Our 2024 festival is over
Another successful Festival of Walking – and more to come.
Thank you to everyone who took part in our festival this year – the best yet! A record number of you either joined a social walk, downloaded a map or used our discount, and the feedback we have received is fantastic.
Even though this year's festival is over, we've got exciting plans to bring you new opportunities to walk with YHA throughout 2025, including of course the Festival of Walking in the autumn.
In the meantime, you can still 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.
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.
BMC
Cotswold Outdoor
Ordnance Survey
Pilgrim Trust
The Ramblers
Sport England
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.