How to Go Bike Touring with Toddlers
Why this adventurous family started bike touring with their little ones—and some destination ideas and tips for you to do the same.
Every month, I’ll be bringing you interviews from travel experts/caregivers from around the globe as part of Travel with Toddlers—because as we all know, every! kid! is! different! I want to include a wide range of voices here, so if you or someone you know would like to be featured, comment/reply and let me know.
When I decided I wanted to start a travel blog focused on toddlers, I put out a call for travel stories in one of my favorite parenting Facebook groups: Adventure Moms of New England. This group is super active in my area, organizing hikes and trading tips. As someone desperately trying to hold on to my outdoorsy/adventurous side after having a kid (I mean, I honeymooned in Patagonia!) I have found real talk from other parents trying to do the same inspiring.
Kelly Shultz was one of the adventurous mamas who agreed to be interviewed, and I’m so glad to bring you her story today—before chatting with her, I had no idea bike touring was even a thing you could *do* with little ones, and certainly not abroad. (Does Peloton count as training for bike touring? Asking for me…)
Kelly Schultz on Travel with Toddlers
I hope to bring a mix of voices to this newsletter, and including real parents and caregivers out there planning trips and making magic for the kids in their lives. I think you’ll appreciate Kelly’s measured approach to trying bigger and bigger biking trips with her family as they’ve grown (now three kids, aged 9, 7, and 3.5)—with plenty of tips on how you can try something similar, too1:
What was the first trip you took after having a baby?
The absolute first trip I took was a day trip to Cape Cod to visit friends when my oldest was two or three weeks old. I do not recommend this course of action! It was too soon for us. (Editor’s note: Oh my gosh, I am impressed you even tried this!!)
As I learned with my subsequent kids, it works much better for me to try and literally stay at home for a month or so postpartum, and then slowly re-enter real life after that. Of course, with my subsequent kids, I also had older kids to think about. So, we would do a lot of going to a playground for the older kids where I could just sit on a bench with the baby and not have to move too much while the older kids played.
How has your travel “style” changed before and after having kids?
We travel often, with a mix of trips to visit family and trips that are just for fun.
My husband and I met on a Rotary Club cultural exchange program to Japan when we were teenagers. We traveled a lot around Europe and the East Coast, hiking, camping, and backpacking.
After having kids, my family was a 4-hour drive away, so we traveled mostly by car. But my oldest would scream for hours in the car, so we started traveling up and down the East Coast of the US by train on Amtrak in an effort to avoid long distance car travel. We mostly took the train from Boston to NYC/Northern NJ, but I did go all the way to Baltimore from Boston when my oldest was 17 months old, and I was pregnant with my second for the 2017 Women's March in Washington D.C.
Then, when our oldest was almost three and second was 10 months old, we started bike touring. We never did any bike touring/bikepacking until we had kids. While we loved backpacking pre-kids, there was zero percent of either of us that wanted to carry our stuff *plus* our small kids while hiking. So, we decided to give bike touring a try. And, we discovered that we loved it much more than hiking. We actually hardly ever go hiking anymore.
I’ve never even thought about bike touring! Tell me how you got started with it.
We started with a one night overnight trip. Then, a month later, we did a two night trip, but we just biked for one day, spent two nights camping with friends, and biked home the next day. All this built up to a four day ride to Maine for the 4th of July.
In order to get ready for our trip up to Maine, we just did trips from home. We left home and rode about 40 miles west, sometimes along a rail trail, to the only campground we could find that was open in mid-April. And, the next trip was also around 40 miles west-ish from our house, though that one was mostly on roads. We also did day trips from home, around where we live, to playgrounds and such. For our actual trip, we stayed at a campground in NH the first night, then a Warmshowers host (like Couchsurfing, but for cyclists) in Maine the second night, and we camped in the backyard of a friend of a friend in Maine on the third night.
The easiest way to get started bike touring on normal roads and rail trails is to practice locally. You could use a backpack, or buy some panniers for your bike, or the back of your kid trailer, or any way to carry some stuff. Put some extra layers and snacks in there, bring lots of water bottles, and ride from hotel to hotel. My recommendation is to find longer distance rail trails close to you, and see if there's camping or other accommodations along the route.
Traveling with toddlers means picking one activity per day and enjoying it.
My biggest advice for traveling with babies or toddlers is to slow down. Only plan one activity per day, and fill the rest of your time with playgrounds, finding ice cream shops, and just soaking in the feeling of where you are. (Editor’s note: Agree!!)
The best destination to travel with toddlers is…
This summer, we went to Aviemore in the Scottish Highlands. It was our whole family's favorite part of that trip. We fed reindeer in Cairngorm National Park which was amazing. We also really enjoyed the Highland Folk Museum.
