England

Well planned tour. The guides were exceptional, warm, knowledgeable and patient. Trip hotels were thoughtfully chosen. I liked that most of the rides started or ended right at the hotel we were staying in.

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.

We really lucked out with the weather, signed up for the trip in Sept. the year before. Lovely scenery for bike riding, we choose E-Bikes after reading other reviews, a first, usually ride road bikes or Hybrids, glad we did, it has some punchy hills, made for an enjoyable ride I think 17 out of 20 guests also rode e-bikes. Also with an e-bike you have some suspension, which came in handy as some of the road surfaces are chunky or bumpy. The Hotels and Inns were charming with smallish rooms and good dinners and breakfasts offered. Dining out in the smaller towns was limited, lots of choices suggested by VBT were very good. Oxford and Bath were fun towns with lots of history and good pubs.

Beautiful countryside, quaint villages, challenging hills. Incredible lodging , lots of history.

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.