Steel Donkey Bike Tours

Kicking up quite a fuss recently, Steel Donkey Bike Tours have become famous as Barcelona's first alternative two-wheel tours. Unlike with the city's many other bike tours, no two rides are the same and instead of following a set itinerary, crammed full of boring facts, you'll simply be let loose on the city with a knowledgeable local as your guide! You'll discover little-known secrets of the city, eat local food with the local people and cycle through some of Barcelona's most scenic squares and streets far away from the tourist maelstrom. Steel Donkey only rides with a maximum of eight people, and this enables you to actually stop off and interact with the city... at markets, vintage shops, squat houses, hidden bars and more! If you're looking for a unique Barcelona experience, you may have just found what you're looking for! Book ahead via email.

Last week I got a great opportunity to spend 4 hours discovering Barcelona by bike. We were shown around Raval, a district that many tourists seem to avoid, but which was a real experience to see the real face of the city. Our guide was great, telling all the funny stories you can't find in anu guidebook. The bike tour (bikes are incredibely comfortable and Barcelona has a lot of bike lanes so it is easy to visit by bike)is highly recommendable to those that prefer seeing the real city, sometimes not that preety, instead of just rusing from one Gaudi monumento to another.

A cracker of a tour. Completely different, really personal, awesome guide! If any of my mates were going to Barcelona I'd send them straight to Steel Donkeys!

Steel Donkeys - apart from having a great name! - are def. the best tours I've done in my many years as a traveller. They've got everything you want from a tour. Authenticity, great guides, flexibility (we got to choose our own start and end time!), entertainment and we even burned a few calories so it was even good for us! I really liked the fact we were in a small group. When I saw a big crowd of about 20 people on oragne bikes going past at one stage I felt really sorry for them. I'm sure we saw 5 times as much of them! Absolutely great value for money and no hesitation in recommending this

Fantastic day out. OUr guide gave us a personal tour of what seemed like the whole city! It costs more than most of the other bike rides in town (around 30 euros) but we wanted a more exclusive experience - and that's what we got!

Great fun, completely unexpected day out. There was a lot of interesting stories and information but mostly we rode around cool areas of town, played ping pong and enjoyed the sun. It didn't feel like a rigid tour but exploring with a local.

I can honestly say this is the best city cycle tour I have ever been on.
I was slightly daunted beforehand about the prospect of cycling around a strange city, but the route we took was largely off road or on quiet back streets.
Our guide was fantastic, and knew a lot about the city. It was great to do something a little alternative and he had lots of pithy stories about random things that allowed us to get under the skin of the city.
And the cycle back along the playa with the sun setting over the city was sensational.

Just as Toomas from Estonia said, we aren't the type to take a tradition tour. The ride with Slinky was perfect for us. Just the 3 of us rode all over Barcelona. We toured the factory that recycles city banners into bags, and they were so great we bought some. We also had lunch at a great cafe that is part of a design studio in a former warehouse, rode all over the waterfront, on streets we'd never know, and looked at the cemetery. Slinky was nice enough to let us keep going and going. ("What's over here? Let's check this out!" Us.) We were out for about 4 hours, but Slinky would tailor the ride for whatever one would want. Also, we were able to keep the rental bikes for another day and use them to ride to some famous Gaudi sites on our own. Excellent!

We don't usually do guided tours, but this Steel Donkey ride seemed interesting. Also, we could have a guide just for 2 of us. We went to the Steel Donkey ride on March 31, 2010, and it was very much fun. Usual tourist places can be visited on your own with the help of guide book (this is what we did), but the Steel Donkey took us off the common path to funky places with interesting stories. Definitely worth the money!