I hear a few different definitions of the varying types of touring

Credit card touring,
Touring
Expedition touring
Supported touring
Fully supported touring


Is there a good definition for each of these?

Have I missed any?

z

Hub-and-spoke tours
Self-supported tours
Fully-loaded tours
Day tours
Cross-country tours
End-to-end tours
Round the World tours (RTW)
Short tours
Long tours



The definitions of all of these (yours and mine) overlap and vary depending on the person doing the tour, what the person is doing, and what the person decides to call it.


Rowan and I are doing a Round-the-World, starting in a little over a week. We're flying, taking trains, using ferries, and of course cycling on our trip around the world. The tour will also be a "Long tour", may incorporate "day tour", "hub-and-spoke" and "credit card" elements now and then, may include a "cross country" or perhaps an "end-to-end" or two, and will be mainly "self-supported" and "fully loaded". It won't likely include any "expedition" elements, and won't likely be "supported". And we've done a couple "short tours", one "credit card" tour, and several "hub-and-spoke" and "day" tours, in preparation for it.

Add S24O tour

I'm not sure if there is wide agreement on anything touring related

To me:
Credit Card Touring means no cooking, no camping, rooms every night and probably a lot of restaurant meals.

Expedition touring means self supported touring in third world countries.

Supported Touring means a car on van is following along.

Touring, to me at least, implies a trip by bike that is at least overnight.

Self supported touring? No vehicle support and probably mostly cooking (or eating uncooked food) and camping.

Ultralight touring? Touring with minimal gear weight. Not sure where to draw the line though. Twenty pounds of gear? 15 pounds? 12 pounds? I am starting to think of it as starting somewhere around 15 pounds.

Spoke and hub touring? I'll let someone else define this one.

I doubt that everyone shares all of my definitions, but I think that is OK.

Cycle Touring: Getting on a bicycle, riding along enjoying what you find along the way. The equipment, distance, locale and verbiage are all secondary.

Aaron

A hub and spoke tour is where you book a hotel room somewhere central,
and go out on day rides as far as , say, a lunch meal in a cafe,
then you ride back to your lodging.

Next day you go out in a different direction.

Yep. We've done a lot of these around Victoria and South Australia. We book into a caravan park and spend a long weekend exploring the area by bicycle.

Hub-and-spoke might just be my favorite kind of touring. You really get to know an area by camping/lodging in a town and exploring areas within a day's ride. You don't have to lug a bunch of gear on your bike. You can plan your daily rides around the weather, taking advantage of winds or taking a break on a stormy day. You don't have to figure out how to get back home or to your car at the end of the trip.

Expedition touring could also include mountain bikepacking in first world countries, especially those which travel for several days from civilization on minimal or no roads.

Ever since Ive seen this term, for some reason I still think of a Volvo S40 I drove in France, or it might because of the old 240 series, I dunno, but a Swedish automobile image always pops into me 'ead.

Except expedition touring, all kind of tours share the same things -- you are never far from a bike shop, hospital or a parts and tools supply store via Fedex or UPS and cell coverage.
Expedition touring requires that you CARRY ALL TOOLS and Parts, food and a satellite communication device with GPS relay (very helpful getting help when you're down) and knowledge of first aid and medication. Why? Because there are 2 things that stop you from touring. You being sick or the bike being broken. Typically, you'll choose a heavier and sturdier frame and wheels because that's the only thing you can not fix effectively by yourself.

Other than that, all tours are really the same. It's how you enjoy the tour that counts. Don't let some touring cyclists with this elitist attitude convince you only one tour is better than the other. I've met my fair share of cyclists who make rather childish immature comments that their tours are better than yours. Sort of like my iPhone is better than your Android. A tour that you most enjoy is the best, so being a hub and spoke is equally as good as an expedition trip across the Sahara desert or an ultralight on a carbon or sport touring bike.

Agree with this comment and staehpj1 defintions. My forthcoming Dreaming Tour includes around 15 to 20 days in the Pilbara where there only two places for water on the section and no re-supply options for the whole section ... would put that close to expedition at least, as would rides of the Canning Stock Route and the like.


Canning Stock Route

Andrew

FWIW-- I believe that bike tours like a lot of activities do not fit discretely into nice little categories. The different kinds of bike tours are a continuum ranging from fully supported, luxury tours to hardcore expedition riding. As an example, the demarcation between self supported and supported is not a precise black and white boundary, but rather a broad fuzzy gray area where the amount and type of equipment carried varies considerably. Just the term "self supported" could include a pretty broad range of situations. I think naming the different categories is relatively easy, but defining them is another matter.

I just completed a 3 week "fully loaded" tour and only camped 50% of the trip. The other 50% was CC. Does staying at motels, friends and relatives part of the time, negate the part of the tour that was "self supported"?

Suits me.

I've always tended to think of "touring" as synonymous with "loaded touring": a giant bike with a hundred pounds of stuff strapped to it while the owner spends three months riding around the country. I suspect that's a common definition.

But I also have a hard time coming up with a name for the kind of riding I enjoy these days (not that naming it is especially important): spending a day cruising around, carrying the stuff I'm likely to want and need, often with no specific goal in mind other than to see new and interesting places and things. When asked, I call it "day touring" which seems as good as any other name for it - though my wife likes to refer to it as "idling, piddling, and general loafing".

Although there is significant overlap with loaded touring, expedition touring, and S24Os, there is also "bike camping."

"idling, piddling, and general loafing"

Honorable mention for that one monsieur jours, darn sun woke me up (plus I need to make sure my son is up soon as he has an exam this morning) but that garnished a chuckle.

I prefer the term "ramble". I will load up a bike, usually one of my vintage 3 speeds with a few necessities and go rambling about the countryside. Another old favorite was the heads or tails tour. Come to a intersection or crossroads...flip a coin, heads you go right tails you go left, lose the coin go straight.

Aaron

Touring doesn't imply a lot of luggage. NA is a place all it's own, rich people, and open spaces. But in europe for instance, one can go long distances without needing to carry stuff, hostel to hostel, not really credit card touring in the sense one often hears it over here. Touring is exploring, or simply driving a route on a bike. Sight seeing, how long you are out there is not really the point, or how you sleep at night.

Here's my attempt at a few definitions

https://wheelsofchance.org/2009/08/19/touring-taxonomy/

Definitions are just descriptions people attach to things. You can pretty much divide and categorize things any way you want, though there are widely accpted definitions of many things.

Anyway, to me an interesting way to think about cycling is to think about how much the bike is the ends or the means. In racing, performance oriented, skill based riding, etc.. the focus seems to be very much about the act of cycling. When it comes to things like commuting, utlitily, and touring the bicyling supports some other activity. In the case of commuting and utility it is work. In touring the bicycle supports travel and exploration. A bike can even the means to just have some fun, the ends.

I also tend to think that as cycling becomes a normal, everyday thing the emphasis can shift from being about the bike to being about what the bike can do for us. At least that's how it went with me.