Hey, Rob! The company provided routes, maps, GPS waypoints, hotel reservations, and they moved our luggage from point to point. We paid extra for a "guide", but he really didn't do much guiding; he drove our luggage and helped us carry our bikes into/out of the secure rooms at the hotels. He was most useful in dealing with the various problems we had, like, the e-bikes were not that great quality, one guy needed his bike swapped out three different times before he got one that worked well enough, and when one of our group had a wreck and had to go to the hospital (you'll read about that in part 2!) he helped out a lot with driving him and his wife around.
The routes were...okay. One issue is that the waypoints they sent us were for the west-to-east version of this trip, which we reversed, but that meant we ended up going the wrong way down one-way streets sometimes, which just added to the stress when there was traffic! There are a lot of signed bike routes which our route took advantage of, so I can't imagine the routes are proprietary; you can probably get a bike map of Lombardy that has these routes. If you want I can send you the waypoints or our route track points - email me at heyheyilana@gmail.com!
As far as the blend of e-bikes and acoustic bikes (I know, I know, but I heard that term on an e-bike message board and it amused me!) it worked pretty well. Nobody in the group was not at least somewhat fit, but we had an age range from late 50s to early 70s, plus two people in their mid-30s. The people on e-bikes kept the assist moderate most of the time other than on hills, so that the batteries would last all day, and the mixed groups were pretty well blended, I think.
Re: cool
The routes were...okay. One issue is that the waypoints they sent us were for the west-to-east version of this trip, which we reversed, but that meant we ended up going the wrong way down one-way streets sometimes, which just added to the stress when there was traffic! There are a lot of signed bike routes which our route took advantage of, so I can't imagine the routes are proprietary; you can probably get a bike map of Lombardy that has these routes. If you want I can send you the waypoints or our route track points - email me at heyheyilana@gmail.com!
As far as the blend of e-bikes and acoustic bikes (I know, I know, but I heard that term on an e-bike message board and it amused me!) it worked pretty well. Nobody in the group was not at least somewhat fit, but we had an age range from late 50s to early 70s, plus two people in their mid-30s. The people on e-bikes kept the assist moderate most of the time other than on hills, so that the batteries would last all day, and the mixed groups were pretty well blended, I think.