How to prepare for your multi-day cycling holiday or mountain biking tour

Here at Trailbrakes Biking Holidays, we’ve been taking part in our own multi-day cycling trips and mountain biking adventures throughout the wilderness areas of Scotland and northern England for over 15 years. Our business began from humble beginnings, when our founder, Pete, managed to convince his unsuspecting friends and Christine, his partner in business and life, to join him on mountain biking tours and cycling trips, sometimes on routes that were not already tried and tested - with varying degrees of success!

This adventurous approach to researching cycling tours and mountain biking routes in the UK led to more than one sense of humour failure, but it does mean that the cycling holidays and mountain biking routes we now have listed on our website, are the best that they can possibly be. The cycling and road biking routes miss out sections on busy roads and make the most of the beautiful countryside in Scotland and northern England. While our mountain biking holidays take you on journeys through the most remote areas in the UK on trails that we know are bike-friendly. We keep the road sections to a minimum and make sure that the trails that you’ll be mountain biking along are rideable. We’re not big fans of hike-a-bike!

So, if you're new to cycling holidays, what are our top tips for being comfortable on a muti-day cycling holiday or mountain biking adventure in the UK? Well, first thing is you need to be comfortable on your bike. We always recommend bringing your own bike on your cycling holiday or mountain biking trip but sometimes that just isn’t possible. In this instance, we’ll be able to hire bikes for you and we’ll always try to get hire bikes that are close in size and geometry to your own bike.

You’ll also need to be physically ready for your cycling holiday or mountain biking tour. There’s a fine line between a ‘challenge’ and a ‘chore’! In order to make sure you’re on the ‘challenge’ side of the equation, you need to be fit enough to feel comfortable cycling or mountain biking on consecutive days. We try to give you as much information about each of our mountain biking tours or cycling holidays in advance of you booking so we’ll let you know how many miles you’ll be cycling each day and the types of terrain you’ll encounter on your cycling tour or mountain biking holiday. You can see how our biking trips are graded here. You’ll also need to have the right kit and a kit list can be found here. If you need more details on essential cycling clothes that we’d recommend bringing on your cycling holiday or mountain biking trip, you can have a look at our previous blog post here.

The most important thing to remember though, is that it’s supposed to be challenging and it should be fun! So, happy cycling everyone! Have a look at all of our cycle touring holidays, mountain biking holidays, gravel bike routes and road biking tours for more inspiration.