Walking Vacations

** Digging up an old thread for a good reason **

It was this thread, from 8 years ago, that resulted in a fantastic vacation that DW and I had last week. These are the reasons I come back to ER.org, despite my occasional squabble I may have, as I did on a thread earlier today. :angel:

A few posts back, someone mentioned "Sherpa Expeditions." Well, they are kaput. Before they got absorbed by World Expeditions group, I signed up for their news. Once World Expeditions absorbed them, I kept the news from Walker's Britain and Utracks. You see, sometimes an 8 year old discussion pays off years later.

Utracks is ultimately the group that I connected with, and they presented the tour we did a few weeks ago. I only have good things to say about the experience. It was affordable, adventurous, and meticulously planned. They came through on everything they said they would, including luggage transfers and assignments to fantastic small family run hotels/pensions.

The specific tour we did was a self-guided walking tour of Andros Island, Greece. Here: Andros Trail Self Guided Walk In Greece

Our first contact with them was by phone to a N. American specialist. He knew his stuff. Then we signed up online, and we immediately were asked some pretty direct questions to assure we were fit enough, and if we knew what the hell we were getting ourselves into. All email discussions were prompt and professional. Eventually, we had to answer some direct questions about health, and they cleared us, although sometimes people are asked to get doctor's approval. Although this seems invasive, it was really for the best.

The travel documents they provided were subbed-out to a local expedition group from Greece. These were extremely helpful and very detailed, right down to expected cab fares, and names of people we should chat with, including one of our cab drivers (and boy, she gave us an island history in 20 minutes, it was great!).

We were odd ducks on Andros. Everyone loved to hear we were from America because most of their clients are from Europe or Greece mainland. We shared a lot of discussion.

If you read the tour summary at the link provided, you see there are some ferry rides, public bus rides, and taxi rides, many of which require our own coordination. That's not my style, I like driving. But I was glad to be forced into it. In many ways, the public bus part was the most memorable as we had to rely on the locals to help translate. One young lady made sure we got our transfer, then she had an exchange with the bus driver that was typical Greek (loud). We wondered what we did wrong. Nothing: she convinced the bus driver to take a small detour and drop us off right in front of our hotel. Now that's memorable!

Route instructions were detailed. We mostly used the phone app, which was awesome. And we did some dead reckoning too. We found things not described, like a really old church in ruins, or the man and his granddaughter having a Sunday morning moment in a quite place in the woods. We intruded on them, but they were happy to see us and astonished we were from America.

I could go on and on about the food and generosity, international travel troubles, and all the other wonderful parts of the trip (beaches!), but I have to stop somewhere.

I'll leave you with this: if you imagine doing this or any of the many other Utracks trips, don't delay. The elevation changes were challenging as they are on most of the trips. We were fit enough cardio-wise, but took a lot longer than expected because we didn't want to break or twist anything on the loose rocks. Breaking an ankle 5 km into an island path is not a good thing to do. As my arthritis continues to advance, I'm not sure we'll be able to do this again... but we're thinking about it.

We have a million pictures, but for some reason these two touch me. Maybe DW and I will go back in 15 years, after our hiking days are done, and be the lovely couple holding hands walking on the beach:
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I responded earlier to this thread. We just got back from 4 days in Rocky Mountain National Park. We rarely hire a company to organize our trips. This one worked out well and not too expensive. About 35 miles in 4 days on different trails. Hike on your own with guidance Foot Paths of the World. They arrange lodging, most meals, and transportation. What I like best is we did not need to repeat trails as we sometimes do on your self contained trips.

We also hiked Laugavegur in Iceland. We were self contained and camping. It was summer but still cold at night and windy. The camp sites had stone wind breaks that worked well for the wind.

For those who desire more support, I know you can find tours as we were on the same timetable as a tour group from Italy. DW and I hiked 4 days. DD made it a 5 day trek.
 
Timely post as we just came back Wednesday from a trip with Country Walkers. Croatia: Brac, Korcula & Mljet National Park | Country Walkers.
Our trip was well organized with a Plan A and Plan B everyday. Dining and wine tasting along the way were very nice. Accommodations better than we would get on our own. We also added a day trip in Split before the group. 2024 (Split) From Split: Krka Waterfalls, Food & Wine Tasting Tour

This was our 6th trip with Country Walkers, Calif wine trail, Amalfi Coast Italy, Zambia Safari, Bryce Zion NP, Greece

We are not do it yourself people, so when we leave the homestead to travel we don't want a willy nilly trip. And we like the hand holding, YMMV
 

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Timely post as we just came back Wednesday from a trip with Country Walkers. Croatia: Brac, Korcula & Mljet National Park | Country Walkers.
Our trip was well organized with a Plan A and Plan B everyday. Dining and wine tasting along the way were very nice. Accommodations better than we would get on our own. We also added a day trip in Split before the group. 2024 (Split) From Split: Krka Waterfalls, Food & Wine Tasting Tour

This was our 6th trip with Country Walkers, Calif wine trail, Amalfi Coast Italy, Zambia Safari, Bryce Zion NP, Greece

We are not do it yourself people, so when we leave the homestead to travel we don't want a willy nilly trip. And we like the hand holding, YMMV
Very nice! Some other posts back mentioned Country Walkers. Most of these tours are more upscale than UTracks. Nothing wrong with that if you can afford it, and I think we can Blow That Dough. I'm putting them on our list. I like that they have less aggressive options than UTracks. I also like that they have some turn-key options including travel.

