According to the guide books that we write, the average daily spend on a hike is as follows:

If camping: Campers can survive on £12-15 per day if using the cheapest sites, cooking all their food themselves, foregoing the chance to visit tourist attractions, pubs, cafes etc – and generally having a miserable time of it. Assuming that you have the occasional drink or meal in a pub, the true figure is more likely to be £20-25 per day.

If staying in hostels: those relying on the hostels you can easily double the above figures, even if the hostels do have self-catering facilities to enable to you cook or yourself. Around £35 is the minimum budget if you have the occasional bar meal and a drink or two. Eating out more frequently? Bump that up to £45-50 per day. 

If staying in a B&B: I think that £60-80 per day is about the average spend if you are staying in B&Bs (and assuming you’ll be eating out all of the time too) – though this can easily rise to an average daily spend of above three figures.

The above figures are only a very rough guide and will vary enormously, depending on several factors, including:

• when you are walking (your budget during a summer holiday will be much more than if you’re walking out of season),
• whether you are walking by yourself (walking with someone is often cheaper),
• which trail you have chosen,
• how long you take to complete the trail,
• whether you want to visit ay tourist attractions or historical sites along the way (particularly pertinent on the Hadrian’s Wall Path)
• … and so on and so on.

But do these (admittedly very approximate) figures bear any resemblance to reality? Well, let’s have a look at what I’ve spent on some of my hikes and we can draw some conclusions from there:

It always makes my eyes water when, at the end of the tax year, I calculate my total spend for a walk. Because the bottom line is that I seem to spend a lot more on my hikes than the figures above suggest I should.

Let’s look at the three hikes that I completed in 2018.

I spent £427.98 for 14 days on the Pennine Way, £1178.26 for 10 days on the Cotswold Way, and £742.36 for 15 days on the Cleveland Way.

That works out at £30.57 per day on the Pennine Way, £49.49 per day on the Cleveland Way and a whopping £117.82 per day on the Cotswold Way. (All figures exclude the transport costs of getting to and from the trail.)

There are two obvious questions prompted by these figures:

1. Why is there such a big variation between the trails?
2. Why are they so different (and bigger!) than the estimates provided at the top of this page and given in the guide books?

In answer to the first question, the higher daily price for the Cotswold Way is in part due to the fact that the Cotswolds are a more expensive part of the country than the Pennines. But perhaps more pertinently, my partner Zoe joined me for the first part of this walk. And, unlike me, she has standards, and doesn’t want to wild camp. Nor is she happy going for a day or two without a shower. So for all these reasons the daily cost on this walk is higher.

Similarly, for the Pennine Way, it was just me and my dog, we indulged in a fair bit of wild camping, the north of England is famously cheaper than the south – and the trail itself is more remote, so there are fewer places where you can actually spend your money.

So I think, on balance, the Cleveland Way’s average of a fraction under £50 per day is probably the most useful average.

But this is still double the daily budget we estimate for campers at the top of this page and in the guide book.

So are my figures typical? And is this what you can expect to spend when you’re walking on one of these trails?

Well, maybe, maybe not. On the one hand, in some areas I actually think I spend less than most people; but in other areas I spend more.

For example, I like to camp (as long as the weather’s good), which obviously saves me some money. Indeed, for the past few years I’ve really started to enjoy wild camping, effectively reducing my accommodation costs to zero for much of the walk.

I also like to carry my own luggage, so I don’t pay for baggage-carrying companies to carry it for me.

On the other hand, I probably spend more than most people on these trails because of the following:

1. I probably spend more than most people on food. I don’t like cooking for myself when I’m camping. I find it takes up too much time, and I don’t like carrying food, cooking equipment etc. But I also think that eating in cafes during the day, and pubs in the evening, is one of the joys of hiking – and an essential part of the whole experience.

(Of course, as I am almost invariably working on a guide book when I walk, so I also have a duty to eat in as many places as possible  for ‘research purposes’. But I would be lying if I said this was the reason why I ate in a lot of cafes. Researching’ is just my excuse for being a glutton, not the reason.)

2. On that subject, because I am researching for a guide, so I probably spend more than most people on public transport, because I sometimes have to retrace my steps in order to complete or check my work.

3. I also think that having a dog can increase the cost of a walk. Hostels don’t, as a rule, allow dogs, and one’s choice of B&Bs is also limited. So if I decide not to camp, I may have to spend more on my accommodation. Dogs also push up the overall cost because of the incidentals – food, poo bags etc – that you may need to buy on the way.

4. Finally, when I’m researching these guide books I am usually doing so on my own (plus the dog, of course). Travelling by yourself will usually cost more if only because you are liable for every expense – staying at a B&B is cheaper per person if there’s two of you, for example.

So while my budget is likely to look very different to yours, I think that, overall, the areas where I spend less may balance out those areas where I spend more.

In other words, perhaps your daily budget won’t differ too greatly from mine. Mine is probably a little excessive due to the amount of times I eat in cafes and pubs. But not excessively so,

And I think that perhaps in the next edition of these guides we need to revise the budget estimates upwards by £5-10 per day for every category.

Anyway, I’d be interested to hear your experience, and whether your daily budget is similar – or very different – to mine.

Example: my budget for the Cleveland Way

Below I have printed the budget for one of my walks. It includes both expenditure that occurred beforehand – for example, on trains/buses to the start of the walk, and back at the end – as well as the daily spend when on the trail.

This budget is an honest reflection of what I spent. Just ask the taxman – because these are the same figured that I declared to HMRC.

As you can see, I actually took two trips to complete the trail and my research. Break wasn’t planned – just need to return home because my elderly mum had a fall.  On that first trip I was accompanied by my partner Zoe, our son and Daisy. On the second trip it was just me and the dog.

So the second trip will have a lower per day expenditure, as mentioned above, as Zoe has standards, and we needed to make allowances for our four-year-old child too.

On both occasions we didn’t take public transport but drove up to the moors from our home south of London near the south coast.

Like I say, in many ways this daily budget will differ enormously from yours: it’s doubtful you’ll eat in as many places as I do, and I doubt you’ll need certain supplies – exercise books, correcting fluid – that I bought along the way for my work, and which I have itemised below.

Anyway, I don’t know if it will be of any use to anybody – but I’ll reproduce it anyway, in the hope that it is:

Conclusion

Well as you can see, even though I wild camped a lot on the trail, I still was spending around £30 per day, and the high spend at the start of the trip when I was with my family pushed the overall budget up to almost £50 per day.

I think the main lesson to be drawn from this particular trip – and it’s one that I draw from every trip I take – is that it’s surprising how quickly things add up. That even when I think I haven’t spent that much in a day, I still end up around £30 poorer at the end of it than I was at the start.

The other conclusion I draw is that these figures don’t really matter. Indeed, I can’t imagine that I would keep a  daily account of my expenditure normally; it’s just that I need to in order to show the taxman should he request them.

But other than that they’re unimportant. Because I love walking, it’s perhaps my favourite pastime – and so as long as the budget is bearable then I am happy with the amount I’ve spent.