Cotswolds walking vacation, small group

Planet

We are firmly committed to responsible tourism, and all of our tours reflect that commitment. Our vacations are purposefully designed to provide a visitor experience that maximises the positive benefits of tourism while minimising any negative impacts.

Leave No Trace & Our Guides

We are staunch advocates of the Leave No Trace principles, in which our guides are fully trained. On all of our activities, our guides will ensure that the impact on the environment, wildlife and local community is minimised. Along the way, our guides will teach you how to do this so that the knowledge is spread on your travels in England and further afield. Our guides are ambassadors for England's wild places and are passionate about sharing their knowledge. Your guide will not only lead your activities but tell you all about England's flora, fauna, geology, history and culture along the way.


Transport

Our trips focus on enjoying the landscapes through human power, so by walking or biking through them. We minimise motorised transports as much as possible.

This walking tour of the Cotswolds starts and finishes at a mainline train station to encourage the use of public transport. During the trip, you’re based at two different accommodations across the Cotswolds to minimise longer daily driving distances. Walking is the main activity of the day, so you’ll be walking 6-11 kilometres a day so that you can fully immerse yourself in the beautiful landscapes.


Accommodation & Meals

We’ve handpicked the accommodation that you will be staying at during this trip - we work with B&Bs, country inns, guest houses and small hotels that are run locally and are guaranteed to provide a warm welcome. We take the accommodation provider’s sustainability efforts into account during our selection process and encourage, where possible, for our partners to reduce, reuse and recycle.

England is known for its fantastic and varied natural larder so we try to source all food and drink provided on the trip as much as possible locally and endeavour to take our clients to establishments that celebrate seasonal English produce, meat and dairy. The Cotswolds are known for their pastoral charm, and we’ll be sure to try regional meats, cheeses, bread and beer.


In the Office

It’s not just on trips that we promote sustainable processes. We operate our vacations out of a carbon-efficient headquarters which is heated by the latest sustainable heat pump process. This, alongside the latest standards in insulation, means we stay warm in winter and cool in summer while being friendly to the environment.

We reduce, reuse and recycle, using environmentally friendly products from local suppliers where possible for milk and other essentials. From sustainable toilet roll to auto-off lights to reduce electricity consumption, every part of office life has been considered to be as eco-friendly as possible. We even encourage car-sharing and compete monthly for the most environmentally friendly commute!

Additional

In preparation for our trips, we strongly encourage our travelers to bring a reusable water bottle and lunchbox on their vacation to discourage the use of single-use plastics.

Lastly, we are committed to contributing annually to nature-based and community charities, trusts and initiatives across England that support sustainability and the local communities in which we work.

People

Local Team

Our team hail from across England, and most of our office staff work out of Kirkby Lonsdale, a historic market town nestled in between the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales. Because of this, our passionate team are able to give expert insider advice on their own favourite playground and ensure the best experience for our visitors.

Local Partners

We ensure a warm welcome from the locals wherever we go, as we’ve always strived to work together with the local community and businesses, ensuring that the economic benefits are shared. We seek out locally owned and family-run hotels and restaurants over chain businesses. Packed lunches and snacks are sourced locally, either directly from the accommodation providers or from small cafes and delis.

Local Experiences

On each trip, we endeavour to introduce our visitors to local and unique experiences. On this walking vacation to the Cotswolds, our travelers kick off their trip with immersive visits to the iconically beautiful university grounds of Oxford and the palace grounds of Blenheim. Depending on the time of year, the trip progresses with a stop at neolithic stones or lavender fields, as well as time spent at the Chedworth Roman villa and Broadway Tower. There will be plenty of opportunity to see the various quaint villages that the Cotswolds are so well known for along the way. Our travelers can pop into independent and artisan shops with day trips to Bibury, Chipping Camden and Bourton-on-the-Water. The walking vacation finishes in Stratford-upon-Avon for a short walking tour.

Over-Tourism

Some of the areas we visit suffer from over-tourism, and we do what we can to manage this consequence. The crowding caused by over-tourism negatively impacts not only the natural environment but also the quality of life of the communities who live and work in the beautiful destinations that we visit. To mediate this, we take our clients to the lesser-known spots in any given area, extend our tour departures into the less busy shoulder months to spread the flow of visitors, and when we do visit ‘hotspots’, we aim to go outside of peak hours.

Group Sizes

We deliberately keep our groups small for several reasons. Having smaller groups mean less disturbance to the environment and the local community. It also means that we can stay at smaller accommodation providers who are not eligible to benefit from mass tourism providers and have a better guide-to-traveler ratio. This trip takes a maximum of 8 clients, with one guide.