Here's the thing: there are a lot of options out there. If someone reading about this is thinking about a walking (really, hiking) vacation, don't delay. Those joints don't last forever.
 
Very nice! Some other posts back mentioned Country Walkers. Most of these tours are more upscale than UTracks. Nothing wrong with that if you can afford it, and I think we can Blow That Dough. I'm putting them on our list. I like that they have less aggressive options than UTracks. I also like that they have some turn-key options including travel.

Here's the thing: there are a lot of options out there. If someone reading about this is thinking about a walking (really, hiking) vacation, don't delay. Those joints don't last forever.
All our guided tours with Country Walkers have 2 guides for the unexpected, and one guide may go an easier way than the other 15-17 walkers.
 
All our guided tours with Country Walkers have 2 guides for the unexpected, and one guide may go an easier way than the other 15-17 walkers.
That was our experience with them as well.
 
There are so many places to go for walking vacations and so many ways to do them. In past years my wife and I have been in the "do it yourself" camp, but as we're aging we're more inclined to trips that are at least partially supported. Sometimes it's great to be in a group, but what I more prefer is an agency that will arrange lodging and haul your luggage each day, and do this along an established walking route. Most recently we did this in Bavaria last year on a pilgrim route (Jakobsweg), and before that about a 500 mile trip on a different pilgrim route in SW France.

If you want to go international and have more of a do-it-yourself experience, we found the one time that we hiked in England to be wonderful, and we more or less speak the language. On more popular routes one can typically find a service that will give you the freedom to go your own pace during the day, but arrange the lodgings and haul the baggage. We did it all ourselves on the Coast to Coast trail in England, but we still had to schedule each day and book lodgings ahead of time.

Sometimes it's possible to just wing it. If you do the most popular Camino de Santiago route during a shoulder season --- well, it can still be popular and competitive to get a bed for the night, but at the same time it's nice to be able to pick your daily mileage as you go, or to take a day (or more) off if you either want to or need to. Hiking in France my wife had some foot issue that made hiking unpleasant for the latter part of the trip, so she was always scrambling a bit to get to our next book lodging along the way. She said it was fine, part of the adventure, but ...
Always trade-offs in planning and scheduling stuff like this.
 
There are so many places to go for walking vacations and so many ways to do them. In past years my wife and I have been in the "do it yourself" camp, but as we're aging we're more inclined to trips that are at least partially supported. Sometimes it's great to be in a group, but what I more prefer is an agency that will arrange lodging and haul your luggage each day, and do this along an established walking route. Most recently we did this in Bavaria last year on a pilgrim route (Jakobsweg), and before that about a 500 mile trip on a different pilgrim route in SW France.

If you want to go international and have more of a do-it-yourself experience, we found the one time that we hiked in England to be wonderful, and we more or less speak the language. On more popular routes one can typically find a service that will give you the freedom to go your own pace during the day, but arrange the lodgings and haul the baggage. We did it all ourselves on the Coast to Coast trail in England, but we still had to schedule each day and book lodgings ahead of time.

Sometimes it's possible to just wing it. If you do the most popular Camino de Santiago route during a shoulder season --- well, it can still be popular and competitive to get a bed for the night, but at the same time it's nice to be able to pick your daily mileage as you go, or to take a day (or more) off if you either want to or need to. Hiking in France my wife had some foot issue that made hiking unpleasant for the latter part of the trip, so she was always scrambling a bit to get to our next book lodging along the way. She said it was fine, part of the adventure, but ...
Always trade-offs in planning and scheduling stuff like this.

I lived in North Bend WA at the base of Mt Si, hiked to the top once a week. I was 45 at the time 30 years later, not so much. But I still would rather walk my way around life. A walking safari in Zambia is more to my liking.
 
Sometimes it's great to be in a group, but what I more prefer is an agency that will arrange lodging and haul your luggage each day, and do this along an established walking route.
Yes, this is what we liked about the UTracks trip. We could just do our thing and not worry about luggage and lodging. And we knew that in worst case, we could taxi from site to site. We never had to, thankfully.

That said, I won't rule out a guide or group for the future.
 
I’m not sure we’ll try an organized walking vacation these days although I certainly would appreciate the arranged lodging, transportation and guides.

We often hike on US vacations and have recently done several days of 5 mile hikes on mountain trails at higher altitude with several hundred feet of climb. But a hike much more than five miles a day just sounds like a slog.
 
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