Far from confined to hiking-stick retirees and pilgrims, the remedial powers of walking have gripped a much younger crowd, swapping Ibiza benders and fly-and-flop plans for therapeutic walks through Europe’s dramatic, varied landscapes.
Emily Thornton and Lucy Hird of hiking club Soft Girls Who Hike attribute this walking renaissance to people drinking less and focusing more on health from a much younger age: “it’s also a cheap way of spending time with friends.” They also deem lockdown as being largely responsible. “People wanted to get out of the house and walks were the only option: that’s what got us into hiking as we realised there’s so many beautiful green spaces around us that are accessible by public transport.”
Simply being outdoors, they say, has proven to lower stress and anxiety levels, beyond just the physical health benefits. “People are realising they belong in the outdoors, no matter their hiking ability, you don’t need to be an athlete or have high tech gear.”
Indeed, for a lot of young people, it’s a head clearing exercise, a chance to slow down, focus on putting one foot in front of the other and absorb the natural splendour around them. “It’s also not looking intensely at peoples’ faces, where conversation is so often lubricated with drink,” says Bella Somerset who founded the mountain trek and yoga retreat company, Bella’s Magic Mountains.
Bella has led groups of people mainly in the 20-40 bracket on hikes from Nepal to the Lake District, and is always struck by the depth of conversation reached after just one day immersed in a beautiful place, a depth rarely achieved without alcohol. “Life’s not always easy, and there’s a mutual vulnerability there…when you’re not looking directly at people, but nature and where you’re stepping, it becomes a space for honesty and boosts connections. It removes all that ‘being on form’ pressure, as you’re focusing on the walk.”
It also removes the frenzied pre-trip research and agony of itinerary indecision, as Paul Easto (founder of nature-based guided tours and custom travel, Wilderness Scotland), asserts, having clocked an increase in Gen Z and Millennial demand for guided tours – “they offload the hassle of logistics to the tour operator.” With staggeringly scenic walks through some of Scotland’s most rugged, unsullied landscapes (including Skye, The West Highland Way and Glencoe), Wilderness Scotland’s guided tours tap into the younger traveller’s growing appetite for experiential and fulfilling travel.
And if the explosion of Gorpcore is anything to go by – a sartorial term coined by The Cut back in 2017 from the acronym for ‘good ol’ raisins and peanuts’ (your classic trail mix hiking snack) – the move from desks to outdoors feels like a cultural flashpoint that will move the dial, not simply a trend. Gorp Girls, a collective founded by Hannah Da Silva that champions women in the outdoors (and riffs on this sartorial trend), brings women together with a roster or hikes, with everything from Autumnal traipses through the South Downs to sunny hikes through LA’s Zion National Park.
The cool, youthful, puffa-clad crowd plastered across the community’s Instagram homepage is anathema to those typically associated with walking holidays or just outdoorsy pursuits, and brings home the cultural shift away from tech and tortuous office hours, and back to nature. You could join them on their walking trips to Albania (evocative, mountain encased lakes and hearty, local food) or Morocco (Marrakech to the coast, via the Tamari desert), scheduled for 2025. Or pack your best Gorpcore for one of the walking holidays, below, whether that’s trudging through Iceland’s otherworldly lava fields, glaciers and hot springs; or skirting Sao Miguel’s ludicrously green coastline via secret coves, black sand beaches and sea cliffs carpeted in wild flowers.
The dripping forests and volcanic lakes of Sao Miguel
It’s the vibrancy of the Azores that first hits you as the plane descends to these impossibly green volcanic islands, scattered in the vast mass of the Atlantic like exiles. It’s as if someone ramped up the contrast button, with surreal blue lakes bordered by colourful flowers, and bright green forests dotted with pixie waterfalls, exotic butterflies and illuminated still further with a sharp, Azorean light. Headwater’s seven-night walking tour through Sao Miguel (the greenest of the 9 islands in the archipelago) is designed to fully absorb the beauty and magnitude of Ilhe Verde (the Green island). The app-led walk wiggles through old Portuguese villages, prairie forests and tea plantations, skirting crater lakes, and factoring in plenty of pit stops, such as a long stew in the hot springs and a tour of the island’s pineapple plantations. Many of the stays along the way are eco-friendly, and work this fertile island’s infamous bounty into creative plates and fruity cocktails.
The Undiscovered villages of Umbria
Just as beguiling as Tuscany, perhaps more so, and without the crowds and hordes of celebrity holiday homes, Umbria keeps its cards close to its chest. The so-called green heart of Italy –landlocked, untamed and largely undiscovered – Umbria is pecorino and church bell country, where car-free villages tumble down vertiginous hills in mustards, creams and terracotta, and artisanal rhythms and local rituals remain crucial reference points.
Headwater offers a seven-day, unhurried walking tour that follows in the footsteps of St Francis along the ancient pilgrimage trail. Luggage is transferred between hotels as walkers pound the ancient cobbled stones of hilltop villages, pausing for misty views across the valleys, and wind through Roman-planted olive groves, with the striking Medieval towns of Assisi ‘the town of St Francis’ and Spoleto with its impressive amphitheatre and aqueduct. As well as resting weary heads in boutique stays and guesthouses along the way, walkers can sample regional specialities as they go, with local recipes and Umbria’s foodie treasures: truffles, pecorino cheese, porchetta sandwiches and Sagrantino di Montefalco wines.
