How to plan a biking vacation for your family — and enjoy it

My family was about halfway through a 280-mile, eight-day bike tour around Denmark this summer when we stopped at a coastal hamlet with a sheltered dock, a line of vacation homes and a small, seaweed-strewn beach.

The stop offered a reprieve after my husband and I had been towing our two boys, 18 months and 5 years, in trailers for two hours over some 20 miles. It also offered a chance, as we sat on the beach together and the boys played, thousands of miles from home, brought to that spot under our own power, to reflect on how lucky we were to have moments like these.

A regular cyclist at home, I had long dreamed of doing a multiday bike trip. I wanted to see new places and watch the landscapes unfurl at 10 miles per hour. With 2024 a milestone birthday year for me, my husband proposed we do a bike trip together - as a family.

Bike trips are on the rise in the United States and Europe, for travelers with and without kids alike. In Germany, a center of bike-tour culture, some 37 million people took at least a one-day bike trip in 2022, more than 1.5 million of those being families with kids under 14.

We picked Denmark both because we had never been and because of its own legendary cycling culture, where even 5-year-olds bike to school. It also looked flat, a plus for us bike-tour newbies.

Our trip, which began and ended in Copenhagen, was not all beautiful countryside and kid-friendly beaches. But we spent almost every night somewhere new, and each day brought different sights, activities and challenges.

Here’s how you can organize your own family vacation on two wheels - and the best lessons we learned from our first.

Where and how you can plan a bike trip

Organizations like Adventure Cycling Association in the United States and EuroVelo in Europe offer ready-to-go routes for anyone interested in planning their own multiday trip. The former is best known for its TransAmerica route from Astoria, Ore., to Yorktown, Va. And the latter’s Atlantic-Black Sea route from Nantes in France to Constanta in Romania is its most popular.

For those who do not have the time or energy to research routes, find bikes and search for suitable accommodations, there are a number of tour operators who will plan everything for you. These range from global operator Intrepid Travel - which can arrange a bike tour just about anywhere around the world - to local operators, like RockVelo in Slovenia.

Robin Watkins, a nurse practitioner who lives in Washington, D.C., and her husband have taken their two kids, ages 4 and 8, on bike trips ranging from a tour around Finland to a ride from Pittsburgh to D.C. on the Great Allegheny Passage and C&O Canal Towpath.

“We found cycle touring is one of the things that really lends itself nicely to being able to bring your kids with you,” Watkins said.

Melissa Moser, a cartographer at Adventure Cycling who lives in Missoula, Mont., has taken her 6-year-old daughter on several multiday bike tours. She suggests starting small. “One to 20 miles is good for a first,” she said.

We planned our route by combining sections of several of Denmark’s national bike routes together and using the Komoot app to fill in the holes. We chose a large loop, picking up and returning our bikes and trailers to One Way Bike Tours in the suburbs of Copenhagen, over concerns with trying to take everything on a Danish train.

“With this little thing,” One Way Bike Tours founder Birger Kjaerbye said when we arrived, pointing to his phone, “the Komoot apps, the Ride with GPS, you can find the whole thing there. Your accommodation, your point of interest, and so on. You build your own adventure.”

Get gear that works for you and your family

All successful bike trips begin and end with a bike. We chose standard hybrid touring bikes similar to what we ride at home. An e-bike, which has a small battery-powered motor to assist with pedaling, is also a popular option for multiday bike tours - and can take the edge off pulling your kids and gear.

Finding bikes to rent, if you are not bringing your own, is typically easy. Most major U.S. and European cities have multiple shops that offer a variety of bikes.

A family trip also requires gear for your kids. We chose trailers but young children can also ride in a child’s bike seat, or on a cargo bike.

Renting trailers, we found out, is not as easy as finding bikes. Most bike rental companies in Copenhagen market Danish cargo bikes for families. We rented one around the city but I would not want to ride it for hours at a time. It was only after a lot of online searching, and numerous emails, that I found One Way Bike Tours.

Older children can ride their own bikes. For kids who want to ride but can’t tackle a full route, Watkins recommends the FollowMe Tandem, an attachment for the back of your bike that allows an adult to tow a child’s bike behind them.

A key decision that lightened the load: We stored our suitcases at a hotel in Copenhagen, packing only what we needed into large backpacks.

Proper lodging can go a long way

On their first self-supported tour, Moser and her daughter went about three miles before they set up camp for the night, she said. But whether to camp on a family bike trip is entirely up to you. Moser and Watkins said that on some bike trips they have carried camping gear and camped overnight, while on others they found indoor accommodations.

My husband and I chose the accommodations route. We didn’t want to add the camping gear to our towing, and it was really nice to have a bed to collapse onto each night, too.

Our nights ranged from posh (a bed-and-breakfast in Denmark’s Skjoldungernes Land national park) to simple campground cabins and rustic farm stays. The latter were our boys’ favorite after a long day on the road: One had a large yard they could run around and play in and animals they could feed.

Don’t expect (or attempt) fine dining

One thing a family bike tour with young children is not: fine dining.

Between our boys’ picky eating and seeming inability to sit still in a restaurant - especially after riding in a trailer all day - we stuck most nights to casual, often carb-heavy dinners like pizza (with an all-you-can eat Asian buffet in Korsør being one exception). Solo bikers or older groups might be more ambitious, but while we planned the broad outlines of our ride before we left, we largely decided meals as we went.

At night, we sometimes noted dining highlights on the next day’s route, but mostly we made sure to carry sandwich makings and plenty of snacks. Nearly every Danish town has a supermarket, and in a pinch, a gas station convenience store has enough for a meal. Dinners we typically sorted once we arrived at our lodging for the night.

As for shopping, the only things we bought on our ride were some small sweet treats for friends at home and a toy or two for the boys. Having to tow whatever we got for the rest of the trip dampened any urges to shop more.

Build in breaks, for your kids and yourselves

From my computer at home, I had mapped a route for us to ride close to 40 miles most days. But after our first back-to-back 40-mile days my husband and I agreed to lower our daily distance. We were tired, but more importantly the four-plus of hours pedaling was too long for the boys, who would end the day amped with energy.

Somewhere around 30 miles a day, with plenty of breaks for the boys, proved the sweet spot for us. And it was the breaks that really made the trip.

My son excitedly rowing a Viking boat at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde. The beach on Samsø island where we waded out to a sandbar where both boys could play in the sand and gentle surf. The pedal cars they used to get around the Danmarks Busmuseum.

“I want to stay here 1,000 nights!” my older son routinely exclaimed before we went to bed, excited from all the things he saw and did that day.

We wanted to, too.