What's Included in a Supported Gravel Cycling Holiday

The clearest way to understand what you’re buying on a supported gravel cycling holiday is to read the line on the invoice that says “included” — and then read the line that says “not included” just as carefully. Both matter. A good operator tells you exactly where its responsibility ends and yours begins, because the gap between the two is where holidays go wrong: the rider who assumed lunch was covered, the one who didn’t realise they still needed travel insurance, the one surprised at the airport that the transfer wasn’t laid on. This guide closes that gap. It’s a precise, honest account of what is included in a gravel cycling holiday with us — every line of it — and an equally plain list of what isn’t.

If you want the broader picture of how the model works as a whole — what “supported” and “hotel-to-hotel” mean, how a day flows — that’s covered in what a supported gravel tour is. This piece is narrower and more useful at the point of decision: a checklist you can hold against any tour, ours or anyone else’s, so you know precisely what your money buys and what you still have to sort yourself.

The short version: included, in one list

For riders who want the answer before the detail, here is everything included on every Gravel Adventure tour, stated flat:

• English-speaking guides on guided departures (maximum 10 riders per guide; 8–10 on the Trans Pyrenees).
• The full GPS route for Garmin, Wahoo and Komoot on self-guided departures.
• A daily evening or morning briefing with maps, the route overview and elevation profiles.
• Daily luggage transfer hotel to hotel in the support van — collected at the hotel each evening.
• A support vehicle on the road carrying spares, a spare bike and a clothing bag, with mechanic help from the crew and parts at cost.
• Hand-picked hotels, hotel-to-hotel, a different well-placed one each night, with bike storage sorted.
• Breakfast every day, and some dinners — always including a closing celebration dinner.
• A daily lunch stop at the van with a free PurePower energy-drink refill (energy bars and chews available to buy).
• The per-tour airport or bus transfer (which one is specified on each tour page).
• A Gravel-Adventure jersey to take home.
• A shared online photo album of the week.
• Lifetime membership of the RIDERS network, our community of past guests.

And here, just as flatly, is what is not included:

• Flights to and from the region.
• Most lunches, and some dinners (the ones on free evenings).
• Travel and cancellation insurance — required, and your own to arrange.
• Bike rental, where you want it (gravel around +€300, e-gravel around +€400 for the week, region permitting).
• The single-room supplement, if you want a room to yourself (priced per tour).
• Personal extras: drinks, parking where it applies, spare parts used in a repair (charged at cost), and anything you buy at the van beyond the free energy-drink refill.

That’s the whole picture. The rest of this guide explains each line — what it actually means on the road, and why it’s drawn where it is — because the specifics are what separate a genuinely fully serviced tour from one that uses the word loosely.

Guiding and routes: someone has solved the navigation

The first thing a supported tour includes is the answer to “where do I go?” — and it’s included in one of two forms, depending on how you choose to ride.

On a guided departure, an experienced English-speaking guide rides with the group and navigates. You are deliberately not handed the route file; you follow, which frees you to ride and look around rather than manage a head unit and second-guess junctions in the rain. Guided groups are capped at a maximum of 10 riders per guide — eight to ten on the Trans Pyrenees. That cap is part of what’s included, even though it never appears as a line item: it’s what keeps the group small enough that the pace flexes to the people in it, that the guide knows everyone’s form, and that a café stop or a viewpoint isn’t a logistical event.

On a self-guided departure, what’s included instead is the full, tested GPS route for Garmin, Wahoo and Komoot. You ride it at your own pace, not attached to a group, with the same hotels, the same luggage transfer and the same van on the road. The navigation work — building a multi-day gravel line that’s actually rideable, with surfaces that haven’t been logged shut and climbs that go through — has been done and ridden in advance by us, and handed to you as a clean file. Every route we run is scouted and tested by the team before it goes on sale; the line you ride is one we’ve ridden first.

