England

This tour was a good combination of beauty and history. Our leaders, Jago Hartwell and Daniel Guest, plus Callum Fallows (in training) provided great orientation, including historical context, and lots of cultural information about the Lakes District, the Pennines and the Scottish border. They each went out of their way to show us great courtesy and excellent service. There’s a lot of riding on this trip, more than others we’ve been on with VBT. Most of the riding was on quiet country roads and dedicated bike paths, which was great. The scenery includes lovely mountains and lakes, and lots of open pasture land crisscrossed by ancient Stone walls. We learned a lot about land management of these open rugged spaces. The accommodations were very nice and the food was varied and consistently good. I highly recommend spending an extra few days in Edinburgh, as it is a city of great history and beauty. We also passed through many small English villages, each of which had its own charm. Along the way we saw beautiful farms and many, many grazing animals.

Great trip, having ebikes made it work, the numerous climb segments would have been challenging for most of us.

This was our 10th VBT trip and was one of our favorites. The Cotswolds scenery was beautiful and being able to see Oxford and Bath was a plus. Our guides (Jago and Hattie) took great care of us and were very knowledgeable about the history of the area. Most of our group used e-bikes because the terrain was very hilly. If you are a strong rider, a road bike will suffice. All of the other guests on the trip were very friendly. I highly recommend this trip!

Beautiful countryside, charming hotels and restaurants. The bicycling was more difficult than I expected, and the traffic was terrible.

What a fantastic trip this was. This was my 6th time going to England, but my first for the Cotswold region and what an extraordinary time it was. The food was fantastic, everywhere you looked the views were spectacular. It was fantastic trip which I would do again in a heart beat.

My husband and I did this self-guided tour in early September and absolutely loved it. Country Walkers did an impeccable job taking care of every detail--booking hotels, moving our suitcases between hotels, and, best of all, the "route notes" book was so detailed and had everything we needed from step-by-step directions and restaurant suggestions to history and ideas for things to do. It felt like a wonderful adventure following the famous paths through sheep pastures and little forest thickets, past gardens and ancient churches, and climbing over or around all the different gates. It was often overcast and misty in the mornings, but the mid-day sun burned it all away. Our highlights are choosing to stop for an hour to check out the Hailes Abbey Museum and rubbing elbows with some locals at the only pub in a tiny village. So many great memories! We liked the intimate experience of doing a self-guided trip and the independence (without the planning!) that it provided. We spent some extra days in London at the end of our trip...that was just icing on the cake.