It was, of course, Laurie Lee who inspired me to walk in Spain. Ninety years after the author began the journey that became As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, the tale of his walk through Spain still goes straight to the head. To read his euphoric prose is to grasp immediately why you might prefer to discover the place on foot. It is to step off life’s merry-go-round. To engage. To “smell the different soils”, as Lee put it.
Like him, the teenage me slogged under heavy backpacks. The middle-aged me points out that that’s not a holiday, it’s an ordeal. That’s why all but one of the tours on this list of 24 Spanish walking holidays provide luggage transfers. It’s a no-brainer.
Since that revelation I’ve discovered the camaraderie of a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, trekked across wild beaches in Galicia, and dawdled through resiny, pine-fresh coves in Catalonia. I’ve walked Roman paths in Castile, picnicked in the shade of silver-green olive trees in Andalusia, and rewarded myself with countless plates of jamon.
So trust me when I tell you that Spain offers terrific walking. There’s reliable weather year-round: go north from mid-June to August and south in deep winter. The food is fabulous, and the choice of trails is almost limitless. Pilgrimage routes to Santiago, the wellsprings of long-distance hikes for pleasure, are the most famous. But in a country that’s twice the size of Britain with two thirds its population, there’s a helluva lot of walking to discover.
There’s the Spain of boho-posh villages on the Costa Brava, or of landscapes as epic as South America’s in the Sierra Nevada foothills. There’s the Spain of bears and eagles in the green hills of Asturias, of hairy-chested hikes in the Picos de Europa mountains, of scrubby deserts in Almeria, of pottering in Menorca.
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I’ve included all among these suggestions, which stick to the mainland and Balearic islands. I can’t promise your journey will inspire the poetry of Lee, but I bet it lingers long in your memory.
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1. Hidden Catalonia
Did you read about the Catalonia village in 2022 that refused to go on Spain’s list of most beautiful villages because it didn’t want crowds? They wouldn’t thank me for naming it. Suffice to say you visit its hilltop citadel on this moderate self-guided walk through the region of El Priorat. This area receives few visitors despite being an hour southwest of Barcelona, yet this is a walk for connoisseurs; moderate footpaths, glorious hills, terrific vineyards — the wine guru Robert Parker named a Priorat bottle his wine of the century — and accommodation is in village B&Bs and traditional inns. What it lacks is crowds.
Details Seven nights’ B&B from £1,170pp, including five picnic lunches, four dinners, luggage transfers and transport(onfootholidays.co.uk). Fly to Reus
2. Local life in the Alpujarras
Twenty-five years after Chris Stewart published Driving Over Lemons, Brits continue to seek the authentic Alpujarras he portrayed. Few find it for the same reason that Stewart did — he lived there, they do not. Here’s the solution: an organic farm in the village of Mairena, in the region’s east. You’re less a tourist than a guest of the owners, Emma and David Ilsley. Days are spent on paths to neighbouring villages in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, its clear air and trickle of water a narcotic combination. Moorish culverts still power the Ilsleys’ olive mill. Fittingly, homemade dinners have a north African twist.
Details Seven nights’ half-board from £1,005pp, including three lunches, luggage transfers and transport (inntravel.co.uk). Fly to Malaga
3. Madrid’s secret sierra
Heard of the Sierra de Gredos? Neither had a pal who lives in Madrid when I went. So little visited is a range which rises like a landfall from the Meseta plain an hour west of the capital that John Major holidayed here, unbothered by anyone, when he was prime minister. If you like the idea of quiet towns and nine-mile hikes in rugged granite uplands of waterfalls, following a Roman road through mountains and taking picnics while griffon vultures circle overhead, you’ll fit right in. Buzzy Salamanca or walled Avila are nearby for a rest day; accommodation is at the four-star El Milano Real.
Details Seven nights’ B&B from £849pp, including one evening meal (headwater.com). Fly to Madrid
4. The other Costa Blanca
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In 1959 the mayor of Benidorm permitted bikinis on his beaches. That was that for the Costa Blanca of old. Inland, the decades rewind until you find yourself among sugar-cube houses beneath the Sierra de Aitana massif. This is Benimantell, where the two-star hostel Rincon de Pepe is your base for a criminally undiscovered walking region. The local guide José Molina López winkles out the best bits on this small-group trip: eight miles among the limestone needles of Raco de Tovaines as a warm-up to five modestly challenging day-hikes up local peaks; picnic lunches with views of Reconquista castles; a day on the beach at Villajoyosa.
