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I live in New England and have strong opinions about places. I love the wilderness, hiking, lakes and hate cities. So Cliff wants my focus to be outdoors and out of the ordinary and talk straight. Suits me. Looking forward to some good feedback and comments on my posts. I'm also setting my own blog up at the moment which I'll let you know when it's ready for public consumption. See you soon, Yankee Traveler

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Boston Bike Tours with Urban Adventours

September 20th, 2008 • Related • Filed Under

Fenway Park Boston ImageYou’ve heard of Boston’s Duck Tour or Trolley Tour, and these are both great ways of getting an orientation of the city even if the narration at times is more focused on entertainment than… let’s be generous and say - the facts.

But I’ve always wanted to take a Bike Tour around Boston and visit the places that vehicles can’t go, and get a different perspective and some exercise at the same time.

If you’ve followed my other posts then you know I’m not a lover of cities but Boston is an exception. And you probably also know I prefer to add a little spice to my destinations, and peddling around the streets of the South and North End, and visiting famous iconic structures such as Fenway Park and the Hatch Shell while sharing the road with Boston cab drivers certainly qualifies in the excitement category.

So this summer I took a risk and booked myself on one of Urban Adventours cycle trips around Boston hoping to see Boston through different eyes and have fun to boot - and I was not disappointed.

About Urban Adventours:

The folks at Urban Adventours are passionate about sharing their knowledge and love of Boston with visitors while reducing our carbon footprint- they’re all avid cyclists and commute on bike themselves. While it’s fashionable now for a company to be seen as “green“, Urban Adventours have been environmentally conscious since inception, and their famous recycled vegetable oil powered truck is a tourist attraction in its own right with it’s distinctive… let’s say aroma.

A number of tours are offered in addition to their signature and immensely popular Boston City View Tour. These include: Tour De Boston along the Charles River and Harbor area; Greening the Greenway which traverses the Rose Kennedy Greenway; Funway to Fenway, I’ll let you guess the connection; Art & Architecture, where you can appreciate the old historic and the new exciting buildings of this city; and the Minuteman Bikeway Tour, a chance to explore one of the nations most popular and successful rail-trails.

All tours include bike, helmet, and water, and reservations are required as tours fill up fast - more about that later.

The View from the Boston City Tour:

I elected to take the Boston City View Tour, and arrived outside Landry’s Bike Shop on Commonwealth Ave in Brookline and in the heart of BU territory on a Sunday morning a little before 10:00am. I was equipped, given the rules of the road by Andrew Prescott - Chief Wheel Officer - and joined a large group of fellow cyclists and tour group leaders as we headed over to Fenway.

The tours are no race and as long as you can ride a bike you’ll be able to keep pace with the group - there’s so much to see the bike leaders don’t want you to miss a thing anyway.

Christian Science Center Boston ImageThere are too many stops for me to describe and mention here plus it would spoil the anticipation for you.

I know Boston well and have acted as a guide on a number of occasions, and can tell you I got to see most of the highlights of the city on this tour.

It hits all the popular destinations that frankly on foot would take you a weekend to cover. And the bike tour is just a few hours.

The highlights for me were the Back Bay and Italian North End sections and of course Beacon Hill - yes, I did navigate Mt. Vernon Street just fine, and so did everybody else. To paraphrase a politician “no cyclists are left behind.”

Back at Commonwealth Avenue:

The final section of our bike tour took us over to the Charles River Esplanade and the path along the river bank and then back over to BU area and the newly complete special bike path along Commonwealth Ave, and then back to Landry’s. The whole tour lasted about 2.5 hours and we covered around 12 miles.

Charles River Esplanade ImageAs I said you get to see a lot of Boston and it’ll help you decide which places to return and visit in more detail. The group leaders and staff of Urban Adventours are a great bunch of people, and ensured we all kept safe and had an enjoyable ride.

I highly recommend this tour and the Urban Adventours Company and am looking forward to returning on another one of their tours this fall or summer next year. For details on all the tours, fees, dates and to book online go to Urban Adventours Boston Bike Tours website here.

Boston has many attractions to visit and for more suggestions check out our special Boston destinations page here.

Another New England post by one of our writers is being prepared right now so be sure to visit again or just subscribe to our RSS Feed here and get notified automatically of events and news.

Yankee Traveler
Staff Writer
www.CompleteNewEngland.com

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There Are 9 Responses So Far. »

  1. Gravatar

    Comment by Bill6620 on 22 September 2008:

    This sounds like a lot of fun but I’m wondering how safe is it to ride around Boston roads on a bike? I’ve heard about the reputation of Boston drivers and don’t want me or my family to end up roadkill. How did you find the safety aspect of the ride?

    Bill

  2. Gravatar

    Comment by AngieM on 22 September 2008:

    Hi Bill,

    I’ve done this ride as well and it is safe. The company has plenty of leaders preparing the way ahead and getting you across busy intersections - which aren’t a lot. The route keeps to mostly back streets and there was only one occassion when a cab driver got a little “noisy” with his horn, and the bike leaders were all over him like a cheap suit. And like Yankee Traveler says you get to see stuff that you just can’t on a bus or trolley tour. Gets my thumbs up as well.

    Angie

  3. Gravatar

    Comment by yankeetraveler on 23 September 2008:

    Thanks for chirping in Angie. While like any of these types of trips you have to sign a waiver in case something happens, the tour company has every incentive to make sure nothing happens to their customers. So my sense was that Urban Adventours goes out of their way to promote safety both during the orientation and throughout the ride.

    Yankee Traveler

  4. Pingback by biketourscat » Blog Archive » Boston Bike Tours with Urban Adventours on 25 September 2008:

    [...] the rest of this great post here [...]

  5. Gravatar

    Comment by Jo Grove on 28 September 2008:

    Enjoying the ebooks - will be coming to New England in 3 weeks - too late for the north tours? Anything we should definitely see in 5 days that would stand out the most?

  6. Gravatar

    Comment by yankeetraveler on 28 September 2008:

    Hi Jo,

    Yes the northern areas will probably be past peak and it’ll moved to southern areas like Massachusetts and Connecticut. However, you’ll still find plenty of color in southern Vermont and the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. Just be prepared to drive around a bit and keep checking the New England fall foliage color updates at Cliff’s squidoo lens at http://www.squidoo.com/fallfoliage

    Enjoy your trip,

    Yankee Traveler

  7. Gravatar

    Comment by Carl on 12 October 2008:

    good way to shake off some of the inevitable holiday pounds ;-) Im goin to be in boston in November, convincing the wife may not be so easy though

  8. Gravatar

    Comment by Amsterdam Apartments on 25 November 2008:

    While riding a bike in the Netherlands makes you king of the road, it seems that elsewhere in the world it makes you into a likely roadrage victim or even worse roadkill.

    Bicycle lanes, and strict laws about liability in car vs bike accidents should by implemented in the US. When a car and a bike have an accident in the Netherlands, the car is always at fault. And the insurance of the car has to pay up. Combined with the fact that it is illegal to drive without insurance and the creation of a fund for road-victims where the driver has not stopped. This works quite well.

    But then perhaps American drivers are too used to their ‘free’ right turn. Even here where everybody rides bikes to work, school, everywhere, right turns still cause a few fatalities every year. Especially when trucks or busses are involved.

    Anyway, that’s all from me. I just loved reading how cycling is treated in a city like Boston.

  9. Gravatar

    Comment by Cliff Calderwood on 30 November 2008:

    Glad you enjoyed the article - although leaving a real name in future would be preferred.

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