Croatia and Slovenia cycling holiday

Carbon reduction

Your holiday will help support local people and conservation. We must also reduce CO₂. Learn about the CO₂ emissions of this holiday and how to reduce them.

Environment

Accommodation & Meals:
On this trip, we will spend the week in comfortable, locally staffed hotels. We avoid the larger chains outside of Zagreb, and try to invest in the smaller businesses where our money stays local. This also offers a more authentic experience to our clients. All breakfasts are included and where possible the ingredients and produce is purchased from local suppliers and farmers. For lunch and dinner, we usually have group meals in small local restaurants which are booked by the leader. Otherwise, clients are always recommended and encouraged to try local delicacies from local shops and businesses. Croatian cuisine has a mixture of Central European, Italian and Balkan influences, producing dishes like grilled lamb, pizza, fine seafood, pasta and salads. Likewise, Slovenian cuisine is greatly influenced by its neighbours, mainly inspired by the flavours of Austrian, Croatian and Hungarian. Buckwheat dumplings are the country’s national dish, traditionally served with meat, stews, sauerkraut or sausages. Other specialties of theirs are Kranjska Klobasa (Carniolan sausage) and Potica, a yeast dough cake with a variety of filing options – a typical Slovenian dessert.
We also offer the opportunity to visit a local wine cooperative where we learn about the local produce, have a wine tasting and also sample local meats.

Activity:
Being a cycling trip means that we create very little impact on the environment as vehicle transport is kept to a minimum. The sightseeing aspect of the tour is really beneficial to the country and its several historical and cultural attractions. This part of Croatia see far fewer tourists than the Dalmatian coast and some areas we visit like the Kupa River in Slovenia are pretty remote which makes our tourism even more beneficial to the communities we visit here. In both Zagreb and Porec our groups have time to explore and take guided tours -entrance fees for sights in these cities and town go towards the up keep of the historic sights.

A Fair Deal:
We work closely with our local operator and ensure that all of our guides are local and that in exchange for their expertise that they are paid and treated fairly. The leaders will give a briefing on Responsible Tourism issues to help you understand how you can help reduce your impact and maximise the benefits to the local community from your visit.

Water:
Water is a really important issue with trips such as this and whilst we must stay hydrated, it is also vital that we have a system for providing clean water without causing lots of waste with plastic bottles. Wherever possible we provide safe alternative sources of water to buying single use plastic bottles. This may be through large water containers, or encourage our passengers to filter, sterilise or purify water. On this trip, not only are there big containers of waters provided on the bus, tap water in Croatia is safe and drinkable so clients can easily refill their bottles without the need to purchase single use plastic bottles. We encourage all our passengers to come prepared with a reusable water bottle for this purpose.

Group Size:
This is a small group tour, meaning that we have a low impact on the environments and communities we visit and are able to ensure that we do not disrupt or lead to the displacement of local people. The small number also allows us to stay in unique, family-run hotels that cannot benefit from coach tours and other mass tourism due to their limited sizes.

UK Office:
It all starts at home where we work towards reducing our carbon footprint in our offices through energy conservation measures, recycling policies and the promotion of cycling and walking as a means for our staff to commute. Our head office has become a plastic-free zone with the use of plastic bottles being banned in our head office and we distributed reusable water bottles and tote bags to every staff member. We also support a large number of community and environmental projects in different parts of the world and try to give something back to the places we visit.