Introduction
Festival of Walking 2025
Friday 12th September - Sunday 12th October 2025
Save the date! Our popular celebration of walking is set to return this autumn for a fourth year, with another exciting programme of guided social walks from YHA hostels around England and Wales, as well as mapped walking routes for your own self-led adventures.
Sign up below for regular email updates and enjoy some of the highlights from last year’s successful event in our video. In the meantime, you can also download a self-guided map and enjoy a walk from a wide choice of hostels any time you want.
Keep up to date on walking with YHA
Be the first to hear about new YHA walking activities, including special offers, mapped routes and the Festival of Walking 2025. View our Privacy Notice.
Ways to get out and explore
Our Festival of Walking may be over, but there are still ways to get out and explore.
Ways to get involved
Plan a self-guided walk
Download free maps and route instructions for walks across England and Wales. All our self-guided walks start and end at a YHA hostel.
Visit one of our hostels
YHA hostels are ready to welcome tentative trekkers and hardened hikers all year round. Where will you go?
Explore accessible routes
Accessible means different things to different people. We have identified a range of accessible routes from and near our hostels.
Prepare for your walk
Want to understand more about our maps or develop your walking skills?
We've created some useful guides to help you prepare for your chosen walk.
Festival partners
To support us in our mission to get more people involved in recreational walking, we partnered with some amazing organisations to deliver this year’s Festival of Walking.
Partner logos
BMC
Cotswold Outdoor
Ordnance Survey
Pilgrim Trust
The Ramblers
Sport England
Opportunities for Outdoor Citizens
Outdoor Citizens opportunities
Thanks to continued funding from Sport England, The Pilgrim Trust and Cotswold Outdoor we were once again able to offer bursaries to members of the Outdoor Citizens community to support more people from diverse or underserved communities to get involved in this year’s Festival of Walking.