While I’m sidelined at home during Covid, I’ve been drawn to reliving the 3 previous women’s hiking trips that I’ve taken in the past 5 years by scrolling through my hundreds of photos. Having had 3 different types of organized hiking experiences, I wanted to share how we planned our women’s hiking adventures and to share my best tips for finding your own optimal hiking experience.

Five years ago, a group of active, like-minded mid-life women decided that we wanted to explore Italy and enjoy the things that we wouldn’t necessarily have the luxury of doing if travelling with our partners (e.g., doing long daily hikes/walks, taking cooking classes, shopping until we dropped, making great meals in a villa, sharing stories over a glass of wine, etc.). While some of you might have very amenable partners, I think some of you will know what I mean! We nicknamed the group “the Bellas no Fellas”, since our first adventure was in Italy, and that “Bellas” name stuck even after we planned subsequent hiking vacations in Portugal and Croatia. Going on a walking/hiking tour is a great idea if you are foodies and oenophiles who enjoy eating local dishes and drinking local wines without carrying home extra poundage.

We decided to try renting a villa outside of Florence for our first week and we found a superb 17th century villa that was also featured on Airbnb and other booking sites (Villa Le Muracce). Although the villa was a little challenging for our taxi drivers to find, we did discover there was an occasional Florence-bound bus that stopped nearby. It’s an ideal location if you are brave enough to rent a car in Italy - just 30 minutes outside of Florence, close to Greve in Chianti, and from here there is easy access by car to other Tuscan day trip destinations like San Gimignano.

From the villa, our walks and hikes were local and self-organized (e.g., to Impruneta where there is an annual September wine festival), to Greve in Chianti, or around Florence. The villa was quite expensive but split six ways, the cost was manageable. The villa was situated in the stunning Chianti hills, had an (unheated) pool, a covered loggia where you could take in the breathtaking sunset, and a well-equipped rustic kitchen. We enjoyed some amazing meals we made ourselves, and enjoyed many a bottle of wine while taking in the breathtaking Tuscan view from the loggia.

For our second week, three of the six “Bellas” continued on to the Amalfi Coast, where we were joined by 3 other “Bellas” for the organized hiking trip arranged through Walkers’ World/Teachers’ Travel in Toronto. We stayed in a very comfortable 4 star hotel in a village outside of Sorrento which served as our home base for the week. The village of Sant’Agata also just happened to be the location of a Michelin two-starred restaurant, Don Alfonso 1890, which a couple of us were thrilled to experience!

The Amalfi hiking trip started with a word- of-mouth referral to organized walking tours through “Walkers’ World”, coordinated by Teachers’ Travel in Toronto. You don’t have to be a teacher to join these organized walking tours, and in fact none of us were teachers. However, of my 3 European hiking trips, I can say that this model (stay at a home base hotel for the week) and do day hikes or tours from there, with professional guides, worked the best for me. The accommodation was excellent, most meals were included, the tour guides spoke fluent Italian and they knew the region’s history and topography intimately. The hiking group consisted of about 20 adults from across Canada and it was a convivial group of experienced travellers. Some of the highlights of this trip included walks in Sorrento, through the local village of Sant’Agata, a tour of Pompeii, trip to the island of Capri, and hikes along the “Path of the Gods” high above the coast. On a free day, a dozen of us arranged for a mini-bus to take us to the towns of Amalfi, Positano and the exquisite Ravello, which I hope to return to in future.

Tuscan Villa, Tuscany, Sorrento, and Ravello

Two years later, some of the “Bellas” got together to arrange another hiking trip – this time through Portugal’s Douro Valley. This was an organized but “self-guided” hiking tour option arranged through a tour operator with offices in the US and Portugal. Starting in Porto, we met a tour rep who gave us a cell phone, and a rudimentary GPS and the next day we set out by train to Pinhao where we were fortunate enough to stay at the upscale Vintage House Hotel. All the hotels were pre-arranged through the tour operator, breakfast was included and our luggage was transported to our next hotel to await our arrival. We had a few misadventures getting lost which we laughed about over our evening dinners. The GPS counted down the steps to our day’s destination, so if the steps increased, it meant we were going in the wrong direction. We were often wandering down deserted gravel roads or through vineyards, and sometimes it wasn’t entirely clear if we were on the right path. Our cell phone didn’t always work in the Douro hills or valley when we did try to use it as can be expected when you’re somewhat off the grid. We did enjoy some incredible scenery, stayed in some very charming accommodations, and felt we got to see the Douro Valley off the beaten path away from hordes of tourists. However, I did find that we missed some of the significant details of the topography or charming towns, because we were on a self-guided tour and didn’t speak the language.

Vintage House Hotel, Hiking through the Douro Valley

Our third type of hiking tour, this time featured a home base hotel in Baska Voda on the stunning Dalmatian coast of Croatia. The “guided” day hikes from this location typically had us picked up in the morning by coach, and took us to our hiking starting point from there. The tour operator was a UK company, however our two tour ‘leaders’ were volunteers, which in this case meant that they were Brits who didn’t get paid other than in kind by getting their travel taken care of. They were friendly, they were definitely the furthest thing from the professional and knowledgeable guides we had expected. They had never been to the area before, didn’t speak Croatian, gave us no additional information other than what had been provided in our tour package literature. After getting lost a few times under their guidance, we started paying closer attention to one of our fellow hikers’ GPS systems instead of to the suggestions of the ‘leaders’. It was much hotter than expected (average 34 degrees C), so bringing water, a good hat, and wicking clothes are important. Collapsible trekking poles are highly recommended. One of my friends had an awesome cooling towel that wet and she hung around her neck and it made the heat much more tolerable. On the positive side, the week’s tour was fairly reasonable in cost, the hotel was very comfortable, you could choose an easier or more difficult route each day, the breakfasts and dinners at the hotel were good, and the scenery in the area was stunning. Highlights included the stunning Cetina Gorge, the medieval town of Trogir, and numerous hikes along the foothills of the Biokovo Mountains.

Plitvice Lakes National Park, Hiking toward Makarska, Baska Voda, and the Dalmatian Coast

So, to recap the 3 different types of hiking trips we took –

1) the full-on guided hiking tour of the Amalfi Coast from a home base with professional guides earned five stars;

2) the itinerant self-guided hiking tour in Portugal’s Douro Valley was about a 3.5 star experience, and

3) the organized hiking tour from a home base with volunteer guides was about a 3 star at best. I will say that the camaraderie with the other travellers and the scenery did largely make up for the shortcomings of the leaders.

My advice….

Choose the model of hiking trip that suits you best based on your budget, personal preference and your comfort level in an unfamiliar country where you may not speak the language. For me, I really appreciated the country so much more when I learned about the history, the flora and fauna and the culture from professional guides even though it was the more expensive option. I find that planning some unstructured walking/hiking days that you organize yourself is a good compromise and balance in conjunction with an organized walking/hiking tour.

As someone who spent 10 years working in the airline industry, I love travel planning, and I try to build in some free days before and after an organized walking tour which allow for some spontaneous changes of plans, and for setting our own pace.