Details Seven nights’ B&B from £1,219pp, including five lunches, six dinners and airport transfers (exodus.co.uk). Fly to Alicante
5. Valencia’s Orange Blossom Coast
At this time of year, Valencia’s Costa del Azahar — literally the Orange Blossom Coast — is in heady bloom. We’ve called it Spain’s last best costa for a while. This new guided break may convince you. It’s a week of easy daily walks in the Castellón hinterland north of Valencia with a guide to tease out narratives of Moorish settlement and rural life; there’s olive tasting then lunch in the world’s largest grove of millenary olive trees. En route you’ll discover Peñiscola, a wave of white houses bound by sea walls, and Vilafames, perched above almond groves. If you’re after romantic Old Spain, this is for you. Accommodation is in a beachfront four-star in Benicassim.
Details Seven nights’ half-board from £1,799pp, including flights, transfers and one lunch (rambleworldwide.co.uk)
6. Wine and walks along the Duero
The Spanish, who know a thing or two about good wine, eulogise terruño (terroir). It’s the soils, the aspect of hills and heat of the sun — all things, basically, that you experience on a walk, which helps to explain this new tour pairing wine tasting with gentle walks of up to four hours. The River Duero winds through the Ribera del Duero wine region to Porto (the final four days are in Portugal). Along the way are Unesco-listed Segovia and Zamora. Both are splendid but I bet it’s discoveries like Guadarrama National Park or a tasting in a family bodega in Fermoselle village that linger in the memory. Accommodation is in a series of comfortable hotels.
Details Eleven nights’ B&B from £1,845pp, including luggage transfers and transport (explore.co.uk). Fly to Madrid and return from Porto
7. A taste of Cadiz in Andalusia
Book this week of walks and food to take home an Andalusian souvenir more memorable than Jerez sherry. Taking care of the former for two days is local guide Carlos M. The Costa de Luz has 160 miles of beaches (it’s nicknamed “Cadizfornia”), a third of it is protected as a reserve, and it has no mass tourism. A walkers’ nirvana, basically. The food holidays specialist Annie B immerses you in local food culture via tapas tours, market visits and cooking classes in the striking town of Vejer de la Frontera, so that you return with the secrets of Andalusian cuisine. You’ll stay at Vejer’s historic La Casa del Califa hotel.
Details Five nights’ full board £1,865pp (anniebspain.com). Fly to Jerez
8. A camino the easy way
Pilgrims: you’ve been doing the Santiago camino wrong. To follow the actual route of St James you need to take a boat up the River Arousa from Vilanova de Arousa. Though that sounds like cheating, the half-day journey known as the Translatio replicates the saint’s final journey and is an approved pilgrimage route, so you’re cheating with the Pope’s blessing. It’s part of the Variente Espiritual, a quieter coastal diversion off the Portuguese Way taken on this new group pilgrimage. It’s a trail of highlights, using minibuses to skip boring sections while still covering the 62 miles required for a pilgrimage. Accommodation is in small two to four-star hotels.
Details Eight nights’ B&B from £2,089pp,including luggage transfers and transport(exodus.co.uk). Fly to Porto
9. Traditions of the Picos de Europa
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There are many challenging hiking trips in the Picos de Europa mountains. This isn’t one of them. Rather than conquer stiff summits this small-group tour provides insights into traditional life through day hikes of up to eight miles. Sure, you’ll clamber across the national park’s attic above the Valdeon valley. But there are also villages in wildlife-rich forests and a visit to a cider maker in Llanes. And while one night in a hikers’ mountain refuge will make you feel like Edmund Hillary, others are in family hotels of medieval towns like Potes.
Details Eight nights’ half-board from £1,299pp, including luggage transfers and transport (yellowwoodadventures.co.uk). Fly or take a ferry to Bilbao
10. Catalonia with children
There’s no secret to successful family walking holidays. Just select a region like Catalonia’s Costa Brava, where dirt trails in the Cap de Creus Natural Park end at dinky pine-scrubbed coves. Now base yourself close — but not too close — to a white beach town like Cadaques, with the lingering bohemia that attracted Salvador Dalí and assorted Rolling Stones. And because the kids won’t appreciate daily walking, splurge on Cala Joncols hotel. Located within the park area, it’s the first stay on the Costa Brava to win a biosphere accreditation, with the beach just there for them and a good restaurant for you. I think that about covers it.
Details B&B doubles from £90 (booking.com). Fly to Girona
11. Do part of the Camino del Norte
You’d need a year’s holiday allowance to complete the Camino del Norte from San Sebastian to Santiago de Compostela. That’s not ideal for a standard summer holiday, or much fun for you — the route’s initial stages follow A-roads. A better bet is to tackle the camino’s scenic final stages through Galicia’s ripe hills beyond the historic port of Ribadeo. On this new group trip you’ll share the route to Santiago among like-minded pilgrims and a guide who organises lunches plus extras en route such as tastings in a cheese factory. The sense of achievement on the square before Santiago cathedral? Exactly the same. Accommodation is in family hotels and pensions.
