Before you say yes
What is worth knowing
before you sign.
This page is not here to protect us. It is here because nearly every disappointment on a walking trip starts with a sentence nobody said in time. Here we say it in time.
28 things to know
The walking
Every stage has its distance and its climb, and both are written in your proposal and in your personal area before you decide anything. If the numbers look like too much, we change them while there is still time: one more day, a long stage split in two. Once you have set off the room to manoeuvre narrows, and the only thing left is to skip a day by transfer.
Who you walk with is your choice: a partner, friends, your children, your mother. Self guided means something else, namely that nobody walks beside you for a living. You have the route, the maps, the accommodation already booked and someone to call, but no guide waiting at the junction and no group of strangers to share your day with. If that is what you are looking for, we are not it.
You walk in the wet too, and a bad week is not grounds for a refund: it is the reason a waterproof is on the packing list. When the weather stops being a nuisance and turns into a risk, though, we call you and the day gets rewritten together.
A local feast day, a Sunday, the wrong month: buses thin out, some ferries do not sail and more than one kitchen stays shut. We plan around it, and where a stage is affected we write it into the itinerary rather than let you find out on the spot.
The signs along the path are put up and looked after by local associations and authorities, and every route speaks its own language: yellow arrows, shells, wooden posts, painted flashes on walls. Before you leave we tell you what to look for on yours. We cannot promise every marker is where it should be, and nine mistakes out of ten happen on the way out of a village or where the path crosses a road. One rule covers it: if you have walked a while without seeing anything, go back to the last marker you remember instead of guessing. Your personal area holds the track and your position, and tells you when you drift sixty metres off it.
The person handling your trip speaks your language, and so do your itinerary, your documents and your personal area. At the counter, though, it is you. In places used to walkers there is almost always someone who gets by in English, and the sentences you actually need come to about five. If you get stuck, call us and we speak for you. But if ordering dinner where you understand nothing makes you anxious, better to know that now than on the third evening.
Where you sleep
On the Essence line you sleep in a dormitory, in bunk beds, with shared bathrooms and a door that locks at a set hour. Sheets, blankets and duvets are not always provided and you usually make the bed yourself: a light sleeping bag belongs in the pack. If you want a room of your own, the line you are after is Minimal.
Hotel classification is set country by country, on its own terms: the stars on a Galician country house, an Irish guesthouse and an Italian three star are not measuring the same thing. So we choose on the real quality, on where a place sits along the stage and on how it treats people arriving on foot, not on the plaque by the door.
Check in and check out are set by your hosts, not by us, and they change from one place to the next: many receptions are not staffed all day, some ask for a document and a deposit, others leave keys in a box with a code, and hostels bolt the door at a certain hour. What we know goes into the itinerary; the rest is the property's to run, and if you are arriving late they need telling beforehand, not afterwards.
A dirty room, heating that does not work, a different arrangement from the one booked: the moment to say so is then, not on your return. The number is in your personal area. We speak to the property, and most of the time it is sorted within half an hour, because that property works with us and not with an anonymous booking site. If it is serious and cannot be fixed, we move you. What we cannot do is repair it afterwards: a bad night two months ago leaves nothing to put right.
What is included
One piece per person, a stated weight limit, and a morning deadline to leave it by: come down late and you risk finding it that evening exactly where you left it. On some sections, where the route crosses by ferry or climbs, your bag takes the longer road and arrives after you do.
They are not included, and that is deliberate: the food of a place is half the place, and a set menu every evening in the building where you sleep takes it away from you. Breakfast is there where the property serves it, and on the Serenity line it is always there.
Where the route has one, we do not sign it and it is not in the price: the office that looks after that route issues it, on its own terms. They usually want a minimum distance walked continuously on foot, the official track, and a credential stamped along the way, and stages skipped by transfer do not count. In Santiago the Compostela wants the last hundred kilometres on foot; in Rome the Testimonium asks the same. On other routes no certificate exists at all. Where a credential is needed we post it to you in the gift box, but the stamps are yours to collect.
From the airport to the start you travel by train, by bus or by private transfer: the proposal tells you the best way, but the ticket is yours to buy, unless we build the transfer in. The same goes for the way home. And if your return flight leaves at dawn, say so while we are still designing the trip: sleeping near the airport often beats sleeping in the old town.
