Walking distance is the only number on this site that your body reports back to you the same evening. Beds slept in is a fact about your mornings. Flying time is a fact about a plane. Cost is a fact about a bank account. Miles on foot is a fact about your knees, your feet, the small of your back, and how you feel at six in the evening when there is still dinner to sit through. That is why people ask for it more directly than the other four, and usually with a specific joint named.
The figure below each trip is arithmetic and nothing more. We take the walking that is built into the trip as it is run, add it up across the days on the ground, and divide. Transfers are not counted. Wandering after dinner is not counted, though on some of these trips it is the best part. What is counted is the walking you cannot skip without missing the thing you came for: the approach to the site, the stretch between one village and the next, the loop that starts and ends at the door.
Two things follow from that method, and both of them matter more than the number itself. First, an average is only honest about trips whose days resemble each other. A walking route that covers roughly the same ground daily is described well by one figure. A trip with three sitting days and one enormous day is described badly by the same figure, and the same figure is what you get. Second, distance is not effort. Eleven flat miles on a towpath in fifty-five degrees is a pleasant day that ends with an appetite. Six miles on loose scree, in ninety degrees, with 2,600 feet of climb, is a day that costs you the following morning as well.
Nine nights: two in Skidegate, three in Port Clements or Tlell, two on Moresby near Sandspit, two back at the north end, moved by rental vehicle and one inter island ferry, with your bags going wherever you go because nothing is portered.
Nine nights in five places: three farm guesthouses, one small hotel above a bakery in Ludza, and one room in a potter's household near Preili, moved between by a hired car you drive yourself, with luggage staying in the trunk between towns.
Nine nights: three in a colonial house in Salta city, two in a small hotel in Cafayate, two in a plain adobe inn in Cachi, two back in Salta, with a driver and a vehicle moving the party and the bags between them on gravel and paved road.
Nine nights in three beds across four stays: three nights at a working cattle ranch north of Mullen, two at a guest ranch on the Niobrara, two in a small hotel in Valentine, two back at the first ranch; you drive your own rental between them and your bags stay in the car.
Eight nights in four harbor guesthouses, two nights in each, private rooms with shared or private bath depending on the house; the party moves between islands on scheduled passenger ferries and walks the last stretch, carrying its own bags every time.
Nine nights in four places: three in Castro, two in Cucao near the national park, two on Isla Mechuque reached by launch, and two in Ancud, moving by private vehicle and public ferry, with luggage carried in the vehicle except on the Mechuque leg, where you take an overnight bag.
Eight nights in four beds: three in a ranch guest house near Cassoday, two above a main street storefront in Cottonwood Falls, two in a converted stone schoolhouse west of Council Grove, one final night in Manhattan; one rented car throughout, luggage stays in the trunk between moves.
Nine nights in six village inns and one mountain lodge, two of them for three nights at a time, moved between by rental car you drive yourself, with luggage staying in the trunk and carried in by hand each evening.
Eight nights, seven in one timber guesthouse near the Riisa side of the park and one in Parnu before the flight home, with a driver moving the party and all luggage in a single van transfer at each end and nothing carried between beds.
Nine nights in four places: three in a family guesthouse in the Biebrza villages, two in a wooden house near Kruszyniany, three by the forest at Bialowieza, one last night in Bialystok, with a driver moving the party and the luggage between them by road.
Nine nights: four in a stone village house inland, two in a small family guesthouse near Malko Tarnovo, three in simple rooms above a beach at Sinemorets or Varvara, moved by hired car with a driver, with luggage carried in that car and never on your back.
Nine nights: four in a small hotel in Xincheng near the gorge mouth, two in a homestay in the rift valley near Yuli, three in a guesthouse on the coast south of Hualien city, moved between by hired car with a driver, and luggage travels in the car rather than on your back.
Nine nights split between two family-run guesthouses, five in a Glenariff village and four near Cushendall, with a local driver moving suitcases between them on the changeover morning and returning walkers from the far end of each day's route.
Nine nights in three village bases of three nights each, all rooms with private bathrooms in family run places, moved between by a small rental car you drive yourselves, with luggage staying in the car and never transferred by anyone else.
Nine nights in three places: four in a small inn at Miyanoura on the north coast, three in a family guesthouse at Anbo, two at Onoaida in the south, moved by rented car, with the two large bags staying in the car and a daypack carried on the trails.
Nine nights: two in Shkoder in a small hotel, three in a guesthouse in Theth, one in a hut nearer the pass, two in a Valbona guesthouse and one back in Shkoder, moving by van, boat and on foot, with luggage carried ahead by road and packhorse while you walk with a daypack.
Eleven nights in six places: four small rural hotels, one converted granite farmhouse and one night in a guesthouse inside a walled town, with a driver moving the party and the bags by road while you walk or ride between them.
Eight nights, all of them in the same family run guesthouse in Zabljak with private bathrooms and no elevator; a car and driver moves the party to each trailhead in the morning and collects it in the afternoon, so luggage is unpacked once and stays there.
Eight nights in four family-run village hotels, two nights in each, walking between three of them on marked paths and moving by road once; a van shifts the main bags between hotels on walking days, so you carry a daypack.