Counts and the Carpathians in Transylvania
Whether for its Saxon simplicity, its untamed forests roamed by wolves and lynx or its time-warp villages, untouched by modernity, Transylvania has lured in just about every plummy Brit with Ye Olde England nostalgia, most famously, our King. They are drawn to Transylvania’s evocative, eerie landscape, where bell towers pierce through the valleys’ low-hanging clouds and the snow-capped Carpathians surge menacingly in the distance. It’s essentially time travelling, one that is helping build Transylvania's rural economy in villages untouched by modernity that can flourish in their current form, rather than being left behind. As such, several of the traditional farming estates scattering this wild, unfenced region (reclaimed by their noble owners following Romania’s Communist chapter), have been sympathetically reimagined as stylish guesthouses – puffing smoke into the cold mist and warming rambler’s tummies with hearty goulash and orchard-pudding suppers. Bethlan Estates is one of these, where Count Mikos Bethlen and his family have breathed new life into a string of barns, granary houses and Saxon cottages. From them, guests can set off on guided adventures into the Carpathians, where bear sightings are common and walks skirt the edges of glaciers or venture deep into the forests where lynx roam. The walks are carefully crafted to show off the best of the dense, unsullied forest surrounding the estate, and to offer a profound connection to one of Europe’s last great wildernesses.
Glassy lakes, peaks and perfect sunny lunches in Zermatt
The snowglobe-pretty Swiss mountain town of Zermatt sits in the Matterhorn’s trance like an owl stopping a field mouse in its tracks with its sharp glare. In winter, it’s a skiers paradise with challenging runs and pillowy off piste so glide through. The snow melts to reveal Heidi-style green pastures, glassy lakes and Alpine gardens and sunny refugio terraces. Zermatt’s hikes are dramatic and wildly beautiful, and Inhams run a ‘under-your-own-steam’ series of routes here as well as bi-weekly guided walks, which includes flights, accommodation (you can pick your level) and transfers. A highlight for families is the 19th century cog railway, chugging through the emerald green Alpine scenery with black-nosed sheep grazing in the meadows as you hop off the train. Having taken on the challenging trails of the Rothorn, walkers can cool off in the lakes of Sunnegga, soothing weary muscles in the crystal clear water.
Thundering waterfalls and gurgling mudpools in Iceland
Iceland’s belching, spluttering, thawing, creaking, trickling interior is simply too ravishing to refrain from trudging through, wide-eyed and humbled by its Lord Of The Rings landscape. From exploring raw volcanic deserts of ash and bubbling mud pools to stewing in geothermal pools at Landmannalaugar, Macs Adventure’s ‘drive and hike’ itineraries uncover the raw beauty of the ‘Land of Fire and Ice.’ The epic journey begins in the capital, Reykjavik, then takes the scenic Ring Road 1, slicing through the picturesque south coast and the east fjords to Lake Myvatn on the north coast. Highlights include Jokulsarlon glacial lagoon, filled with enormous turquoise icebergs, and the dramatic waterfalls of Gullfoss, Skogafoss and Dettifoss.
Folklore and abandoned villages on The Isle of Skye
From wind-battered fishing villages gazing into shifting coral skies then abruptly, a hazy outline of the Hebrides across a grey, melancholic Atlantic, to the moody castles strewn across heather-carpeted valleys with views of the mountains’ crooked spines, Skye’s cinematic landscape is pure hiker fantasy. It’s also remarkably varied for its size, with the South dubbed ‘The Garden of Skye,’ then, via lonely, scenic roads that wind through pixie-green valleys, steep, untamed moorlands, and along sea lochs, the rough and dramatic north, whose sheer cliffs and dark, volcanic stones meet an unpredictable sea. Skye’s essence can be found in the whipping rain on the glens, the meteor showers on crisp nights, the mirror-like lochs that only fuel the Cuillin mountains’ well-founded narcissism. It’s this vastness and mercurial weather that dominate, carving the locals’ hardy, no-nonsense character and dispensing visitors with an involuntary shot of humility, (along with tinkling drams of Gaelic whiskies). Explore it all on a 6-night guided walking trip with Wilderness Scotland, traipsing across salt-stung bluffs, along long stretches of blonde sand and among the jagged spines of the Quiraing. Guides filled to the brim with island knowledge will take walkers to abandoned villages, ancient Iron Age brochs and lonely lighthouses, dissecting the day’s rambling adventures over fresh, locavore food and whisky in cosy, stylish digs.
Journey to Å, Lofoten
Few places are as raw and beguiling as the Lofoten Islands beyond the Arctic circle. Clusters of fisherman houses peer out across the majestic fjords, and life here can be both brutal and beautiful, with age-old rituals still adhered to. With a mix of hiking and driving, Inn Travel have curated a hair-raising walking trip starting in Svolvær, the island’s pocket-sized capital, and heading south-westerwards via two of the archipelago’s main groups of islands, where they’ll stay in cosy, converted fisherman’s cottages, whose log burners and wood-clad embrace are a welcome finalé to day spent traipsing rugged terrain and ogling at the sweeping fjord views. The walk runs over summer, when vast expanses of moorland and hidden mountain lakes are bathed in the soft, nostalgic light of the Midnight Sun.
