A walking tour usually refers to either
- a guided walk of a historical or cultural site, usually in an urban setting, [1] or
- a long guided walk over several days in the countryside.
A walking tour usually refers to either
(1) Also included are a walking tour of the town of Nantucket, cocktails each evening and round-trip fast-ferry. OED
(2) Walking ... in the Tyrol with the Austrian Alpine Club. ... hut to hut walking tour, 16 days. OED
An early example of a walking tour was a pilgrimage. This was a religious journey, often taken on foot but sometimes e.g. on horseback, to a location of significance to the walker's faith. Chaucer's 14th-century narrative poem Canterbury Tales depicts such a pilgrimage. People still undertake such journeys, of which the most famous is the Camino de Santiago. Many pilgrimage routes now coincide with long-distance trails. Such trails are a recent form of a walking tour or backpacking. One example is the French GR 65 path, Chemin de Saint-Jacques (in Spanish the Camino de Santiago francés), an important variant route of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.
Early examples of extended walking tours were undertaken by the Romantic poets, William Wordsworth and John Keats. [2] In 1790 Wordsworth set off on an extended tour of France, Switzerland, and Germany, which he describes in his autobiographical poem The Prelude (1850). In 1798 he walked through Wales and he and Coleridge, in 1799, undertook a three-week tour of the Lake District. John Keats, who belonged to the next generation of Romantic poets began, in June 1818, a walking tour of Scotland, Ireland, and the Lake District with his friend Charles Armitage Brown. Walking tours were popular in the 19th century, and a famous example is Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey (1879). Stevenson also published in 1876 the famous essay "Walking Tours". An early American example is naturalist John Muir's A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf (1916), which describes a long botanizing walk, undertaken in 1867. Another early type of tour was The Grand Tour, undertaken in Europe in the 17th through 19th centuries, as part of a wealthy young man's education, [3] this involved a lengthy tour of Europe, with visits to cities, historic and cultural sites, which would involve similar walking tours as those undertaken by modern tourists. [4] Modern young people often undertake a similar, though cheaper, form of touring.
There are also self-guided tours, which aid travellers by means of books, [5] [6] maps, pamphlets, and audio material. [7]
A walking tour is usually much shorter than an escorted tour, which may last for a week or more. They are led by guides that have knowledge of the places covered on the tour, and their historical, cultural and artistic significance.
Many walking tours involve a payment to the guide, although some operate on a tip system. [8] The "pay what you want" model started around 2004, and can be found in many countries. The UK-based Guild of Registered Tour has criticised the system for not requiring any training or certification of its guides. [9]
Several cities now have employ dramatic spectacle to add interest to their tours. Usually guided by actors in costume, these walking tours create the feel of living history "in a non-academic, very accessible fashion." [10]
These tours are a form of promenade theatre, as well as museum theatre in that it makes use of first person interpretation.
A hike is a long, vigorous walk, usually on trails or footpaths in the countryside. Walking for pleasure developed in Europe during the eighteenth century. Long hikes as part of a religious pilgrimage have existed for a much longer time. "Hiking" is the preferred term in Canada and the United States; the term "walking" is used in these regions for shorter, particularly urban walks. In the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, the word "walking" describes all forms of walking, whether it is a walk in the park or backpacking in the Alps. The word hiking is also often used in the UK, along with rambling, hillwalking, and fell walking. The term bushwalking is endemic to Australia, having been adopted by the Sydney Bush Walkers Club in 1927. In New Zealand a long, vigorous walk or hike is called tramping. It is a popular activity with numerous hiking organizations worldwide, and studies suggest that all forms of walking have health benefits.
The Camino de Santiago, or in English the Way of St. James, is a network of pilgrims' ways or pilgrimages leading to the shrine of the apostle James in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain, where tradition holds that the remains of the apostle are buried.
The Overland Track is an Australian bushwalking track, traversing Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, within the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. It is walked by more than nine thousand people each year, with numbers limited in the warmer months. Officially the track runs for 65 kilometres (40 mi) from Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair however many choose to extend it by walking along Lake St Clair for an extra day, bringing it to 82 kilometres (51 mi). It winds through terrain ranging from glacial mountains, temperate rainforest, wild rivers and alpine plains.
The Milford Track is a hiking route in New Zealand, located amidst mountains and temperate rain forest in Fiordland National Park in the southwest of the South Island. The 53.5 km (33.2 mi) hike starts at Glade Wharf at the head of Lake Te Anau and finishes in Milford Sound at Sandfly Point, traversing rainforests, wetlands, and an alpine pass.
Literary tourism is a type of cultural tourism that deals with places and events from literary texts as well as the lives of their authors. This could include visiting particular place associated with a novel or a novelist, such as a writer's home, or grave site, following routes taken by a fictional characters, visiting places mentioned in poems, as well as visiting museums dedicated to specific writers, works, regional literatures, and literary genres.
The Camino de Santiago, also known as the Way of St. James, extends from different countries of Europe, and even North Africa, on its way to Santiago de Compostela and Finisterre. The local authorities try to restore many of the ancient routes, even those used in a limited period, in the interest of tourism.
Escorted tours are a form of tourism in which travelers are escorted in a group to various destinations; they differ from a self-guided tour, where the tourist is not part of an organised group.