Eight nights: four in a small hotel at Aberlour, two in a guesthouse at Grantown on Spey, two in an inn at Kingussie, with a driver moving the party and the bags between the three by road while you walk the section in between.
Nine nights: two in a small hotel in Targu Jiu, four in family guesthouses in the Jiu and Olt valley villages, two in a stone refuge below the ridge, one back in town; a driver moves the party and the bags, and you walk carrying a day pack.
Nine nights: seven in family run guesthouses of four to nine rooms along the coastal route, two in a small hotel near the island's main town, moved by a booked driver and one local bus, with a bag transfer van carrying everything but a daypack between each night.
Nine nights in four places: three in a Vimperk guesthouse, two in a converted forestry lodge at Modrava, two above Cerne Lake, two in Ceske Budejovice; a driver moves the bags between the four, and you walk or take the summer forest bus.
Nine nights: seven in family-run inns with shared bathing, one in a temple guest hall with a shared sleeping room, one near the airport at the end. You walk between them every day carrying a daypack, and your main bag is forwarded ahead by the domestic parcel service.
Ordered by miles walked a day. This is an ordering by one measurable fact and not a ranking by quality: no trip here is better than another and this office will not say that one is.
What two miles a day and eleven miles a day actually do to an evening
At the low end, walking is not the trip, it is the connective tissue between parts of the trip. Two miles a day is a museum in the morning, lunch sitting down, a slow street in the afternoon, and about four hundred yards back to the room. Nobody packs for it. Regular shoes hold up, a day bag is enough, and the thing that limits you is standing still on hard floors rather than covering ground. People underestimate that: three hours upright on marble is harder on the lower back than five miles on a dirt path, and a two mile day can still end with sore feet for a reason that has nothing to do with distance.
Around eleven miles the arithmetic of the day changes shape. Eleven miles at a real walking pace, with stops, is five to six hours of the day gone before you account for lunch or a swim or a long look at something. You are unlikely to also do an afternoon of anything else. You will eat more than you expect and sleep hard. Laundry becomes a logistics question rather than an afterthought, socks stop being interchangeable, and if your footwear is wrong you will know by day two rather than day five. Fourteen, the top of this list, is a day that starts early because it has to, and it is the only band where a rest day is built in rather than optional.
- under 2 miles
- walking connects the parts of the day, it is not a part of the day; street shoes, no planning, standing still is the harder problem
- 2 to 4 miles
- a normal city or coastal day, one destination on foot and the return; most people do this at home without noticing
- 4 to 7 miles
- the day has a shape and walking sets it; you will want a second pair of shoes and you will be ready to sit at seven
- 7 to 10 miles
- the walking is the point now; three to five hours of moving, a real lunch stop, and an early evening
- 10 to 14 miles
- a full working day on your feet; boots that already fit you, a rest day in the itinerary, and one day in the week that goes long
Where the average lies, and it lies in one direction only
The number understates the hard days and it never overstates them. Averages cannot do otherwise. Take a trip that prints five miles a day across eight days on the ground. That can be eight days of five miles, which is a genuinely moderate trip. It can also be two travel days of nothing, four days of three miles, and two days of thirteen with a long descent on the second of them, which is a different trip entirely and will not suit the same person. Both are five. We show the average because it is the number that can be computed the same way for all twenty-four, and we tell you here that it is the wrong number to make the decision on if you have a knee, a hip, an ankle you have already had opinions about, or a person in your party who cannot turn back partway.
The other place it lies is surface and grade, which the figure has no room for. Ask about the hardest single day rather than the average, and ask what it is made of: how many feet of climb, what the ground is, whether there is shade, whether there is water, and whether it is a loop or a point to point. Point to point matters more than people think, because on a loop you can shorten the day by turning around and on a point to point you generally cannot. When you send a request, name the number you know about yourself, whether that is "eight miles is fine, four hundred feet of climb is not" or "I want to walk until I stop thinking". We will put the hardest day in writing, with the climb and the surface, before anything is reserved.
Four other questions you could be asking instead of this one
The same twenty-four trips are printed on this site in five orders. Beds slept in, flying time, this one, how much is arranged before you arrive, and what it costs to start. Each is an ordering by something you can measure, and not one of them is a ranking of quality. There is no best trip here and no shortlist behind the list. Choosing an order is choosing which question you are actually asking, and the five questions genuinely conflict: the trips that walk least are often the ones with the most already decided for you, and the ones that walk most tend to be long, which drives up the bed count and drags cost with it. Somebody who sorts by walking and somebody who sorts by cost will read the same catalogue and arrive at opposite ends of it, and both of them are reading it correctly.
This office will not tell you which of the five matters. We do not grade these trips, we publish no opinions about them, and we do not keep a favorite to steer people toward. What we will do is answer the specific question underneath your ordering: the climb on the worst day, how far the nearest road is from the middle of the route, whether an eight mile day can be cut to four without missing the point of it, and what any of that does to the figure. Amber Almanac takes the request and places the reservation with the company that runs the trip. No payment passes through this office and there is nothing to check out of.