NZ Bicycle Tours

NZ Bicycle Tours (New Zealand Bicycle Tours) is a small, owner-operated cycle touring company that has been designing and guiding bike holidays across New Zealand for 37 years. It's run by Brian Farrant and Carole Gibb, both keen road and mountain bikers, with a small team that includes a tramper/ecologist, a retired hiking guide and a travel writer, all of whom have personally scouted the routes they sell. They describe their tours as "designed by cyclists, for cyclists" and are a founding member of Cycle Tour Operators NZ and a member of the Tourism Industry Association NZ.

Rather than running a large fixed catalogue, they specialise in fully supported, custom-built cycling holidays on quiet, low-traffic paved roads, along with e-bike and gravel-road tours on New Zealand's bike paths. Guests can either follow one of their known popular routes or work with Brian and Carole to build an itinerary from scratch, with the option to combine cycling with other activities such as kayaking, glacier walking, caving and wildlife watching. Tours run supported, with vans available for riders who need a break, and the company supplies its own fleet of Specialized Roubaix and Creo road/e-bikes chosen for local conditions.

Their most popular routes are the West Coast of the South Island road tour (native forest scenery from the mountains to the sea, best ridden in late summer) and the Alps to Ocean gravel tour from Tekapo to Oamaru on the east coast (best ridden October to April), though the tours page states these are best treated as starting points for a custom-designed trip rather than fixed packages with their own booking pages.