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Cultural Walks

Our featured regions are all of great scenic beauty, making for very enjoyable walking, but some are steeped in history or full of culture, adding a fascinating extra dimension to your holiday.

Besides our Greek holidays, which are all great introductions to Ancient Greece, one of the best holidays to choose if you want to combine culture and walking is our Hill-Top Towns of Tuscany Walk (grade 1-2). Our gentle route leads from Volterra, via San Gimignano and Colle Val d'Elsa, to Siena. Volterra boasts substantial Etruscan and Roman remains, San Gimignano is famed for its many ancient towers (and also has some excellent museums and galleries), while Siena is an art lover's paradise, its Palazzo Pubblico, cathedral, Pinacoteca and Museo dell'Opera del Duomo housing some superb masterpieces and splendid frescoes, among them works by Jacopo della Quercia, Lorenzetti and Donatello. You have a full day to explore each of these three fascinating places, and could even add a stay in Florence at the end of your holiday.

For the chance to gain an even better insight into the Etruscans than can be gleaned from the excellent museum in Volterra, choose our A Stroll through History Walk (grade 1-2). By following ravine-like sunken lanes (vie cave) past necropolises hewn from the rock and walled towns built by the Etruscans, the holiday reveals both how this mysterious but very powerful pre-Roman civilisation left its mark on the land and how it obviously revered its dead.

Also in Italy, another good choice is Umbria, where we offer two walks. The easier of the two is In the Footsteps of Perugino (grade 2), on which you can visit some of this Renaissance artist's most famous masterpieces and see for yourself how little the region has changed over the centuries. The second, a grade 2-3 holiday, encapsulates all that is Umbria – known as Italy's 'green heart' because of its wild, beautiful and very green scenery, Umbria is also a very spiritual and mystical region. It is said that 20,000 saints were born in Umbria, of which St Francis is of course the most well known, having started a religious revival that eventually swept all of Italy and Europe. The region is peppered with fine (Romanesque) churches, many with superb frescoes, and, besides the excellent walking, one of the joys of the holiday is passing occasional secret hermitages and wayside chapels as you follow the ancient trails. You also stay two nights at the magnificent Romanesque Abbazia di San Pietro in Valle, parts of which have been converted into a small, atmospheric hotel.

You pass several chapels on our grade 1-2 Spain's Secret Sierra Walk, too. This wonderful holiday explores the chestnut-clad Aracena Sierra north-west of Seville, where seemingly every village hides an architectural treasure, be it the 16th-century Chapel of Our Lady in Alájar, the Knights Templar castle in Aracena or Spain's oldest mihrab in the 9th-century mosque at Almonaster.

Of the many reminders of southern France's Roman past, the Pont du Gard must be one of the most spectacular and awe-inspiring, a real testimony to the Romans' engineering prowess. As its name suggests, our grade 1-2 To the Pont du Gard Walk leads from the historic town of Uzès across the herb-scented limestone hills of the garrigue to this impressive monument. It is impossible to gain a sense of scale from photographs, and emerging from the woodland to be greeted by the sight of the aqueduct is simply breathtaking. Later the same day, you can celebrate the end of the walk with a superb dinner at the Michelin-starred Vieux Castillon.

The Corbières, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, is another region steeped in history. The landscape is dominated by extraordinary fortresses, perched on seemingly inaccessible ledges of rock. Originally built around 1000 by local noblemen to protect their lands against the Spanish forces, in the 12th and 13th centuries some of the region's castles became refuges for members of the Cathar sect, who had developed a more ascetic and less ritualised version of Christianity that was soon declared a heresy by Rome. A series of crusades were launched, led by Simon de Montfort, and the fortresses fell one by one until the movement was eventually crushed in 1255 after countless sieges, raids and massacres. To this day, a great deal of mystery still surrounds the Cathars, with tales of hidden gold. The grade 2-3 Castles of the Cathars Walk offers rewarding walking between three of the region's most dramatic châteaux – Puilarens, Peyrepertuse and Quéribus – all of which are open to the public.

Albi, where the grade 2 Along the Tarn Valley Walk starts and finishes, also has links with the Cathars. Indeed, Albi was the first place to offer the Cathars refuge from the Pope's armies and as a result suffered heavily. Its striking cathedral, the largest brick building in the world, was commissioned by the bishop of Albi some years after the sect was crushed to encourage the town's people to remain loyal to the Church in Rome. Despite its stark exterior, the interior is very extravagant, with a wealth of paintings, frescoes and sculptures. The walk incorporates a full day to explore Albi, often referred to as la ville rose, because of the faded red brick buildings of the old town, which glow an extraordinary pink at sunset.

If you prefer a gentler walk, choose either our Châteaux & Vineyards or Sunflowers & Abbeys holidays. The first, in the Loire, offers the opportunity to visit the abbey at Fontevraud (the last resting place of Richard the Lionheart and Eleanor of Aquitaine), as well as the turreted château at Azay-le-Rideau and the equally romantic château at Ussé, the setting of Perrault's original tale of Sleeping Beauty. The second, which explores timeless Gascony, not only features a full day in both Condom and Lectoure, two delightful old towns, but also gives you the chance to visit the Abbaye de Flaran and its beautifully preserved cloisters, and the 14th-century collegial church at La Romieu, a Unesco World Heritage Site.

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