Inn to Inn Walks - Self-Guided vs. Guided, Favorite Walks

We booked walking tours in The Cotswolds and Antrim Coast in Northern Ireland. They were both okay but we have since done walking holidays on our own and that is now our preference. In both cases, we didn’t necessarily feel we got what we paid for. We did a cross comparison and the full package price was more than twice as high if we booked the same B&B’s plus taxis on our own. The maps we were given were helpful but not anything better than we could have picked up in any town along the way or AllTrails. We have since done a weeklong Cotswold trip staying in a rental and used buses and the occasional taxi to help get us to and from various hiking starting points we wanted. We also found packing and unpacking nightly gets old and prefer to be in a nice town with dining and pub options each night that you become familiar with.

If you walk the West Highland Way, for example, the trail is easy to follow. There are many other people on the trail, and it is well marked. You could then book your own lodging if you wish. If you do other trails (we did one to/from Bath, and then also the North Peak Way in the Peak District), you would be totally lost without the very specific instructions for following the trail. For example, it might say, proceed to the far corner of the field and cross the stile. While you find some markers to assist, it is not an easy-to-follow footpath. From time to time, you might need to backtrack to get on the right spot, but we find that part of the fun -- it's like a treasure hunt and finding your B and B at the end of the day is the ultimate treasure. We have never been lost to any great degree. We find the value of using the companies is excellent; the cost is far less than spending time in most cities we visit. We have used Cotswalds Walks and Contours.

We have done three walks - Hadrian's Wall, Menalon trail (Greece) and Wild Western Way (Ireland). We spent 6-8 days on each. Inn to Inn. Two of them we used a self-guided company. The one in Greece we did ourselves.
You can do it yourself. However, there is a lot of planning involved. Primarily is if the trail only goes through small towns. Or no towns. If you book it yourself, you will have to know the distance to walk and then find a place. Perhaps that place is not on the trail, but several miles away. You have to walk extra to get from trail to accommodation and back in the AM.

The biggest problem -
Let's say you have 6 days. A to B to C to D, etc. Your date start is Saturday. You get A for Sat, then B for Sunday, then there is nothing available for C on Monday. What do you do? C has a night on Tuesday. Good. No, not so good. Now you have to rearrange A + B forward one night, but maybe they do not have space on those dates. More work. You can see how any single day can mess it all up. Some end of day hike stop points have very few accommodations. You could easily miss out on nights you need.

I do not know how much you need maps. All the trails we did were pretty well marked. But with provided maps and GPS coordinates download into my phone we were always aware of distance traveled, where we were, and distance to go. Believe me that distance to go is important after several days, bad weather, and being tired.
You do pay more for the service. I calculate approximately 30%. You get all the above. Known accommodations nearest the trail. Or taxis arranged to take us if the accommodations were more than you would want to walk, and then back again in the AM to resume your walk. Bags ferried between places. Maps and GPS. And a phone number for support.
On Hadrian's Wall trail we stayed at a house right on the trail. You could not get any closer. And nothing around for miles except one lone pub 2k away.
I would say that it is worthwhile to consider a company. It will take such a burden off your planning. And things will be much surer. The services offered by different companies are essentially the same, luggage, accommodations, maps, guidebooks.

As far as recommendations and since you mentioned England, I would have to say that Hadrian's Wall is pretty nice. You get to walk across England. How cool is that! Without the 2-3 weeks of the Coast to Coast trail. Which is probably our next endeavor.

Thank you all for the quick replies! You all have definitely added to our perspective on planning this trip.

Jay MN- you bring up a great point about choosing one point and then planning day walks from there, may be easier on the whole to go that route and just utilize taxis when we need to do so

padams - You touched on our exact concern regarding the very specific directions! We don't want to just be wandering around a random field, lol! Sounds like we need to identify exactly what trail we want to do first. I will definitely look at the companies you suggest!

treemoss2 - Hadrian's Wall is on our list, so thank you for mentioning it! I think you make great point about getting all of the timing just right. Ideally, we would want to keep it to about 6-10 miles a day. We definitely want to take in all of our surroundings and be leisurely when we want to, but you are correct - it would be miserable if there is poor weather to then add miles to get to our inn. We are very comfortable with both paper maps and gps/app maps, but there really is something to knowing a specific area. We are pretty proficient in planning hikes on U.S. trails, but sometimes you just have to pay for the expertise of someone who really knows the path.

Thank you all again, it's great to hear practical advice on planning a "walking" trip!

I've done three walking tours with three different companies. The three companies offered different levels of luxury and assistance. I would use all three again depending on what I wanted. All three provided excellent directions. One included GPS coordinates. For me the main benefit of using a company is working out the logistics. A previous poster pointed out the issue of having accommodations on days 1 and 2 but not on the third. If you are on a very popular route (like the West Highland Way) during a high season you may find yourself out of luck. I also liked that all three offered 24 hour assistance in the event of the unexpected.

You said, "you bring up a great point about choosing one point and then planning day walks from there." If you decide to look into this more, the Cotswolds is one great area for doing it. You can easily spend a couple days in one town (Broadway, for example) and walk out in a different direction each day, visiting different smaller villages on your way. the tourist office in every town has MANY brochures of walks in the area. Then spending a couple of days in a different town, you would have a whole new choice of walks and places to visit. I am sure that there are other areas of the British Isles about which this is equally true; it's just that I know the Cotswolds area the best.

I've done long distance walks in Ireland and England and have always booked my own lodging (well in advance as places to stay along some trails are limited in some towns/villages). I enjoy the searching and researching and like being able to pick where I want to stay versus where someone thinks I should stay. The one time I also splurged on luggage transfer, I also arranged that on my own as I wasn't going to need it every day. It was easy to do. You can absolutely do all the arranging on your own if you'd like, and enjoy that level of planning.

Since now I know your preferences better as noted, such as 6- 10 miles walks out of a single base, I will adjust my advice and info from previously.
Knowing that I would do it myself. There is no point to point involved. Makes it much easier to arrange on your own. When I look around Europe for hiking and I see a self guided hike offered that is out of single bases, maybe 3 hikes from same place, I immediately discount that option. Not as much value as I feel I can easily go to that place and hike those on my own.
So unless you are thinking of a linear hike, do it on your own. I will say that your 6- 10 miles is minimal for doing one of the inn to inn hikes. On them you should be comfortable with 10-15 miles a day. There are hikes with lesser miles in combination, but you often have 10-12 miles on successive days.

Walking in the UK is wonderful and I'm sure you will have a great time no matter which option you choose. I've done several long distance paths in the UK, and thought it might be useful to share my experience. We like to stay at one or two different bases when we complete a long distance walk (when we did Hadrian's Wall we had three). Each day, we drive from our base to where we plan to end that day's walk, then we get public transport (if available) or a taxi to take us to the start, and walk back to finish at the car. We also arrange it so one of the day walks will end at our base(s). In some locations you can even do this without a car, but we like having the car waiting at the end so we're not stressed about making it on time for what can often be infrequent bus service. If you do it this way, you don't have to pay for a service to carry your bags, but you do have to pay for a rental car and taxis, depending on what the public transport is like along the path. It takes a little advanced planning but it's not very difficult.

In terms of finding your own way, if you do one of the National Trails then I've found these to be mostly very well marked. We use Cicerone guides for the maps and directions and have those as a back-up where the trail might be unclear. I also download the GPX files to my Google maps which is helpful as long as you have service. Good luck!