Either way, a daily briefing is included: maps, the route overview, elevation profiles and the key points of the day. If you’re weighing which format suits you, the guided-versus-self-guided section of how our tours work is worth the read — but the thing to hold onto here is that the navigation is solved and included, in whichever form you prefer, and the support underneath is identical between the two.

Luggage transfer: you ride with a day bag

This is the line that does the most to change how a week feels, so it’s worth being exact about what’s included and what isn’t.

Daily luggage transfer hotel to hotel, in the support van, is included on every stage. You leave your main bag at the hotel in the morning; it travels in the van; it’s waiting for you at the next hotel that evening. You ride each day carrying only a small day bag — a shell, a tube or two, a multitool, your phone, whatever food you like. Across a week, that’s the difference between a holiday and an expedition.

One honest detail, because precision is the point of this guide: you collect your bag at the hotel. It travels in the van and it’s there when you arrive, but it isn’t portered up to your room for you — this is a supported gravel tour, not a five-star concierge service, and we’d rather tell you plainly than let you expect otherwise. The bag moves; you carry it the last few metres from the van or the lobby to your room. That’s the whole asterisk.

What this replaces, if you did the trip yourself, is the genuinely awkward problem of moving luggage point-to-point across a region: either carrying everything (heavier, slower, a different kind of trip entirely) or arranging your own bag transfers between bookings, which rarely goes cleanly. On a supported tour it simply happens, every day, and it’s included. Our Trans Alp Gravel crosses four countries in a week — Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy — and your bag follows you the whole way without you arranging a thing.

The support vehicle: the safety net you’re paying for

The support vehicle is the heart of what “supported” means, and what it includes is more than most riders assume.

On the road through the day, the van carries spares, a spare bike and a clothing bag. The crew provides mechanic help — a creaking bottom bracket, a tyre weeping sealant, a shifting problem — and spare parts are available at cost, which is the one fair caveat: the help is included, the labour is included, but if you need a new chain or a tyre, you pay what the part cost us, not a marked-up workshop rate. The spare bike is there for the genuine mechanical disaster — a cracked frame, a derailleur torn off — that would otherwise end your week.

And the van means a lift. If a stage runs longer than your legs wanted, or a bad day arrives mid-week, the support vehicle gets you to the hotel. This is included and it is not a failure to use it — it’s precisely what lets a mixed-pace group share the same week without anyone being stranded twenty kilometres from anywhere. A long afternoon never becomes a problem; the bonk is somebody else’s job to prevent.

What the van does not include is a guarantee that it’s beside you at every metre. On the more remote Explorer stages you may be further from the vehicle for stretches, which is why we ask that riders on those lines can handle a puncture or a chain issue themselves. The safety net is real and always on the route; it just isn’t a chase car ten metres off your wheel. That distinction is part of being honest about what you’re buying.

Hotels and food: where you sleep, and what’s on the table

Hand-picked, hotel-to-hotel accommodation is included — a different, well-placed hotel each night, chosen for character, position on the route and a serious dinner, with bike storage sorted in advance. The default is a shared double room; that’s what the headline price covers (more on the single-room supplement below). On the Trans Alp that means seven nights in South Tyrolean and Lombard hotels, from valley-floor townhouses to hillside mountain places; on Trans Cyprus Gravel it’s seven nights from Troodos village guesthouses to a final night in Paphos by the Mediterranean. The hotels are part of the design, not an afterthought — places worth staying after a hard day.

Food is where riders most often misread the fine print, so here it is exactly.

Breakfast is included every single day. A proper one, because everyone in the room is about to ride a hundred kilometres or so.

Some dinners are included — always the closing celebration dinner, plus a number of others that varies by tour. The Trans Alp includes six dinners across seven nights (and a gala dinner in Riva del Garda to finish); Cyprus and Tuscany include three dinners each, with a closing dinner among them. The pattern is deliberate: we include dinner where the hotel’s kitchen is part of the experience or the village has few options, and we leave evenings free where you’re somewhere worth wandering out into. The dinners on those free evenings are your own.

