Cycling getaways to the most beautiful luxury seaside resorts

Exercise can work up an appetite, so a group of cyclists who also love food will head to Maine's culinary superstar White Barn Inn this September to ride, eat and lounge.

The Auberge de la Grange Blanche, a resort innis one of New England's most acclaimed luxury resorts, a Forbes 4-star property with a Forbes 5-star restaurant. It has been famous for its hospitality and cuisine for 150 years, but the “Autumn Cycling Retreat on the Coast”, is a new kind of adventure for travelers.

The all-inclusive weekend is a partnership with luxury active travel specialist KC&E Adventuresand runs from Thursday, September 19 to Sunday, September 22, during New England’s peak fall foliage season. The weekend includes two guided rides, one coastal and one wooded, each 35 miles long with optional 15-mile extensions, with all ability levels welcome. It also includes a 90-minute spa treatment for each guest, a pre-race yoga class, and all food and beverages for the weekend, plus snacks and gear like a custom cycling apparel kit, with high-performance rental bikes available.

As one of the most sought-after epicurean destinations in the country, they take their food and beverage side of things seriously. Thursday kicks off with a cocktail hour and a private three-course dinner in the wine cellar. Friday’s ride includes a stop at a classic Maine lobster shack for lunch, followed by a Macallan whiskey cocktail class on the way back (the inn has a partnership with The Macallan, widely considered the most prestigious whiskey brand in the world). Then it’s a four-course dinner in the 5-star restaurant. Saturday’s ride includes a gourmet picnic, post-ride libations by the fire, and of course, a traditional Maine lobster dinner. All three mornings include breakfast at your leisure. The weekend package is $2,200 per person with all food and beverage, plus the rates for the room, suite, or cabin you choose.

KC&E is an active travel agency that offers a handful of scheduled but special trips like this one each year, and also organizes many custom trips. I live in New England and am very familiar with the area around the inn, which is located in Kennebunkport, and it is one of my favorite places. The scenery, the biking, and the food should all be fantastic.

But the White Barn Inn isn’t the only property benefiting from the boom in cycling and active travel that has exploded since the pandemic. All of the major luxury tour operators that specialize in active travel, such as Backroads, Butterfield & Robinson and DuVine, have seen record bookings and, in many cases, can’t add trips fast enough. Combining biking (or hiking) with quality accommodations and cuisine in epic destinations has proven irresistible and is one of the hottest trends in travel. But while traditional active travel customers signed up for weeklong tours that hopped from hotel to hotel, many newcomers prefer a “pack and unpack once” approach and, in some cases, shorter weekend trips. That’s why one segment of the active travel market that’s exploded is river cruises and yacht charters, where the ship is essentially a single floating hotel for the duration. I wrote about this recently here at Forbes.

But the next iteration appears to be trips based on a single hotel, usually a luxury hotel, like the White Barn Inn. The Fairmont Miramar Hotel & Bungalows in Santa Monica, in the middle of one of Southern California's best ridings, just added a The “Wattage Cottage” experience for cycling enthusiasts You want to enjoy the beauty and setting of the West Coast. Packages include a stay in one of 31 upscale bungalows, equipped with a high-end TIME bike (the resort partners with local high-end shop Sundays Cycles, and if you prefer, you can ship or bring your own bike and they will assemble it for you). But you’d be hard-pressed to do better, and you’ll rarely see a hotel offering a bike like this one, a TIME Alpe D’Huez frame with SRAM Force Etap AXS components, disc brakes, and HED Belgium Ardennes wheels.

All guests receive Strava maps detailing local cycling routes curated by a local resident and cycling legend, Phil Gaimon. But an extra step (and an extra $1,000) is the chance to ride alongside Gaimon himself, a veteran American professional cyclist with more than 100 victories, including the world hill climb championship. Gaimon has written several books and has a popular YouTube channel dedicated to cycling. He partners with the Fairmont to ride with guests (subject to availability) and says, “With perfect weather, incredible roads, and an incredible culture, I’ve been saying for the past decade that Los Angeles is the best place in the world to ride a bike. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to share that with the help of the Fairmont Miramar Hotel and Bungalows.” The Wattage Cottage package also includes a massage and several freebies and extras, including food and beverage credits at the resort.

DuVine Cycling + Adventure Company is one of the most premium players in the active travel world, combining cycling with a love of wine (hence the name). DuVine was the top-ranked active travel company in 2023 Travel + Leisure World's Best Awards, second place among all tour operators and first among active tour operators, with a score of 99+. I traveled with them and it was fantastic.

Like the White Barn Inn, DuVine utilizes one of the country's most revered culinary-centric luxury resorts, Blackberry Farm in Tennessee (Forbes 4-Star Lodging and Dining), for a scheduled 4-day/3-night group cycling trip at a resort in the fall, with three dates in September, October and November.

DuVine offers similar scheduled trips to three other notable locations: Troutbeck on New York’s Hudson Valley Bike Tour, Glen Gordon Manor in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, and Coquillade, a Forbes 5-Star hotel and Relais & Chateaux member in Provence, France. They also host private, on-demand trips to places like Twin Farms, a 5-star hotel in Vermont that’s one of my favorite luxury hotels in the world—simply gorgeous—and Solage, an Auberge Resort (like the White Barn Inn) in California’s Calistoga wine country. Finally, DuVine offers a handful of unique trips Cycling + Sailing Trips on chartered boats that serve as a unique hotel base in locations that few other active travel agencies serve, Turkey and Greece.

No player in the luxury active travel space is bigger than Country roadswhich is the oldest in the country, since 1979, and still owned by its founder. Backroads has a fantastic reputation and a high repeat rate, and I know why, because I have traveled with them several times, it was always great, and I can't wait to go back. They have a huge catalog of trips all over the country and around the world, but one thing that sets them apart is that they have repeatedly pioneered the foray into new spaces in the industry, particularly boat travel, where they have led the charge, and they are the only ones to segment trips by age to cater to everyone.

They always seem to know what the next big thing is, so it's remarkable that they've just announced a new category called Home Base travel for 2025 – exactly the trend I'm talking about, cycling and hiking trips based around a single property with no packing or unpacking.

“The new Home Base trips that are being launched are all in Europe,” said Liz Einbinder, a spokeswoman for Backroads. “The essence of the Home Base concept is that they are centered around really incredible hotels in destinations in Europe that are also ideally located.” The first three announced, in Puglia, Italy, the Cotswolds, England and Bavaria, Germany, are designed for hiking, followed by biking. For now, Backroads' extensive range of river cruise-based cycling tours (over 100 departures in 20 countries) works the same way, with a floating hotel for the entire trip. I did their bike cruise from Paris to Normandy on the Seine and was blown away.