Details Ten nights’ B&B from £1,456pp, including five lunches and one dinner, luggage transfers and transport (intrepidtravel.com). Fly to Santiago de Compostela
• 21 best walking holidays in Europe
12. Explore the Coast of Death in Galicia
While Brits pile south in summer for the costas of the Med, Spaniards head to Galicia’s Costa del Morte. The Coast of Death is a hard sell for the marketing people against those of sun or light, which is a shame because the 90-mile Lighthouse Way is one of the finest coastal routes I’ve hiked; a moderately challenging trail through an Iberian Cornwall of granite headlands, surf beaches and estuaries, swinging through farming villages of strutting cockerels, staying overnight in fishing towns like Camariñas and the pilgrimage hub Muxia in friendly small hotels and B&Bs. Journey’s end is Cape Finisterre, mystical land’s end for Celts and Romans alike. Magic.
Details Seven nights’ B&B from £930pp, including two lunches, one evening meal, luggage transfers and transport (onfootholidays.co.uk). Fly to Santiago de Compostela
13. Wild camping and cooking in the Sierra Nevada
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It’s the ideal complement to a luxury city break: a hiking adventure in the high northern Sierra Nevada, just east of Granada. You’ll need the kit to wild camp and cook, plus the stamina to tackle rough extended routes through Los Lavaderos de la Reina valley, then a circuit of 3,000m peaks above. What you’re paying for is expertise — the company founder and local resident Richard Hartley wrote the definitive trekking guide to this region — plus the privilege of being properly off-grid. Expect widescreen mountain scenery, nights boiling with stars and silence in a region very few tourists see.
Details Three nights from £218pp, based on a group of two (spanishhighs.com). Fly to Granada
14. Bear spotting in the Somiedo Natural Park
The wildlife specialist behind this one bills it as the “Realm of the Bear”. Certainly this holiday in the Somiedo Natural Park, a Unesco biosphere, is your best bet to see one of the 130 or so remaining Cantabrian bears. It takes place in early July when mothers and cubs shift to fecund summer pastures. The reason to book, though, is the variety of other species in the most remote Asturian valleys. There are golden and short-toed eagles, black kites and honey buzzards above 2,000m uplands. Black woodpeckers flit in bosky valleys and chamois skip over alpine slopes. An expert naturalist leads on walks of three to seven miles.
Details Seven nights’ full board from £1,695pp, including flights (naturetrek.co.uk)
15. Fishing villages, wild beaches and big views in Andalusia
It’s 60 years since the Italian film-maker Sergio Leone shot A Fistful of Dollars on the Almeria coast of east Andalusia. That makes sense when you enter a coast of cinematic scale on this self-guided walk. The Cabo de Gata Natural Park is prickly pears and white-cube villages and scrubby desert hills. Daily distances of about 11 miles allow time to explore fishing villages like Las Negras, abandoned gold mines en route to Las Mina, and Los Genoveses wild beach, where the Mediterranean will invite you in. Pack your swimmers.
Details Six nights’ B&B from £689pp, including transfers and transport (walksworldwide.com). Fly to Almeria
16. Jamon-fuelled walks in gentle Andalusian hills
The Sierra de Aracena, near the Portuguese border, is not a region to be rushed. It’s not just that life moves as slowly as honey in this deeply rural backwater. It’s that the area produces the finest jamon in Spain. You’ll see black pata negra porkers truffling for acorns on gentle strolls from your agroturismo in Alajar, the prettiest of the medieval white villages in these hills. Where other trips set an itinerary, this one provides a sheaf of suggested walk descriptions, so you live slowly: day to day, meal to meal.
Details Three nights’ B&B from £355pp, including one dinner and car hire (inntravel.co.uk). Fly to Seville
17. A new 300-mile route to rival the Camino
Last June the Ruta dels Indeketes launched in north Catalonia. It’s a star in the making, knitting together routes of Illyrian tribes into a 300-mile circuit of the Alt and Baix Emporda regions that’s as testing as any Santiago pilgrimage. You’ll need to manage about 13 miles daily, tackling Pyrenees foothills as well as flat strolls along the Costa Brava. Unexpected rewards include medieval villages like Peratallada. This new self-guided trip is the only holiday available. Fortunately it includes daily luggage transfer.
Details Twenty-three nights’ B&B from £2,845pp, including transport (thenaturaladventure.com). Fly to Girona
18. Gorges, mountains and griffon vultures in Aragon
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After last summer’s blistering heatwave, we’re predicting high demand for northern Spain. Enter the Sierra de Guara. Don’t pretend you’ve heard of it. Between the busy Catalan and Basque coasts, the largest mountain region of Aragon is almost wilfully obscure. Ask Spanish walkers, however, and they’ll rave about trails through its river gorges. They may also mention griffon vultures and traditional pensions in charming villages. In 2022 the UN lauded Alquezar for community tourism, but if you’re expecting artisan ice cream I’d give it a few years. This week covers 55 miles on five to seven-hour walks.
