Our Policy
Policy aims:
Through our cycling holidays we aim to increase awareness and appreciation of our local regions of the Tarn et Garonne, Tarn and Aveyron departments of France, as ambassadors for both the area and for cycling, ensuring that we:
-
showcase the natural landscape and sights with little environmental impact;
-
enable our guests to engage with local history, traditions, culture and cuisine;
-
encourage interaction with local people and a contribution to the local economy.
Economic responsibility:
Agriculture and tourism are the two key industries in the Tarn et Garonne region both helping to bring economic sustainability to the region through businesses and employment.
Through our cycling holidays we support the local economy by ensuring that all of our routes include opportunities to visit and actively participate in local enterprises such as historical venues, artisanal shops, local markets or restaurants.
A key element of our holidays is gastronomy and so from a company perspective, we use local suppliers and seasonal produce for our catering services and in doing so support these industries and these providers, who have themselves, a passion for the region and preserving their traditions.
With this in mind, we also source our wine exclusively from suppliers in the Gaillac region. Through the vineyard excursions and produce stops that we build into our holidays, it provides an opportunity for our guests to meet the people involved in this process and buy wine directly from these producers.
Furthermore, we are a small family enterprise living and working from our Tours du Tarn base in France, we too rely on and utilise the expertise of our community to support the running of our business.
Environmental responsibility:
Tours du Tarn ask that all our guests who stay at our accommodation follow our recycling policy, where we recycle, glass plastic and paper and we ensure that any food wastage from our catering service is composted.
We provide all our guests with towels but ensure these are only changed weekly rather than on a hotel style basis to keep water usage down. We also promote the use of tap water rather than the use of bottled water, supplying refillable bid-ons for our bikes and tap water in our drinks fridge. We collect rain water from the rooves of all of our buildings to water the grounds surrounding our accommodation, and use a sustainable supply of wood from our own woodland for our wood burners which is our main source of heating.
In addition, through our catering offer we take considerable efforts to supply guests with dishes that don’t rely so heavily on air miles, where we use seasonal and locally or home grown produce for our menu’s
Thorough our booking process we send all correspondence electronically and we ask that they are returned in this way to reduce paper wastage
Social responsibility:
The very ethos of a Tours du Tarn holiday is to promote positively the local customs of the area ensuring that our cycling holidays explore and promote authentic local sights and attractions,such as seasonal fetes and celebrations, markets and cuisine. By the nature of its core business, we are the local guides and it’s our job to appropriately introduce others to the region that we live and work in and the people who are our friends, neighbours and colleagues
Furthermore we provide suggestions for visits to social projects for our guests to attend, locally these include a weekly ‘drop in’ community lunch in a nearby village on rest days, organised by a community housing project. In addition cooperative small scale farming initiatives from food to wine, with producers supplying a local community shop, as well as community house building projects