For every flight, the proposal states what baggage is included. With hand luggage only, a 38 or 40 litre pack usually goes in the cabin, but each airline has its own dimensions and changes them when it pleases. One thing to watch: if your route includes bag transfer, the big bag still has to reach the start, so either you check it in or you genuinely travel light. Adding baggage later is nearly always possible, and nearly always dearer than buying it with the ticket.
Money
It is 129 euro for trips up to 15 days and up to 5 people, 249 from the sixteenth day or for larger groups. It is not a surcharge: it comes off the total. It pays for the work of finding and checking real availability on your dates, which is why it does not come back if you change your mind. It does come back in full, within 14 working days, if we are the ones who cannot find what you asked for.
We do not front money and we hold nothing in your name: the availability you read in the proposal is real at the moment you read it, but it is not reserved. With your signature and a 30 per cent deposit on the ground services, the properties become ours to manage. While you wait, the price can move and a property can disappear: that is why a proposal is not kept warm for weeks.
Accommodation, transport and the services you add are the real cost, not a bracket to be revisited. The one line that can move is the flight, when we handle it: tickets are bought after signature, paid in full at that moment at that day's fare, and we tell you the fare before we proceed. From then on they are in your name: names cannot be changed and as a rule they cannot be transferred.
From the private room lines upwards, one person occupies a room that is not sold to anyone else that night: the single supplement is exactly that difference, and the proposal spells it out. We never put two clients who do not know each other in one room to make the numbers work.
Moving your dates is nearly always possible. Before we touch anything we put the bill in front of you: what the suppliers will not refund, the new rate, and a handling fee of 45 euro per supplier with a minimum of 90. Once the trip has started that becomes 60 per supplier, with a minimum of 150.
The price you accepted stays the price, and you will never find a different figure without hearing it from us before signature. Only three things can move: the flight while it is still unbought, a property's rate if you book close to the date, or a substitution if a place sells out on your dates. And that last one is exactly what happens while a proposal sits there: in spring and summer, on the busier routes, the good places fill and do not come free again.
Help and paperwork
From the day you leave to the day you return you have a number that answers at any hour, for medical emergencies and for travel trouble, and it lives in your personal area. Before and after it works differently: the person handling your trip answers during office hours. Write on a Saturday afternoon with a question about your proposal and the answer reaches you on Monday.
Itinerary, map, documents and the number to call all live on your phone. On the routes we run there is coverage, but the phone is yours: if you are leaving your own country, check first that your data plan works abroad, and outside the European Union, in the United Kingdom for instance, you usually need an add on or an eSIM. A power bank is not a luxury: a day with the map open and photographs taken eats a full charge.
We find them, choose them and book them ourselves, one by one on your dates. The list with the names, night by night, opens in your personal area after the balance is paid, which is within thirty days of departure. Until then you know the town, the category and what each night includes. If booking without the names in front of you is uncomfortable, it is better said now.
No ring binder arrives and you do not go digging through old emails: proposal, contract, payments, night by night itinerary, flights, services and documents all sit in the Wayers Lounge, which you open from the website or the app and which stays yours after you get home. You get in with your email and a six digit code, with no password to invent. You do need a phone or a computer, though: if you use neither, say so before booking and we find another way.
When it goes wrong
People get tired, or discover that walking day after day is not for them. Shortening stages and skipping a day by transfer are things we solve together. But if you decide to go home, the nights and services you will not use stay paid for, because the properties are confirmed and refund nothing. The insurance included covers interruption on medical grounds, not a change of heart.
The trip carries health cover: medical assistance, repatriation, early return. Cancellation is a different thing and is added separately, with Travel Plus: cancel without it and the contract penalties apply. On the Serenity line cancellation is already part of the trip. Your proposal states, service by service, what yours covers.
Two things, and neither passes through us. First: whether your reason is one of the covered ones is decided by the insurer, reading the policy and the documents you send. We help you file the claim, but the yes and the no are not ours, and if the answer is no the contract penalties stay with you in full. Second: even when the refund comes it does not cover everything, because fifteen per cent of the recognised penalties is deducted. On two thousand euro of penalties the insurer pays seventeen hundred, and three hundred stay with you.
If one of these lines
does not sit right, ask.
A question before signing costs two minutes. The same question on the third evening, in a village with no second place to stay, costs the trip. Write to us: the people who answer have walked these routes.