The Big Blue – A sail and bike trip
The first week of tourism reopening in Greece, was a very special week for us, at Outline Adventures. Not only for the obvious reason of restarting our activities, but also because that we finally had the chance -after organising it for the past 2 years- to travel for the test event of our new-born mtb tour!
A tour that combines in the most suitable way sailing and mountain biking! A tour that one can have, probably only at the Greek islands! An experience that can potentially put Greece at the very top of the best mtb destinations globally!
All of our tours, before launching them, are tested by us for two main reasons. Firstly, to make sure that our clients will feel the experience that we have visual and secondary that our tours fulfils the standards of Outline Adventures.
In this case, we were happy enough to host once more our friends from the Evoc family, which they do own a great experience of traveling all around the world for mountain biking.
This makes them the most suitable feedback providers for us, but it also gave us the opportunity to promote our tour and destinations, since our hosts where accompanied by journalists of some of the most big mtb media of Germany and Italy. Among them, a great outdoor photographer Stefan, who had the mission of covering this tour through his camera.
So, we visited Dodecanese islands, sailing for 5 days with a catamaran and riding at some tremendous landscapes at Nisyros, Leros, Kos and Patmos.
We had the privilege to meet people from the local mtb community and from local institutions and authorities, among tourism experts and professionals. Theirs welcome and support confirmed in the most efficient way the world known Greek hospitality.
The week flow with the best conditions we could ask for! All of our guests agreed that this was a very rare and unexpected traveling experience and mentioned the huge respond from theirs social media followers!
And that is the biggest proof of what we do believe and keep saying all these years at Outline Adventures. That the potentials for the development of mountain bike tourism in Greece are here. As long as the potentials don’t just stays potentials…
If there was a minor disadvantage noticed from ours visitors, was the luck of mtb infrastructures and more in specific of many mtb purpose-built trails. During the last years many steps have been done at this direction at Dodecanese, especially with the efforts of the local mtb community. But the truth is that our destinations do not fulfil yet the standards of others European mtb destinations, especially regarding trails. And that is something really sad for us, because this is a situation that it could change without huge efforts and resources. It is only a matter of will and efficient planning…
We believe that everybody now knows. If we really want to develop mtb tourism in Greece, WE NEED to built trails!
We do already have as a country most of the elements and the quality characteristics for a sustainable development of mtb tourism, such as food, hotels, transfers, weather conditions, special mountaineering areas, in order to be competitive to the most well known destinations in Europe. We do offer innovative and attractive tourism products such as the Boat & Bike tour.
And we do have the most important element of all. The hospitality. Which in this case means, that we do want the bikers in our country. And there is no better way to show to the bikers that you want them, than building and maintaining mountain bike trails!
We would like to thank for theirs support:
The Greek National Tourism Organisation and more in specific the Secretary General Mr. Fragakis Dimitris.
The Greek National Tourism Organisation of Germany.
The Greek National Tourism Organisation of Italy.
The Commercial Office of Dodecanese and more in specific Mr. Sarantis Dimitris.
The Leros Municipality.
The Patmos Municipality.
The Lipsi Municipality.
The Kos Municipality.
The Aegean Airlines and more in specific Mrs. Elli Politou.
Special Thanks to:
Giorgos Grigoriadis and Nikolas Sevastianos from Mud Turtles.
Giorgos Boulafendis, Manos Maleas and Stamatis Sifounas form Leros MTB Community.
Captain Christos Nikolopoulos.
Giorgos Ritsiardis from Archon Yachting.
All the local riders that joined and especially the Leros kids!
We thank the whole Evoc family and more in particular:
Holger Feist
Jan Sallawitz
Stefan Neuhauser
Daniel Schaefer
Thomas Werz
Jasper Jauch
Andrea Ziliani
Last but not least we would like to thank Aegean Trails for theirs efforts at the Dodecanese islands and all of the Greek mtb community that constantly tries by ay means for the growth of mountain biking in Greece.