Ultimate Guide to Hiking in Europe: Plan a Cultural Adventure

“…you’re sure to find the adventure of a lifetime within these pages.” — Seattle Book Review
Chanticleer I & I Grand Prize Book Award Winner
Includes 15 of Europe’s best hiking trails for active vacationersA fun, colorful, modern guidebook for adventure travel to Europe
Move over traditional sightseeing, throngs of visitors, and tourist traps! Explore Europe on Foot gives travelers an alternative way to discover Europe. A hiking vacation offers countless rewards: the time to admire the tidiness of a village farm, soak in the rugged alpine view from a rocky perch, and absorb a country through the smells of its landscape and encounters with locals. Explore Europe on Foot is a complete guide to conceptualizing, planning, and executing the slow-travel hike (or hikes!) of a lifetime.
Author Cassandra Overby tells you how you can spend all, or even just part, of your vacation enjoying scenery, small towns, and cultural experiences most travelers miss―all without carrying a big backpack. This guide offers all the nuts and bolts you need: how to choose a route that is right for you, how to plan, what to pack, what to expect, how to find accommodations and food, how to deal with challenges along the way, and so much more. These aren’t wilderness backpacking trips, but rather a wide range of town-to-town walks that offer the opportunity to have an authentic, affordable, restorative vacation.
Travelers will also appreciate overviews of fifteen long-distance trails in Belgium, France, Italy, Germany, Great Britain, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, and Turkey, with itineraries that range from one to fifteen days. For those unwilling to go all-in, Cassandra also offers tips on incorporating day-hike outings into a more traditional vacation. The focus is on how to craft that more immersive vacation so users of the guide will be able to apply what they learn to their own dream destinations.
15 Handpicked Walks include: Rota Vicentina, Portugal English Way, Spain Mont Saint-Michel, France Alsace Wine Route, France Tour du Mont Blanc, France and Italy Cinque Terre 2.0, Italy Lycian Way, Turkey Alpine Pass Route, Switzerland King Ludwig’s Way, Germany The Moselle, Germany The Ardennes, Luxembourg and Belgium The Lake District, England, UK West Highland Way, Scotland, UK Laugavegur Trek, Iceland The Sahara Desert, Morocco

From the Publisher

From the introduction:

My hope is that you won’t use this book just to explore Europe on foot but that it will change the way you travel everywhere, one mountain, village and authentic B and B at a time. I hope it will not only deepen your love of the outdoors but also widen your experience of the world and connect you with

everything from foreign cultures to people who are nothing like you—and yet just the same. I hope that it will help you slow down, to see foreign marvels at a pace they were designed for. I hope you savor a glass of wine in a vineyard as the melody of foreign sounds washes over you. More than anything, I hope your trip is everything you imagine it will be, that you take away from these walks more memories than you know what to do with and that you tell others about exploring Europe on foot.

Let’s create a revolution of more authentic and immersive travel, one trail at a time.

— Cassandra Overby, author (left: Cassandra exploring Mont Saint-Michel)

Chapters

Part 1: Dreaming

Chapter 1: Understand What’s Ideal for YouChapter 2: See What’s PossibleChapter 3: Get a Recommendation: Fifteen Handpicked WalksChapter 4: Make a Final Decision

Part 2: Planning

Chapter 5: Find (the Right) Adventure CompanionsChapter 6: Walk Independently or Hire HelpChapter 7: Get ThereChapter 8: Find a Place to StayChapter 9: Train for the TrailChapter 10: Be Prepared for AnythingChapter 11: Make Your Walk a Cultural Experience

Part 3: Packing

Chapter 12: ClothingChapter 13: FootwearChapter 14: ToiletriesChapter 15: Trail and Travel ToolsChapter 16: Electronic ToolsChapter 17: Packs

Part 4: Traveling

Chapter 18: Check Off Your Final To-Dos Before WalkingChapter 19: Make the Most of the Experience

Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany

From Chapter 2: One-Day Wander #4: Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia

Location: East-central Croatia

Day-Hike From: Split, Zagreb, Zadar

Type: Multiple loops

Distance: 2.2 to 11.4 miles (3.5 to 18.3km)

More info: np-plitvicka-jezera.hr/en

Plitvice Lakes National Park, widely known as the gem of Europe, is so beautiful that you could spend days taking in its allure. If you’re short on time, however, a day is perfect for exploring the park and its sixteen terraced lakes, which are connected by cascading waterfalls of the prettiest aquamarine. Located in the mountains east of Croatia’s Adriatic coast, this park is a natural paradise, with more than 160 species of birds, 321 different kinds of butterflies and 90 waterfalls.

The loop trails that crisscross the park are accessible from both of the park entrances, which are within walking distance of each other. The best way to get a detailed look at the trail system is to purchase a trail map at one of the entrances. Not sure which loop to walk? Ask park staff—they can give a recommendation based on what you’d most like to see and how much time you have available.

As you make your way through the park on the series of relatively short, well-trodden loop trails, you’ll be as close to the enchanting water as possible, in many places suspended just inches above the water on sturdy boardwalks that meander past sleepy trout. The paths take you up through limestone caves and reward you with incredible panoramas of the whole area.

Keep your eyes out for wildlife as you walk. If you make it out to one of the wooded paths that take in the local hills rather than the water, you might even see wolves, owls and brown bears.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mountaineers Books
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 10, 2018
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1680511076
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1680511079
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.7 x 0.8 x 8.9 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #287,869 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #163 in Mountain Climbing #281 in Running & Jogging (Books) #305 in General Europe Travel Guides
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