Featured Departures: Pedal & Sea Adventures, an 8-year-old Canadian adventure company, is in the business of making dreams come true. That’s not marketing spin — and not just because we don’t have a marketing department! In fact, all of our creative biking tours are near and dear to our hearts, and our clients love the passion we bring to our work. Our only mission is to impress.
This year, we’re offering something new— something bigger— and we’re very excited.
But frankly, our new series of tours presented
us with one problem we hadn’t
anticipated: What to call them.
We thought long and hard about our new offerings, and bandied about names
like Premier Tours, or Enhanced Tours, or One-of-a-Kind Tours, because
each description is accurate in it’s own way. But we didn’t
want to give the impression that our new tours are somehow superior to
the old ones. We design each and every tour to exacting standards.
That’s not marketing spin, either. In eight years, Pedal & Sea Adventures has grown from humble beginnings to become an international concern, offering creative bike and cooking tours throughout Atlantic Canada and Europe. In fact, the company continues to double in size every couple of years, since PSA boasts an almost-80 per cent retention rate— compared with an industry standard of less than 30 per cent. In other words, if you book with Pedal & Sea for one tour, we'll probably see you on another excursion somewhere down the road. Our clients quickly become our friends whenever we share the adventures of the road.
And so we’re calling these new tours Featured Departures, and they come with a promise: each tour will be distinctive and worthy. Our founder, Dana Gallant, has created each one of them, and he'll personally be conducting each and every Featured Departure. Really, our new offerings are just different, but in a very good way. They’ll highlight some new angle or focus that will appeal to cyclists and adventurers. It might be a brand-new tour that we’re offering for the first time. Or might be something that builds on an established tour.
We don’t want to say too much, other than to encourage you to check this page often, for we’ll be adding Featured Departures regularly in the next few months, as we finalize our 2008 Touring Season.
Featured Departures for 2008
Featured Departure: Norway
What can we say about Norway?
We were enchanted the moment we stepped off the plane, and our intoxication
grew with each passing day. It truly deserves every laurel that has been
laid upon it's gentle shoulders, including the World's Most Peaceful Country,
the World's Most Livable Country, and many others besides.
Like our home in Nova Scotia, Norway boasts a gorgeous and rugged coastline, but here the scenery is dominated by massive fjords and more than 50,000 islands. Norway is a land of extremes, perched unassumingly on top of the world. It's a place where the glaciers are a recent memory, where every accountant and taxi driver has Viking blood, where the sun never stops smiling in the summer.
Norwegians never take their natural surroundings for granted, and we're privileged to benefit from their dedication. Primeval, black forests stretch over mysterious granite mountains — mythological home to giants, trolls, and the giant wolf Fenrir— and viewing the world-famous fjords by boat is something every person should experience. August 5-12.
Featured Departure: Croatia
Our opening
salvo is Croatia, aboard Romantica,
a luxury ship that plies the waters off the incredible Croatian coast.
We’re are so looking forward to this tour, and it must show, because
it's filling up quickly! September 13-20th.
If you're interested in our regular Croatia tour aboard the Kapetan Jure, please note that our June 14-21 and June 21-28 tours are selling like hot cakes — this is such a beautiful time of year in that part of the world — so we've booked the entire boat for Pedal and Sea. We have six rooms available on both dates, but they won't last long!
Croatia Romantica, Take Two: OK, forget what we said! Due to popular demand, we've added a second Croatia Romantica tour running from September 20 - 27. The only change is that it will run in reverse direction, beginning in Trogir, and finishing in Dubrovnik. Call us for details!
Featured Departure: Enchanted
April in Puglia (Only two openings
left... So please book now!)
Puglia, possibly Italy’s least familiar region, is now being touted
as the next Tuscany. Located on the Eastern Coast, deep in the heartland
of Greek mythology, Apulia does have a distinctly Greek feel, but its ruins
also feature Gothic and Byzantine architecture, among others. What better
way to explore this mysterious region of olive groves and emerald waters
than by bike during this most beautiful of seasons? April 13-19.
Featured Departure: Our guided biking
tour of Sicily.
Sicily is like a fabulous, venerable wine. The layers of history and culture
overlap and combine in so many intriguing ways on the island — just
like flavors in an unforgettable bottle. So many people and cultures have
passed through and colonized this land that history is in the very air. Greek
temples— better preserved than most in Greece— compete for space
between Pheonician ruins, while Norman fortresses and Baroque cathedrals
tell their own tales of fabulous wealth and power now lost to time. And everywhere
is the luxuriant landscape: the sea dazzles below while rugged mountains
tower above, crowding the skyline. And all long the coast, sheer cliffs plunge
into azure water.
This tour is almost four years in the planning. We've offered a self-guided tour of Sicily for a number of years, but the stars have never quite aligned to mount a guided tour. Until now! And that's why we're so excited to be biking through Sicily in Spring, 2008, when the flowers are in bloom, so the hills look as pretty as a picture. As with all our featured tours, PSA founder Dana Gallant will be guiding this adventure with our Sicilian partner. Best of all, if you book before March 15, you'll save $200! April 20-27.
Our first multi-sport tour of Norway on August 5-12, 2008 is coming soon!
