Adventure Cycling Introduces Northern California Bike Tour

Filed in archive Biking on June 11, 2007

The Adventure Cycling Association has released a new guided bicycle tour of Northern California's farm and wine country. The Farm Fresh tour mixes food and biking, with a focus on organic agriculture.

Running from September 16-28, the intermediate-level Farm Fresh cycling tour will be fully supported with luggage transport, leaving cyclists free to visit vineyards, orchards, dairy lands, and croplands - at the peak of harvest season. The riding days offer ample opportunities to stop by local bakeries and farms, and two layover days encourage wine-tasting forays or other side trips through gorgeous California countryside.

After heading north from San Francisco, the Farm Fresh tour travels into Marin and Sonoma counties, which have been in the forefront of farmland preservation efforts. Heading east through world famous wine-growing valleys and the Coast Range, cyclists take an amazing ride, mostly on bike paths, across the Great Central Valley to the Sierra Foothills. Highlights of this stretch include the American River parkway (at 32 miles, one of the finest bike paths in the West) and the resurgent specialty farms of the central Sierra Nevada. After looping back through the Capay Valley (a little-known hotbed of organic farming) and Sonoma, the ride follows a little known road through Coleman Valley, high above the Pacific Ocean, and then traces the coast to Point Reyes and Mount Tamalpais before finishing off with a long, glorious descent back to San Francisco.

For more information or to book a tour on Adventure Cycling's Farm Fresh tour, click here.