Another place that the kids and I really enjoyed was the National Children's Museum in Washington, D.C. So many people go to DC wanting to do all of the historical things and visit places related to the running of the government. But little ones don’t necessarily *get* that, which is we spent an entire day at the National Children's Museum. I think we spent over two hours just at the Dream Machine exhibit. It's basically a giant, indoor play area with a huge climbing structure and a super fast metal tube slide.
We stay in a lot of Hyatt hotels, because they have a great redemption value for credit card points. My kids love the included free breakfast (I always pick a hotel with a free breakfast), but they're basically just regular hotels. The hotel pool is always a hit, though.
Traveling with kids has its fair share of hiccups. Tell me about a recent travel experience and how you recovered.
Things are going to go wrong in life, no matter what. You just have to find ways to address them that work the best for everyone involved.
In the summer of 2023, we spent a month bike touring in Germany, France, and Switzerland. We took the bikes on trains a few times, but they were all regional trains. Our last two nights of the trip, however, were in Paris. And, I had planned to take the TGV (high speed train) to Paris. I did not properly understand the requirements for taking bikes on the TGV, and thus caused our problems.
So, we were in Beançson, France. We walked from our hotel to the train station, in the rain, with giant bike boxes on top of the trailer. Then, my husband disassembled the bikes and put them in the boxes. We got them on the little shuttle train that took us to the TGV station. There, we were told that our bike boxes probably wouldn't fit on the train, but we'd have to wait until the train got there and let the conductor make the final call. So, we talked to the conductor when the train arrived, and he confirmed that our bikes would not fit on the train. The TGV—which I had bought tickets for two months ahead of time—departed without us.
We had to take the bikes back on the little shuttle bus to the Beançson train station, reassemble them, and get train tickets on a regional train to Lyon, and then another regional train to Paris. The whole ordeal got us into Paris at about 10 PM. Then, we had to ride to our hotel, which took at least 45 minutes.
I have to say, though, that riding through Paris at night was a definite silver lining of this whole debacle. I would never in a million years have planned to ride through Paris at night with my three small kids. It was a magical experience. We saw the Eiffel Tower sparkling, we rode up the Champs-Élysées the day after the Tour de France had ridden through while all of the bleachers were still there, and we got some great pictures.
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Having things go wrong is part of the adventure of it all. If things never go wrong while traveling, you might not be doing it right.
What are your top pieces of gear that you can't leave home without?
When we're not traveling by bike, we travel backpacks only. For us, being hands free and having minimal stuff helps to make traveling easier and less stressful. We use compression packing cubes, lightweight toiletry bags (one for me and the kids, and one for my husband), and we rely on layering clothes and doing laundry while traveling.
Baby carriers are absolutely essential for traveling with babies and toddlers, in my opinion. It’s so much more convenient than a stroller when traveling places with stairs and getting on and off public transit.
For bike packing, besides a bike, you’ll need lightweight camping gear. Volume is equally as important as weight, sometimes even more so. The best thing for us was having a double trailer for our kids. We also have panniers and handlebar bags for carrying gear on our bikes. If you’re interested in getting started with bikepacking, it's totally fine to start with what you have and a setup that is just "good enough for now." You can always add more later as you get into it, like we did.
Tell me about one of the best travel memories with your kids.
This summer we went to the UK for two weeks, and we spent our first few days in London. We took the kids to the British Museum. We spent two hours there, saw a few things that we thought would interest the kids, and then left. Our three year old was on my back in the carrier crying and whining the whole time, asking when we were going to leave and generally being unhappy and jetlagged.
Fast forward two months, and he was chatting to me while I was putting him to bed at home. He started asking me about the bones in his body. Then, he said, "We saw bones at the museum!" And I said, "Yes, we did! That's what your bones look like, too."
I was blown away by the fact that he remembered these things from the British Museum, when I thought he was just focused solely on wanting to leave. Even when my kids aren't the best as telling me, I know they're enjoying our travels and getting a lot out of it. 🦴
Thank you, Kelly! It was so cool to hear your bike touring stories—definitely making me think more about what kinds of trips I want to take next year…and what my soon-to-be THREE year old can handle. (How are they getting so big???)
On to this week’s recommendations!
This week’s rapid-fire recs.
Disclosure: This section may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. I promise I’ll only ever recommend products I’ve actually used and loved.
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Thanks for being here.
The holidays are upon us! We booked our appointment with Santa back in September (I know. I KNOW.) and I’m really looking forward to the next few weeks of making magic. The holidays can feel like a lot of work sometimes, but I’m trying to spread it out over the next few weeks and also give myself a break if I can’t get it *all* done. (My wrapping job usually looks like somebody ran over it, but hey! It’s wrapped.) Try to enjoy the magic-making, and if you’re asking yourself, “Do I need to do this?” the answer is NO, go sit down and enjoy yourself for a minute. It’ll be okay. You got this!!
Ho-ho-ho,
Kayla
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.