Once, the only two wheels you needed on your annual summer holiday were on your suitcase. But now they have pedals and saddles attached – because holidaymakers are getting on their bikes. As the summer holiday season gets under way this weekend, tour firms are reporting increases of 10-40% in bicycle holiday bookings. Some 3.8 million people, according to research by VisitEngland, are keen to take to the roads and country tracks on a bike holiday this year.
Cycling holidays were once the preserve of outdoor enthusiasts packing raincoats and picnics or Lycra-clad fitness fans powering over the hills of France or Spain. But holiday firms say a much broader range of Brits are now opting for sun, sea and spokes on trips ranging from the UK's national parks to the Mekong delta in Vietnam.
Cycling is now mass-market. With their enthusiasm boosted by the heap of medals amassed by Team GB in recent Olympics and the success of Team Sky, an estimated 2.5 million people turned out to watch the world's biggest cycling race in Yorkshire earlier this month, and tens of thousands of those Tour de France fans turned up on two wheels. Roads closed to motor vehicles ahead of the race were packed with cyclists of all ages.
"It's been a slow-burn trend," said Andrew Straw, marketing director of Skedaddle, a cycling holiday specialist based in Newcastle upon Tyne. "With Bradley Wiggins and then Chris Froome winning the Tour, and the Olympics, people are getting into cycling. It has become a bit cooler." Skedaddle's sales are 40% ahead of this time last year and inquiries since the weekend of the Tour's visit to the UK have increased by 50%.
Straw said that the biggest change in the market is that cycling is fast becoming a family holiday choice. Skedaddle launched family holidays last year and has tripled sales so far in 2014. "More families want to keep their kids off the Xboxes and get them outside," said Straw.
Exodus and Explore, major activity holiday operators, say growth in demand for cycling holidays is far outstripping alternatives such as trekking, walking or cultural trips. Explore – which offers exotic trips such as two weeks pedalling through Nicaragua and Costa Rica to the Panama canal from £1,580 without flights, alongside four-day Whitehaven to Tynemouth trips for £250 – says cycling holiday sales are up by more than 20% in the last nine weeks compared with the same period last year.
Exodus, whose range includes 17 days "cycling the empire of Genghis Khan" across the Mongolian steppes or a bone-shaking eight days of rocky track mountain biking in Morocco, said its cycling holidays were up 10% year on year. Andy Ross, head of product at Exodus, said: "It's not just advanced cyclists wanting to join our tough Tour de France-style trips; we're finding that lots of our travellers have only taken their bike out on the occasional weekend before, and are trying out our cycling holidays for the first time."
The interest in cycling holidays is part of a general surge in interest in saddling up in the UK, although official figures suggest the proportion of the adult population who cycle at least once a month fell back slightly to 14.7% in the year to October 2013 from 15.3% a year before.
Sustrans, which oversees the National Cycle Network, says that 50 million more journeys were taken on its 14,500-mile network of cycle paths last year compared with 2012, a 7% rise. It says that more than a third of the users of the network could have driven but chose not to. Meanwhile, the retail chain Halfords – the UK's biggest bike retailer who recently paid £20m for Boardman Bikes, founded by former Olympic champion Chris Boardman – recently said sales in the last three months rose by more than a fifth compared to last year. The company's chief executive, Matt Davies, said: "We believe that as a country we are falling more and deeper in love with cycling and recognising the joy and health benefits and the power of the bike as a commuter tool."
■ This weekend and next will be the busiest of the year for holiday departures as schools break up for the summer holidays. Travelsupermarket.com said last-minute package holiday bookings were up nearly a third as holidaymakers shopped around for late deals. It said there was strong demand for traditional bargain destinations, with searches for Benidorm up 18% and Lanzarote up 7% while searches for Mallorca and Menorca have also seen double-digit rises.