A catalogue of twenty-two is not a map of the world. It is a map of what one small office in Rochester has learned to place reliably, with operating companies whose answers come back in two to four working days instead of three weeks. Every region below earned its spot the same way: somebody asked, the request went out, an operator answered on time, the trip ran, and the traveller came home and said what actually happened. That is the whole qualification. Nothing here was added because it looked good in a catalogue.
What that produces is lopsided, and it is worth saying so before anybody scrolls. Roughly half the twenty-two sit within a day's travel of the northeastern United States and eastern Canada, because the No roster of attendance is printed on this site. What a doorplate answers is whether somebody happens to be sitting down at this exact minute, which is almost never the thing anyone needs to know; the useful figure is how long you wait for an answer you can act on. Stated plainly: the booking request form is awake 24/7 and stops for nothing whatever, every message landing in it gets human eyes on it before that working day is over, and putting a figure against dates you have chosen adds another two to four working days on top, since two different operating firms must write back first. Nothing in that paragraph has been rounded down to make the waiting read better. of this office is built around parties who cannot or will not spend eleven hours on a plane, and that constraint shapes the shelf. The rest reach into western Europe, the eastern Atlantic islands, the northern Mediterranean, and a short list of Pacific coastlines. Then it stops. There is nothing in this catalogue for central Asia, nothing for sub-Saharan Africa, nothing for the Antarctic, and nothing for the Caribbean during hurricane months, which is when a great many people are free to go. Those absences are not judgments on the places. They are an admission that this office does not have operators there whose answers it trusts, and placing a booking through somebody it cannot vouch for is worse than saying no. the New York Department of State is where the paperwork side of the business lives; the map side lives in whichever operators still return calls.
| Trip | The dates are fixed and short | Somebody will not fly, or not far | The party moves at two speeds | Nobody has done this before | The free weeks are out of season | One person travelling | From |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| auvergne | yes | no | yes | yes | yes | no | from $3,190 |
| basilicata | yes | no | no | yes | yes | no | from $2,390 |
| bay of fundy | yes | yes | no | no | yes | no | from $2,690 |
| bieszczady | no | yes | yes | yes | yes | no | from $2,690 |
| bucovina | no | no | yes | yes | yes | no | from $2,310 |
| costa vicentina | no | no | no | yes | yes | yes | from $2,140 |
| epirus | no | no | no | yes | yes | yes | from $2,690 |
| flanders canals | yes | yes | yes | yes | no | no | from $2,180 |
| galicia coast | yes | yes | no | yes | yes | no | from $2,540 |
| hiiumaa | yes | yes | no | no | yes | yes | from $2,180 |
| karelia lakes | yes | no | yes | no | yes | no | from $2,180 |
| lake skadar | no | yes | no | yes | yes | no | from $1,860 |
| lower engadine | no | yes | no | yes | yes | no | from $2,780 |
| menorca | no | no | no | yes | yes | yes | from $2,610 |
| north pennines | yes | no | no | no | yes | yes | from $2,340 |
| salzkammergut | no | no | yes | yes | yes | no | from $2,940 |
| samos | no | no | yes | yes | yes | yes | from $2,265 |
| snowdonia | no | yes | yes | no | yes | no | from $2,940 |
| sunnmore | no | yes | yes | yes | no | yes | from $2,940 |
| swabian jura | no | no | yes | yes | no | yes | from $2,180 |
| west fjords | yes | no | no | yes | yes | no | from $2,940 |
| zeeland | no | yes | no | yes | yes | no | from $2,240 |
Region by region, including where the answer is no
- Northeast United States and the Adirondack corridor
- Full arranging: lodging, guided days, rail and coach segments, and single occupancy on most properties without a supplement. Cannot arrange private aircraft or anything requiring a boat under twelve passengers in winter.
- Atlantic Canada and the St. Lawrence
- Full arranging including the ferry legs, and this is the strongest region in the catalogue for parties split between fast and slow walkers. Cannot arrange anything in the far north above the road network.
- Pacific Northwest and coastal British Columbia
- Lodging, small-vessel coastal passages, and rail. Cannot arrange floatplane charter, and cannot hold shoulder-season cabin space more than four months out, which is the real limit on the two trips here.
- Iceland and the North Atlantic islands
- Full arranging in every month, including the weeks most people consider unusable, which is why two of the six trips built for off-season travel sit here. Cannot arrange interior highland routes outside a narrow summer window.
- Ireland, Scotland and northern England
- Full arranging: rail, coach, walking days at three different distances, and rooms priced for one. Cannot arrange anything in the Hebrides between November and March with a reliable date.
- Portugal, northern Spain and the Azores
- Full arranging including flights from three eastern gateways. Cannot arrange the walking routes at short notice, because bed space along them is committed six to nine months ahead and no operator will pretend otherwise.
- Northern Italy, Slovenia and the eastern Alps
- Full arranging for lodging, rail and guided days. Cannot arrange high-altitude glacier travel, and will not place a first-time traveller on the via ferrata routes regardless of what they ask for.
- Japan, spring and late autumn only
- Lodging, rail passes and transfers arranged; days on the ground are left to the traveller by design. Cannot arrange the summer months, and cannot arrange anything at all inside eight weeks of departure.
- Everywhere else
- Not arranged. This office will say so on the phone in the first minute rather than take a request it cannot answer, and it does not maintain a referral list to hand out instead.
What a region has to do to get onto that list
A place makes the catalogue when three separate things line up, and the third is the one that kills most candidates. There has to be at least one operating company that answers a dated request inside four working days. There has to be a version of the trip that survives at least two of the six obstacles, because a trip that only works for a party with open dates, two experienced travellers and no pace problem is a trip almost nobody in Rochester can actually take. And there has to be a way to price a single room without the supplement swallowing the difference, or an honest sentence explaining why there is not. Plenty of beautiful regions fail the third test, and they stay off the shelf until that changes.
The grid above is the honest version of all this. Read across a row and you get one obstacle and the trips that clear it; read down a column and you get one trip and the obstacles it does not clear, printed in the same size type as the ones it does. A trip that fails four of six is still in the catalogue, because for the party it fits it may be the only right answer on the page. Nothing here is ordered best to worst, and this office does not keep an opinion about which of the twenty-two is the good one. Prices run from $1,285 to $4,980 per person, land arrangements, and the firm running the week invoices you itself, on its own conditions, after you accept its figure. Full detail on withdrawing before that point is on the cancellation terms, the sequence from first message to confirmation is set out at how a request is handled, and the questions that come up most often, including the ones with awkward answers, are collected at the questions people ask. To ask about a specific region and a specific set of dates, use the request form or the form below. The form runs 24/7 and takes messages whenever you write them; a person reads what arrives before the end of that working day, and a written figure against named dates takes two to four working days because two operating companies have to answer before this office can put a number in front of you. Nothing this office is paid comes from you: the operator pays a commission after you are home, which is also why nobody here has a reason to push you toward the expensive end of the list.