# Graham Baxter Tours?



## buckybiker4 (May 17, 2004)

I'm looking into going to Paris-Roubaix this spring with Graham Baxter tours; riding the last 100k on Saturday, and watching the race on Sunday. Has anyone done a Graham Baxter tour? Any advice or cautionary tales?


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## teoteoteo (Sep 8, 2002)

buckybiker4 said:


> I'm looking into going to Paris-Roubaix this spring with Graham Baxter tours; riding the last 100k on Saturday, and watching the race on Sunday. Has anyone done a Graham Baxter tour? Any advice or cautionary tales?



I rarely delve into banter about specific companies. You'll find horror stories about everything and everyone if you look hard enough. I do know of at least 2 unpleasant GB experiences, one of which was fixed afterwards in the form of a refund. The other I never heard the end of, aside from the fact that people were somewhat rescued by Trek Travel during the ordeal. 

To their defense both events happened during the height of the Lance Armstrong TdF craze when companies were operating waaaaaaayyyy beyond normal capacity. In those years all of the bigger companies could sell EVERY spot they offered, and be sold out in October and November of the years before the race. 

Some words of caution for picking travel companies. They cut costs generally in the 3 biggest areas of importance. Food...pretty self explanatory but who wants crap food on vacation. Hotels. Again, the hotel can dictate your ability to rest. Combine bad food with hotel where you don't get restful sleep. Then to go ride a hard ride over cobbles in the blustery wind. 

The last is people. You need a good size staff to run things well. Experienced guides cost money. Do you want a guy that speaks little to no french ( or flemish), can't work of bikes very well, and is being a tad bit overworked? As crappy as it sounds they better be capable of taking care of you if the $hit hits the fan, because sometimes it does. In my years guiding I have had the severe displeasure of people straying off,getting very lost from the group. I've been to the hospital with them more than once. Very little bad stuff happens, but the fact remains sometimes things do, so at the very least make sure you've put yourself in good hands. 

Last, just because somebody may not have the $$ to go for an established leader (not that Baxter isn't) doesn't mean that you as the traveler can't level the playing field. Doing things like buying maps of the region and studying a little before you go. Next, find out the hotels you'll use and emergency numbers for the regions you'll be in. Put the hotel and emergency info on laminated cards in the local language to carry with you. Include things like your doctors name back home too. Put one in the seatpack and one in your jersey pocket. Even go so far as to get a Lonely Planet book and study the area before you go. Being smart and partially self reliant will never harm you on a trip like this. Often you can be a the guy the other guests buy beers for....not a bad proposition in Belgium.


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## ispoke (Feb 28, 2005)

*GB is a decent budget option*

Teo has some great advice. And he's right - a budget operator (like GB) may not have a backup plan. So pick your level of risk partly based on the cost of the tour. Another tip - practice some basic French and buy a CD to listen to some pronunciation. You may get snubbed in Paris despite your best efforts, but you'll be warmly appreciated in the French countryside.

We did a GB tour for the TdF in 2003, a year when Americans were everywhere rooting for Lance. A friend gave us a good review of GB, acknowledging that a budget tour operator wasn't going to provide AAA amenities (and we wouldn't want them). We did the Alps package finishing in Arles. We rode up the Col de la Columbiere, Col d'Izoard, Alpe d'Huez, the Ventoux etc.

Accomodations were typically small charming hotels, but in France that means a rustic "Inn", not Motel 6. It would have been very romantic if not for us being worn out after long days cycling and following the Tour! Dinners were nice enough that we felt we experienced some genuine French cooking, but of course not the 7-course extravaganza. Frankly on our budget we ate better during the GB tour than most of the crappy tourist-adjacent food we found in Paris on our own time.

Breakfasts were great - true "continental" meaning yogurt, fruit, bread, cereal, coffee, juice. Perfect pre-ride eating. Lunch we were on our own on the road and that was fine. Our leader subsisted on a half liter of Yop (yogurt) for lunch every day.

When you're following a race, and riding a portion of the route each day, you gotta realize that the schedule is BUSY. Breakfast may be at a reasonable 7am, but you might not eat dinner until an average of 9:30 or 10pm since you're busing from town to town after cycling and spectating all day. We noticed about 1 dinner in 3 required a restart of a kitchen that had already closed for the night!

The GB tours seemed very well researched and the guides (who may or not have been with the company before) were provided with a wealth of information to assist with route selection, navigation etc. Long and short options, or easy vs. difficult, were frequently available. Each participant got a map every day, and the roads/intersections in France were very well marked. Our guide was a cycling nut who had followed the TdF before (not with GB), and rode the long option every day, and was very helpful.

GB is not Trek Travel. At GB you will not have a support person hanging out the side door of a minibus pushing your butt up Ventoux. You will not have someone set up a wine and cheese picnic halfway up the Col because you'd rather catch an early buzz than see the race leaders as they crest the mountain. And if you flat, or a pedal falls off because you didn't tighten it during reassembly, you'll need to figure it out with your fellow participants and the leader when he has a free moment. There will not be a van with a full Park Tool kit and there will not be a dedicated mechanic. At GB, you'll be responsible for disassembling and reassembling your own bike each day. We were fine with all of this and couldn't imagine paying more for more. YMMV.