The daily lunch stop at the support van is included, and what’s free there is the PurePower energy-drink refill — top up your bottles with it as often as you like, at no cost. To be precise, because this catches people out: energy bars and chews are available to buy at the van, not included. The drink refill is free; the solid food is a small shop. It’s a sensible arrangement — you only buy and carry what you’ll actually eat — but it’s worth knowing that “free energy refill” means the drink, not a free pile of bars.

Most lunches are not included, and that’s by design too. Stopping for a coffee and a plate of something in a town you’ve never seen is one of the quiet pleasures of riding across real places, and we’d rather leave you that than herd you to a fixed lunch. So: breakfast every day, some dinners, a free drink refill at the van — and the rest of the eating is yours, which is how it should be.

Transfers: the one that’s included, and the one that isn’t

Airport logistics are the classic place where “included” needs reading carefully, because it varies by tour — so each tour page states exactly which transfer is included, and you should check the one you’re booking. The principle is consistent: the per-tour transfer that makes the route work is included; getting yourself to the region is not.

A few concrete examples, because the specifics differ:

• On the Trans Alp, the return bus transfer from Lake Garda back to Füssen at the end is included — it’s the leg that closes a point-to-point traverse — while the arrival into Füssen and any airport transfers are your own.
• On Cyprus, the return transfer to Larnaca on the final morning is included; the arrival transfer from Larnaca airport is not (it’s about ten minutes, and we can recommend a local taxi).
• On Tuscany, a shared transfer from Pisa airport to the start is included on arrival, and the return bus from the coast to Pisa at the end.

The rule of thumb: the transfer that exists because the tour is point-to-point — getting you and the group back to the start, or to the finish — is built into the price. The transfer that’s really just your personal journey to the region is yours to arrange, alongside the flights. Every tour page spells out which is which, so there’s no guessing.

The extras that come with riding with us

Three things are included that aren’t logistics at all, but matter to the experience and to what you take home:

• A Gravel-Adventure jersey — yours to keep, and a decent one, not a throwaway.
• A shared online photo album from the week, so you come home with proper images of the riding, not just whatever you snapped at a junction.
• Lifetime membership of the RIDERS network — our community of past guests, which is how a lot of our riders end up planning the next year’s trip with people they met on the last one.

None of these is the reason you book. But they’re included, they’re real, and they’re part of why the weeks tend to turn into a habit rather than a one-off.

Now the honest part: what is not included

A guide to inclusions that skips the exclusions isn’t worth much. Here is everything you still arrange or pay for yourself, stated as plainly as the included list.

Flights. This is the big one. You arrange your own travel to and from the region. The tour price is an on-the-ground price — everything from arrival to departure — and flights sit outside it. Each tour page lists the sensible arrival and departure airports.

Most lunches, and some dinners. As above: breakfast daily and several dinners are in; the rest of the eating, including dinners on free evenings, is yours. Budget for it the way you’d budget for eating anywhere you travel.

Travel and cancellation insurance. This is required and it is not included — you must arrange your own. We ask every rider to be covered for a multi-day cycling trip abroad, including cancellation, because a week away on a bike has more moving parts than a beach holiday, and the unexpected does occasionally happen.

Bike rental. Not included in the standard price. Most riders bring their own bike, which is what we recommend. Where we can arrange rental through a local partner, budget roughly +€300 for a gravel bike and +€400 for an e-gravel bike for the week, subject to availability — ask us about specifications before booking. The exception is Cyprus, where rental isn’t readily available, so bringing your own bike in a good hard case is the right call.

The single-room supplement. The default room is a shared double, included. If you want a room to yourself, the single-room supplement is available on request and priced per tour — it’s an extra because the hotels charge us for sole occupancy. Crucially, a solo rider does not have to pay it: come on your own and share the default double arrangement at no extra cost. The supplement is only for those who specifically want their own room.