The French Way follows the GR 65 and is the most popular of the routes of the Way of St. James, the ancient pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain. It runs from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port on the French side of the Pyrenees to Roncesvalles on the Spanish side and then another 780 km on to Santiago de Compostela through the major cities of Pamplona, Logroño, Burgos and León. A typical walk on the Camino francés takes at least four weeks, allowing for one or two rest days on the way. Some travel the Camino on bicycle or on horseback.
John Merrill, from London, England, is a leading marathon walker. He attended Westbourne School in Sheffield, Grosvenor House School in Harrogate, and Wennington School in Wetherby, Yorkshire, between 1955 and 1961. He is active in two areas: firstly undertaking extremely long walks, and secondly publishing books about walking, dealing with both his experiences and describing routes for readers to follow. In January 2003, he was made an Honorary Master of Derby University, for his walking and writing. He also lectures extensively about walking. By July 2020 he had walked more than 227,500 miles and worn out 149 pairs of boots, over 1,500 pairs of socks and 49 rucksacks. He is a keen skier both downhill and cross country, a cyclist and qualified Qigong teacher.
Sanford "Sandy" Brown is an American travel writer, tour guide, and United Methodist minister from the Seattle, Washington area. He has been a leader in advocacy against homelessness and gun violence and in favor of marriage equality.
Christianity has a strong tradition of pilgrimages, both to sites relevant to the New Testament narrative and to sites associated with later saints or miracles.
The Jesus Trail is a 65 km (40 mi) hiking and pilgrimage route in the Galilee region of Israel that traces the route Jesus may have walked, connecting many sites from his life and ministry. The main part of the trail begins in Nazareth and passes through Sepphoris, Cana, the Horns of Hattin, Mount Arbel Cliffs, the Sea of Galilee, Capernaum, Tabgha, and the Mount of Beatitudes. An alternate return route passes by Tiberias, the Jordan River, Mount Tabor, and Mount Precipice.
Heritage trails are walking trails and driving routes in urban and rural settings that are identified by signage and guidebooks as relating to cultural heritage. The heritage might be architectural, or it can be associted with a person or historical or cultural event. In most cases it is in public space.
Walking is one of the most popular outdoor recreational activities in the United Kingdom, and within England and Wales there is a comprehensive network of rights of way that permits access to the countryside. Furthermore, access to much uncultivated and unenclosed land has opened up since the enactment of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. In Scotland the ancient tradition of universal access to land was formally codified under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003. In Northern Ireland, however, there are few rights of way, or other access to land.
Pilgrim badges are decorations worn by some of those who undertake a Christian pilgrimage to a place considered holy by the Church. They became very popular among Catholics in the later medieval period. Typically made of lead alloy, they were sold as souvenirs at sites of Christian pilgrimage and bear imagery relating to the saint venerated there. The production of pilgrim badges flourished in the Middle Ages in Europe, particularly in the 14th and 15th centuries, but declined after the Protestant Reformation of the mid-16th century. Tens of thousands have been found since the mid-19th century, predominantly in rivers. Together they form the largest corpus of medieval art objects to survive to us today.
The Way is a 2010 drama film directed, produced and written by Emilio Estevez and starring Martin Sheen, Deborah Kara Unger, James Nesbitt, and Yorick van Wageningen. In it, Martin Sheen's character walks the Camino de Santiago, a traditional pilgrimage route in France, Portugal and Spain.
Monte do Gozo is a hill in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain. It is known for being the place where Christian pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago can get their first views of the three spires of their destination, the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. At 370 metres (1,210 ft), it could be the pilgrims' last hill and optional last stop before reaching the cathedral, with between one and two hours' walk still to go, and by tradition is where they cried out in rapture at finally seeing the end of their path.
Pilgrim Paths Ireland (PPI) is a non-denominational representative body for Ireland's medieval pilgrim paths. PPI was founded in 2013 to oversee the development and promotion of Ireland's medieval pilgrimage paths, and consists of 12 community groups supporting specific paths. PPI holds an annual National Pilgrimage Paths Week during Easter, and issues a National Pilgrimage Passport to finishers of the 5 main trails: Cnoc na dTobar, Cosán na Naomh, St. Finbarr's Pilgrim Path, St. Kevin’s Way, and Tochar Phádraig.
World Youth Day 1989 was an event organized by the Catholic Church and took place on 15–20 August 1989 in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. It was the first European edition of this bi-tri-ennal event, excluding the two "zero editions" held in Rome in 1984 and 1985, and the first time the meeting did not take place on Palm Sunday, but in the middle of summer.
The Templar Trail is a pilgrimage path that follows the route used in 1096 by Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine, and his troops during the First Crusade to liberate the city of Jerusalem. It begins in Dijon, France and crosses eleven countries and two continents for 4,223 kilometres (2,624 mi). In 2006, Brandon Wilson, an American author and explorer, and Émile, a retired 68-year-old French teacher, retraced the route to create the trail. The account of their expedition with stages and distances are detailed in Wilson's 2008 book Along the Templar Trail: Seven Million Steps for Peace which won gold in the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Awards for best travel book in 2009.
