Bicycle Tours - Development

Development

The bicycle gained from the outdoor movement of the 1930s. The Cyclists' Touring Club advertised a week's all-in tour, staying at hotels recommended to it by other cyclists, for £3 10s. The youth hostel movement started in Germany and spread abroad and a cycling holiday staying at hostels in the 1930s could be had for £2. Roderick Watson and Martin Gray estimate that there were ten million bicycles in Britain to one million cars.

A decline set in across Europe, but particularly in Britain, when millions of servicemen returned from World War II having learned to drive. Trips away were now to be taken, for the increasing number who had one, by car. The decline in the United States came even sooner. McGurn says:

The story of inter-war cycling was characterised by lack of interest and a steady decline... Cycling had lost out to the automobile, and to some extent to the new electric transport systems. In the 1930s cumbersome, fat-tyred 'balloon bombers', bulbously streamlined in imitation of motorcycles or aeroplanes, appealed to American children: the only mass market still open to cycle manufacturers. Wartime austerity gave cycling a short reprieve in the industrial world. The post-war peace was to lay the bicycle low.

However, between 1965 and 1975 the USA experienced a "Bike boom" following which, in 1976, to celebrate the Bicentenary of the founding of United States, Greg Siple organised a mass bike ride, Bikecentennial, from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Siple, said:

My original thought was to send out ads and flyers saying, 'Show up at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco at 9 o'clock on June 1 with your bicycle.' And then we were going to bicycle across the country. I pictured thousands of people, a sea of people with their bikes and packs all ready to go, and there would be old men and people with balloon-tire bikes and Frenchmen who flew over just for this. Nobody would shoot a gun off or anything. At 9 o'clock everybody would just start moving. It would be like this crowd of locusts crossing America

The ride eventually ran from Oregon to Williamsburg, Virginia, site of the first British settlements. 4100 people rode, with 2000 completing the whole route. It defined a new start for cycle-touring in the United States and led to the creation of the Adventure Cycling Association. The ACA has gone on to create mapped routes across America and into Canada, many of the rides taking up to three months to complete on a loaded bicycle.

In Britain, the Cyclists Touring Club has grown to 70,000 members (in 2011) and is now the biggest body campaigning for cycling and cyclist's rights in the UK. It continues to organise group touring events including day rides through its local groups and CTC holidays in many countries led by experienced CTC members. Since 1983 Sustrans has developed to create a National Cycle Network of long-distance cycle routes including back roads and traffic-free tracks built, signed and mapped in partnership with a wide range of local organisations.

Since 1980 there has also been a growth of organised cycling holidays provided by commercial organisations in many countries. Some companies provide accommodation and route information to cyclists travelling independently, others will focus on a group experience, including guides and support for a large number of riders cycling together. A variation on this is holidays, often in "exotic" locations, organised in partnership with a charity, where the participants are expected to raise a substantial charitable donation as well as covering their own costs.

The scale of bicycle touring and its economic effects are difficult to estimate, given the informal nature of much activity. Market research indicates that in 2006 British cyclists spent £120m on 450,000 organised cycling holidays and a further 2.5 million people included some cycling activity in their annual holiday that year. The total economic benefit to communities visited during the nine-day long Great Victorian Bike Ride was estimated at about AU$2 million in 2011, which does not include costs paid directly to ride organisers and ongoing benefits to towns. Sustrans estimate that the total value of cycle tourism in the UK in 1997 was £635m and they forecast £14bn for the whole EU by 2020. Among examples of current activity given by Sustrans are 1.5m cyclists using the 250 kilometres (160 mi) Danube Cycle Route each year and 25% of holiday visitors in Germany using bicycles during their visit.