Help planning trip in Europe next summer

Part of the Tour de Mont Blanc?

Dolomites in Italy?  Coast to Coast UK (half way)?   Have fun!

This book is great for planning hut treks in the Alps.

Manfred and his 16-y-o daughter did GR-20 traversing the spine of Corsica in 2018 and wrote it up on BPL.

Traversing Corsica on the GR-20 – Another Father-Daughter Adventure – Backpacking Light

Being Manfred, he skipped every other refuge.  They camped out, but you could book stays in the refuges with a bed inside the refuge, (or rent a tent and mattress from them), and reserve a hot meal and breakfast at each stop, keeping your weight (and packed gear) way down.

If you’re hoping for a big work out, you could similarly stop at every second (or third?) refuge and if you want a lot of miles that week, potentially bounce it – do a round trip and vary the refuges you stay at going each direction.

Google “GR hiking routes in Europe” for other such routes.

The path and hut network in the Western Alps can’t be beat.

You’ll have the friendliest experience in Italy. The huts can be a bit tatty but the people are warm. Provided you’ve got some basic navigation, the early stages of the Via Alpina trail aren’t technical and take you through some wonderful terrain. This path is a bit less well known and crowded than routes like the Tour de Mont Blanc. But avoid Italy in August at all costs – the heat is appalling and the whole country is on holiday at once. It’s bedlam. I like the shoulder season – mid-Sept onwards. Less crowding, and the weather is often stable.

For a completely different experience consider a couple of sections of the South West Coastal path in England. Terrific cliff scenery, idyllic beaches, charming villages, ancient pubs, high quality eateries, and everyone speaks English! I used to live beside the path in Devon, and very rarely saw overseas visitors. It’s a neglected gem. But you do have to be fit – it’s a brutal switchback of short, steep climbs and descents. Not to be under-estimated.

https://www.southwestcoastpath.org.uk/

I’m a big fan of hiking hut to hut in the Italian Dolomites.  Check out a website “In a Far Away Land” for great guides/descriptions of various hike in the Dolomites.  You can follow one of the suggested hikes, or tailor your own. Early season is a great time to hike, before it gets hot or crowded.

Sorry to reply late on an older thread, but if you haven’t already planned the trip, I’d highly recommend my home country (Norway)! The Swiss huts are excellent, but here we have more space and fewer people—and 550 huts throughout the country. Check out ut.no/kart, and feel free to get in touch.

The South West Coast Path is also a very good suggestion for the kind of thing you are looking for. I did the entire path in one go back in 2021, and so if you want to know anything about it, I’m happy to correspond.

The E5 from southern Germany, across Austria to northern Italy (Tyrol). Did it with my son 2 years ago. Less busy/cheaper than the TMB