The small stuff. Drinks beyond the free van refill, the energy bars and chews at the van, any spare parts used in a repair (at cost), and parking where a tour involves it (the Trans Alp, for instance, has long-term parking near the start at around €40 for the week, paid by you). None of these is large; all of them are yours.

We draw the line where we do on purpose. We include the things that are hard, tedious or risky to do well yourself — the route, the beds, the bag, the mechanical safety net, the transfer that makes a point-to-point line work. We leave you the things that are genuinely yours: your flights, your insurance, your bike, and the simple pleasures like choosing where to stop for a coffee. You can see the exact inclusions and exclusions for any route on its tour page, linked from our tours.

Included versus doing it yourself

The fair question an experienced rider asks is: why pay for all this when I could organise it? You can — plenty of our own riders do self-supported trips too. But it’s worth seeing the included list against what the DIY version actually costs you in time and risk, because most of that cost is invisible until you’re in it.

• The route is included and tested. DIY, you build and validate a multi-day gravel line yourself, and you find the mistakes when you’re riding them.
• The hotels are included, booked and sequenced with bike storage. DIY, you book a string of places in the right spots, on your dates, hoping none cancels — which in popular regions in season can sink a plan on its own.
• Luggage transfer is included, every day. DIY, you carry everything or arrange your own transfers between bookings — a logistics puzzle that rarely goes cleanly.
• The support vehicle is included — spares, spare bike, mechanic, a lift. DIY, a mechanical or a bad day twenty kilometres from anywhere is entirely yours to solve.
• The food on the road — the free van refill, the included breakfasts and dinners — is included. DIY, every resupply and every evening meal is another thing to plan.

The trade-off is honest: a supported tour costs more than a bare DIY trip, and it runs on fixed dates and a set route rather than total spontaneity. What you buy with that money and structure is a week where the friction is gone and the only real decision is how hard to ride. For a rider spending one of perhaps two precious weeks of real riding a year, that’s often exactly the right trade — and the included list above is what that trade actually consists of, line by line. If you’d like to see how it all comes together across an ordinary day, what a supported gravel week involves walks through one start to finish.

How the price fits together

So that the included list connects to a real number: prices are per rider and vary by route — from around €2,650 for the shorter European weeks up to €3,695 for the longest traverses — and what’s included is identical in kind across all of them. A shorter tour and a longer one differ in days and distance, not in the standard of support: same luggage transfer, same van, same hotel-to-hotel format, same daily lunch stop, same guided-or-self-guided choice.

A deposit of €500 per rider secures a place; the balance is due 60 days before departure (tours starting within 60 days are paid in full at booking). Tours are graded to two levels — Explore and Adventure — so a mixed-ability group can share the same week; if you’re unsure where your legs sit, our levels page explains the difference. The honest first step isn’t a deposit, it’s a free 30-minute call to talk through fit, dates, pace and which inclusions matter to you before any money changes hands.

So you know exactly what you’re buying

Come back to where we started — the line that says “included,” read alongside the line that says “not.” On a Gravel Adventure tour, included means the guiding or the GPS route, the daily luggage transfer, the support van with its spares and spare bike and the lift if you need it, the hand-picked hotels, breakfast every day and some dinners with a closing celebration among them, the daily lunch stop with its free energy-drink refill, the per-tour transfer, the jersey, the photo album and lifetime RIDERS membership. Not included means your flights, most lunches and some dinners, your travel insurance, any bike rental, and a single room if you want one — stated up front so nothing surprises you later.

That clarity is the point. We carry the route, the beds, the bag and the safety net so a hard, beautiful week of riding is the only thing you have to think about — and we tell you plainly where our job ends and yours begins. If that’s the kind of week you’re after, how our tours work lays out the model in full, our tours has every route, date and price, and a free call is the fastest way to find the right one for your legs. Come and ride; we’ll carry the rest, and you’ll know exactly what “the rest” means before you go.