Our only gripe was that their system did not work so well when they hired more buses to fill the incredible demand during the Lance era. The pinch came with driving logistics. You may be aware of federal driving standards and log books for big rig drivers in the USA. It's similar over there. Since our driver hadn't done a GB tour before, he made efforts to cut short the afternoons so that he wouldn't log excessive hours on duty. There were threats to leave the rendezvous point at a fixed time regardless of whether or not participants (who were negotiating post race crowd control) got back in time. Of course with this type of activity, someone has to be the bad cop otherwise their job would be like herding cats. Anyway, we witnessed some folks from a different GB bus literally get left behind after Alpe d'Huez and were trying to flag down any other bus for a lift. It was a gut wrenching way to finish an otherwise great day.

So if you want to take some time to evaluate GB, perhaps call them and ask how many buses they're running for the event and how many bus drivers are sympathetic to the event's unique schedule demands. Give them a hypothetical snafu (two cyclists are lost) and ask how your group (who finished the day OK) would contact the leader and figure out how or where to wait at the end of the day. And ask if the leaders plan to cycle each day, hopefully all of them, so you know they're in the same mindset as you.


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## sbindra (Oct 18, 2004)

I did a tour with GB this last summer through the Alps, although it was not during the TdF. I was pleased with how it worked out. It was a large group, almost 30 people and there was a small van that carried vests, helmets on climbs, etc. and then a larger truck that carried the bike boxes and luggage every day. My trip including a significant amount of climbing so people on the trip were generally experienced cyclists. To that end, the van is there to help you but from what I have heard, it is not like Trek travel or the american tour companies. The van stops maybe once on the middle of the climb and then goes to the top when the last rider goes through. I remember climbing the Tourmalet once and the Trek travel guy would wait, let everyone through, drive another 2 miles and then stop on the road again (it was really annoying).

The hotels are rustic, mainly 2 stars. However, from what I understand about the hotel rating system in France, stars mainly have to do with the amenities that the hotel offers as opposed to what I would term quality. Many of the Inns that we stayed in were simple - the kitchen is open during specific meal times, there is no food other than at meal times (except maybe for drinks in the lounge or sitting area), there is no room service, many Inns will be 3 or 4 story without an elevator, no television, no wireless service, etc. Having those amenities is what gets you more stars. However, I found that most of the Inns were clean, the staff was friendly, and the food was relatively good, all that I really wanted in a hotel.

As for the mechanics and repairs on the road, the environment I find to be totally different in France. There people expect cyclists to be on the road and even if you do not speak French and are on the side of the road with a problem, people will stop to help you. Once on a climb just over the French border in Spain, I totally bonked and walked the last mile of the climb. Of the maybe 20 or 30 cars that passed me while I was walking, at least 5 or 6 cars stopped and offered to help (albeit in Spanish) even going so far as to ask if I needed a ride to the next town. I have bonked on climbs in NY in the Catskills and walked to the top and I don't think even once a motorist has stopped to offer to help. I can only imagine anywhere near PR will be exactly the same.

As to ispoke's comment concerning buses leaving people behind, that is not a GB issue, that is a French issue and can happen with any touring company. It is not an issue of logging excessive hours or overtime, it is that in France, a driver can only be on duty for so long before he must be relieved. So, if the bus does not leave by a certain time so that the driver can get back before the end of his shift, he either cannot drive or must stop on the way and a relief driver must be called. At that point, the entire busload of people waits until a relief driver arrives and can continue the journey.


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## teoteoteo (Sep 8, 2002)

The bus thing is interesting because one of the incidents I mentioned was GB and the bus driver pulled over and stopped for the night. They refunded everyones money after the trip, if I recall correctly no relief driver ever came so everyone slept on the bus. I don't know all of the rules but I have worked as a guide during numerous TdF's with buses in operation and never had a driver mention any rules such as this. The incident I mentioned was also 2003 so perhaps it was a specific bus company contracted by GB or their union for that year.


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## vlaanderen2004 (Nov 29, 2004)

teoteoteo said:


> I rarely delve into banter about specific companies. You'll find horror stories about everything and everyone if you look hard enough. I do know of at least 2 unpleasant GB experiences, one of which was fixed afterwards in the form of a refund. The other I never heard the end of, aside from the fact that people were somewhat rescued by Trek Travel during the ordeal.
> 
> To their defense both events happened during the height of the Lance Armstrong TdF craze when companies were operating waaaaaaayyyy beyond normal capacity. In those years all of the bigger companies could sell EVERY spot they offered, and be sold out in October and November of the years before the race.
> 
> ...


I did a Paris-Roubaix weekend last year with Velo Classic Tours. www.veloclassic.com
They are a small company and they have the logistics perfected. We rode 100 km on the course with and met a few pro teams and had Team-CSC DS Scott Sunderland as our guide. Doesn't get much better than that- full van support, lunch, hotels were 4-star, food was fantastic, and the owners of the company lead the trip, so no detail goes overlooked. I wouldn't do it any other way than first class, and certainly wouldn't put up with the sh*t that comes with a GB trip. I've heard dozens of horror stories from other people i've met traveling over the last few years, and wouldn't reccomend them. thats my experience and my two cents.


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