. We couldn't have achieved the ride without the e-bikes.

First of all, let me be clear that we were very satisfied with the Tour. All in all, we would rate it a 9 out of 10. These are the reasons we couldn’t give it a perfect 10.
1. Here is the quote from the tour operator after we asked for the directions in advance: “Tell to clients that they don’t worry, the welcome meeting will be on Saturday p.m. and they will have all the time to study the route before they leave, the day after in the morning.” We did have the welcome meeting but it was a bit rushed and we really didn’t have time to ask questions. We were warned not to be late and arrived on time. They indicated that there was not enough time that evening.
2. We did not get our bikes at the welcome meeting. One Ebike had not yet returned on Saturday afternoon. We were told to return in the morning but not before 9:30 AM. When we arrived, we felt rushed and really didn’t have time to test the bikes. Mine (Ed) was a bit wobbly but I was told that there was nothing wrong. I did get used to it as we went along but my complaint was valid, further verified when I returned home to my own steady bike.
3. All of the bikes had problems with how they shifted and how they meshed with the electric function. Maybe it was our lack of familiarity with the Ebike but we really didn’t have time Sunday morning to ask questions.
4. We never got an explanation on how to engage all of the 27 gears, only could use nine. We were told that they shifted automatically and “don’t worry about it”. The automatic shift stopped working on two bikes after the second day.
5. The directions were very confusing and hard to follow. Last year we had the “E’s” to follow but this year nothing but the somewhat confusing directions.