Walking tours

Guided walks, hikes, and treks in England, Scotland, and Wales

It may be slow going, but there's no way to see the Olde World like a walking or hiking tour through Britain.

From strolls through the streets of London to walks through the Lake District, hikes in the Yorkshire Dales to treks across the Scottish Highlands, seeing the British countryside at a stroller's pace is a time-honored tradition, and "walking" is a cherished national passtime (the Brits will call a two-week hike across the country a "walk;" they're a hardy breed.)

For millennia, walking is how anyone not rich enough to afford a horse got around, and the United Kingdom is still very much built to a human scale, crisscrossed with ancient pathways, scattered with tiny villages and hamlets with welcoming inns each within a day's walk of the last.

Even if you don't want to walk from town to town through the countryside, you may be happy to spend a day walking around town with an experienced guide. There’s no better way to bring a city’s culture and history to life than through a professional guide’s anecdotes, character sketches, jokes, and tons of background details. And the easiest (and cheapest) way to get one is to sign up for a guided walking tour.

Hiking

• Realadventures.com - This is not a tour operator or travel agency, but rather a clearing for independent tour operators, local adventure outfitters, and vacation agencies to offer their trips and tours direct to consumers. As such, it offers a potpourri of trips around the world, from single-day experiences to two-week tours, and they run the gamut from ballooning or biking to walking holidays, cooking schools, and much, much more.Partner
• Infohub.com - Not a tour company, rather a kind of aggregator of trips offered by tour companies—hiking and biking tours all across the U.K., plus barge-and-bike tours of the Thames in England, birding or fly-fishing in Wales, and kayak tours of Scotlands lochs, islands, or coast. Infohub casts one of the largest nets over the industry, listing some 14,000 tours offered by 4,000 operators in more than 100 categories, with more than 200 tours in England, nearly 100 in Scotland, and 65 in Wales.Partner
• Rei.com - America's greatest co-op chain of outdoors gear stores also offers active vacation—like walking tours of England and Scoltand, and some family multi-sport tours.
• Ramblers.org.uk - The premier walkers' association in the U.K., geared toward aiding hikers and walkers, offering tons of resources on rules, paths, and maps as well as sponsoring hundreds of group walks every week for members, from urban strolls to countryside rambles.
• Sherpaexpeditions.com - British company offering tons of self-guided hikes in the U.K., as well as a few escorted group treks, in both popular walking desintations as well as off-the-beaten-track regions.
• Viator.com - Best place to search for one-day walking adventures—from guided city walks to English countryside rambles to scaling Scottish peaks—but also intriguing options like a three-day Highlands of Scotland Whisky and Hiking trip. You'll have to search England, Scotland, and Wales independently, but there are dozens upon dozens of adventures. Partner
• Ordnancesurvey.co.uk - If you're buying the legendary and amazingly spiffy Ordnance Survey maps make sure you get one of the newer (as of 2004) "OS Explorer Maps" with the little brown guy walking across the horizon on the cover—rather than the old "Explorer Maps"—as these new versions show all the new trails.
• Walkingworld.com - Taking the famed OS (Ordnance Survey) maps and plotting on them more than 7,000 walks all over Britain, accompanied by photographs and descriptive text. You can only see a half-dozen or so for free; otherwise, each walks costs £1.95 to download (you print it out yourself), or pay £18 for an annual subscription and unlimited access.
• Contexttravel.com - This bespoke walking tour company doesn't even call its 200 tour leaders "guides." It calls them "docents"—perhaps because most guides are academics and specialists in their fields: history professors, archeologists, PhDs, art historians, artists, etc. Groups are miniscule (often six people maximum), and most docents can be booked for private guiding sessions as well. They aren't always the cheapest tours, but they are invariably the best. People rave about Context.Partner
• Wildernesstravel.com - Specializes in walking tours, treks, and inn-to-inn hiking tours of Europe, as well as less strenuous walking tours.
• Thewayfarers.com - Top walking tour outfit for nearly three decades, with mutli-day walks in the English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish countryside. Not cheap.
• Visitengland.com - A potpurri of articles on walking, trekking, and hiking holidays from the England tourism board.
• Visitscotland.com - A potpurri of articles on walking, trekking, and hiking holidays from the Scottish tourism board.
• Outdooraccess-scotland.com - All about walkers' access to public and private lands across Scotland.