Reviews

My husband and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary doing a boat bike tour from Amsterdam to Brugge. EVERY single thing was perfect. The crew, The Maqnifique, the food, the riding…..everything! We cant wait to do it again!

The accommodations on the new Magnifique II were wonderful. Staff was pleasant, very helpful and welcoming. Our chef, Leroy, was awesome and made the most memorable and creative meals every night! Our cycling experience only comes with some mixed reviews. We very much enjoyed the destinations, the history lessons from our guide and the routes in general. However, there were many variable skill levels of riders and one guide for 38 people didn’t seem enough to keep everyone headed in the right direction. There was much getting ‘lost’, or difficulty in reading routes when on our own and separated from the guide while taking photos. I recommend at least 2 guides for that many riders.

Excellent value for your money. Staff were friendly and caring. During the trip they lost one crew member who had to depart for personal reasons. They all pitched in to help each other out and there was no disruption in service. The boat was clean and well kept.

We really enjoyed our week on the Magnifique II. The barge was clean and comfortable and the crew were great. The crew seemed to manage the challenges that arose with minimal impact on the guests and we felt welcomed and well cared for all week. The bike portion was a bit of an adventure with lots of riding. Would recommend some bike experience. Communication with the tour guide was a bit of a challenge at times which made it was hard to get exact distances and routing information. According to more experienced riders in the group, the bike route information that was provided daily was not sufficient if you were interested in a self guided tour. Would recommend to others to get as much of the route information in advance if you want to go off on your own. Overall the food was good and sufficient. Might be more interesting to have something other than the same sandwich selection every day for lunch as it was also part of the breakfast offering. My husband and I were on our own while some of the others onboard were part of larger groups. We felt that we lucked out as we had great people to share our week with so overall a very fun, first time, bike/barge experience.

We were blessed with perfect weather. Not sure what it would be like if it rained regularly. Be aware that you do ride into towns with cars and bikes going everywhere. So if you are inexperienced at riding this may present issues. Overall a great experience helped by a great bunch of people who all gelled as a group.

Loved our trip on Magnifique 2. Staff on board were excellent, very friendly. Food was great and rooms comfortable, though at times hot during the night. The bikes provided were excellent. Very comfortable, easy to ride and of good quality. The Locks on them were a great system too. As we experienced a heat wave for 4 days with temperatures over 30 degrees, our rides were adapted and changed which was good in that aspect, not sure how much we missed. It is hard balancing a biking holiday with a tourist holiday, but would have liked the opportunity to have stopped to take a few photos at scenic spots, after all that is why we came to a different country to go biking. However we saw and experienced great rides through scenic countryside. Some days were exceptional! Looking forward to doing another tour with Boat Bike Tours.

The boat was comfortable but the air conditioning in the dining room was insufficient. Food was excellent with good variety. Wifi on board was not reliable most of the time. From our perspective the biking was more challenging than anticipated.

I really enjoyed the cycling and seeing the countryside in this intimate and fun way

We would recommend Boat Bike Tours. We were well looked after by the Captain and onboard crew. The food was excellent, the chef cooked some excellent meals, there was also plenty of breakfast and rolls, meat and cheese, fruit etc. for packed lunches. Our ride leader kept the cycling lively. It was very a socialable holiday at meal times and at the bar in the evening.

Just got back from an August bike/boat tour from Amsterdam to Bruges on the Manifique. Overall, the experience was great. The crew was somewhat new to each other (and the boat), but they all had a positive attitude for the most part (there was a little friction between the guide and the captain at one point about scheduling). The biking was pretty easy for me (I ride a lot), but I wasn’t in it for the exercise (more for the beer and scenery!) and my wife had an electric bike which was a good decision (one or two other bikers on the boat decided to go for the electric bike as well). It really does pay to get into biking shape for one of these trips – simply sitting in the saddle for extended periods of time can be a challenge – especially on a different kind of bike. The soft saddles of the Dutch bikes can be a little difficult to get used to. Food was generally pretty good – we elected to eat off the boat in Antwerp (in addition to Bruges) which helped break things up a little in terms of food variety. The BBQ was a big hit and it was nice to be able to eat outside on the deck that evening. The boat was kept pretty clean during the trip – although I would suggest that they change sheets at least once during the trip. We had one of the larger rooms with a “sitting area” – which didn’t really provide that much space for actual sitting, but the additional chairs served as an extra area to dump our stuff at the end of each day. Bathrooms are also clean and a fairly good size – considering this is a barge. One drawback was the fact that we went in August so many of the smaller towns we passed through were pretty quiet (everyone was on their holidays) – St. Amands was pretty much a ghost town when we got there. This wasn’t a problem in the bigger locales (e.g. Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp). All in all, this was a very enjoyable experience.