Details Seven nights’ B&B from £845pp, including transport, three lunches and three dinners (celtictrailswalkingholidays.co.uk). Fly to Zaragoza
• 24 of the world’s best walking holidays
19. Historic escape route across the Pyrenees
During the Second World War, about 800 Allied airmen and Jewish refugees escaped into Spain via a tough route through the Pyrenees. Thirty years ago the Walk to Freedom became a waymarked route. Now it’s your turn to escape to the roof of Europe on this guided trip. You start at the French border in Saint-Girons (albeit in a château hotel) before crossing the mountains of the Ariege at altitudes of about 2,500m. Just be thankful you’re sleeping in hikers’ refuges not barns as the escapees did. Journey’s end is in a tapas bar at Val d’Aran. A challenge, but no one said freedom wasn’t hard-won.
Details Three nights’ B&B and three nights’ full board in a mountain hut from £1,155pp (keadventure.com). Fly to Toulon
20. Rediscover the Costa del Sol
All set for a beach promenade? Then to Malaga on the Costa del Sol we go. Started ten years ago, the Senda Litoral — 112 miles of paths and boardwalks between Manilva and Nerja — is now over 90 per cent complete. Rather than a long-distance route, it’s best seen as a means to rediscover this much-maligned coast. Choose a section — I recommend the 12 miles from the Playa del Cristo to the Guadalmansa River — pack your swimming cossie, stroll past dunes and wildflowers, swim, lunch on grilled sardines at a chiringuito (beach bar), catch a bus home. Easy. Stay in style at Malaga’s Gran Hotel Miramar.
Details Room-only doubles from £178 (uk.hotels.com). Fly to Malaga
21. Easy trails from a stylish Mallorca finca
It’s the Mallorca dilemma: you want a chic break but fancy a walk too. The solution is the latest addition to this specialist’s In Style portfolio, which pairs upmarket rural hotels with self-guided walks. After a day exploring Palma you drop your bags at Ca’s Xorc, a finca in Soller. It’s your base for easy trails: self-guided paths through olive and orange groves lapping to the Tramuntana mountains, a wink of sea, perhaps a fresh cake at Son Mico bakery en route to Deia or a stop for wine tasting. Treat yourself — no walk is more than eight miles in a day.
Details Seven nights’ B&B, including a wine tasting and one dinner, from £2,395pp (macsadventure.com). Fly to Palma
22. Ibiza at its bohemian best
You’re joining this small-group trip to Ibiza for the reasons that Cat Stevens and Joni Mitchell visited in the 1960s — not for clubbing excess but scenic beauty and bohemian attitudes. It’s the other White Isle revealed through hikes of up to five hours; the quieter, soulful one found on swims in Cala d’en Serra’s wild bay, walks along stonking sea cliffs around Na Xamena and views of mystical Es Vedra island from the summit of Sa Talaia mountain. A rest day offers a chance to cycle on Formentera island. The price is pretty 1960s too.
Details Five nights’ B&B from £730pp, including transfers and transport (gadventures.com). Fly to Ibiza
23. Hiking, stretching and homemade meals in Mallorca
Research shows that walking lifts moods and lowers stress — something to do with improved blood flow and a positive influence on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis — so it’s appropriate to team it with yoga. Not at the same time though. That would be daft. This new trip is based in a luxurious agroturismo, which acts as a launchpad for a series of adventurous guided hikes into the island’s mountainous spine. Six hours on a three-peaks challenge in the Tramuntana sounds tough until you learn that there’s restorative yoga at the end followed by a homemade dinner among fellow outdoorsy souls.
Details Four nights’ half-board from £1,127pp, including transport and transfers (muchbetteradventures.com). Fly to Palma
24. Rustic rambles along Menorcan coast paths
It’s now the coolest Balearic island. The art taste-makers Hauser & Wirth opened a modern gallery in 2021. Last year the Son Vell hotel added another chic rural stay. I’m sure first-timers to Menorca are wowed, but for me the appeal of the Balearics’ second largest island is its rustic soul. To find it you need the help of a local guide. Launched recently, this relaxing private tour cherry-picks the best of the Cami de Cavalls coast path: a dawdle past powder beaches here, a natter with a cheese producer or a nature reserve with top naturalist Javier Méndez there. Your hotels? Posh rural jobs, obviously.
Details Eight nights’ B&B from £1,975pp, including transfers, transport, three lunches and three dinners (pura-aventura.com). Fly to Mahon
What’s your favourite walking route in Spain? Let us know in the comments below
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