Active tours
Hiking, biking, kayaking, ballooning, horseback and other active tours of the United Kingdom
Sometimes you just have to go beyond the sightseeing and get physical.
Guided walks and hiking tours, and biking tours, are incredibly popular—and each get their own sections—but you can also go fishing, caving, or rock climbing, surf the waves of Scarborough or kayak the Scottish coast, go on a horseback trek or whitewater rafting, sail, skydive, go off-roading, and much much more.
Here's how to find the best active tours and adventures in England:
Active tours
- 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
- Viator.com - Best place to search for one-day active and outdoor adventures (along with a few mutli-day treks)—from hiking and biking to kayaking, surfing, fishing, caving, whitewater rafting, rock climbing, sailing, skydiving, off-roading, and more. You'll have to search England, Scotland, and Wales independently, but there are dozens upon dozens of adventures in each. 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.
- Gadventures.com - G Adventures is an excellent small-group adventurous tour operator. Not much on the U.K. at present—save for a small ship adventure sailing the Scottish islands and Norway coast—but worth checking out.Partner
- Djoserusa.com - Excellent small-group tour company based out of the Neterhlands. Not much in the U.K.—though the 8-day Wales Walking tour is nice—but also worth checking out.
- Sierraclub.org/outings - Yes, the premier outdoors network of the USA also plans lots of trips abroad, including ones in Europe, like the England Coast-to-Coast walk, or Adventures in the Scottish Highlands.Partner
- Exodustravels.com - Adventure travel and trips, including self-guided walking adventures in the U.K.
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.
Cycling
- Biketours.com - The old Bike Tours Direct is a sort of middleman that can hook you up with smaller, local bike tour outfits, which are often much cheaper than the big international agencies and tour companies.
- 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 holkdays, cooking schools, and much, much more.Partner
- Infohub.com - Not a tour company, rather a kind of aggregator of trips offered by tour companies—including dozens of biking tours in England, Scotland, and Wales, plus nice mixed trips like the barge-and-bike tours of the Thames in England. 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
- Viator.com - Best place to search for one-day biking adventures—from guided city tours to countryside routes. You'll have to search England, Scotland, and Wales independently, but there are dozens upon dozens of adventures. Partner
- Ciclismoclassico.com - My favorite bike tour outfit, extremely well-run—but currently with only one England bike tour on offer.
- Naviki.org - A crowd-sourced navigation service and app for biking in Europe that allows you to plot routes between any two places, near or far.
- Cyclema.ps - A British-based bike route mapping app.
- Roadcyclinguk.com - An online magazine devoted to British cycling, with a (small) section on "Best of British"—reports (including phtoographs and video) of some classic road biking trips through northern England, including the Lake District, North Penines, Yorkshire Dales, and Forest of Bowland.
- Visitengland.com - A potpurri of articles on cycling from the England tourism board.
