Now that you have had a chance to browse the website and pick out one or two exciting walking holidays, how do you choose which walks suit you?

The best place to start is on the 'Information' page of the holiday itself. Scrolling down a little, you will see a paragraph titled 'How Difficult'. Here, you will find an outline of the distances and ascents covered during this holiday.

For more detailed information on what you'd be expected to cover each day, click on the 'Itinerary' tab. You'll see several drop-down tabs that highlight each walk.

Here, you can see the exact distance and ascent for the walk and an estimated completion time.

Using this information, compare it with the walking you are currently doing. Will this holiday provide a leisurely few days, match your current abilities, or be a little more of a challenge?

There are a few other variables to consider when making this comparison.

The heat: It can be warm even in winter, especially with no wind or just a gentle southerly, and continuous exposure to the sun can sap your energy. You should factor this in, as it will add some workload to your walks.

Conditions underfoot: Walking is a flourishing activity, but away from the popular routes, the paths can often be across rough and broken rocks, especially in a karstic landscape. This could only be for short sections or longer, requiring extra concentration and energy to navigate and adding additional workload to your walks.

To help balance this out, I should mention that I don't do yomping! We enjoy our day out on the trails, with frequent stops along the way. If there's a cafe bar anywhere along the route, we'll stop in it.

The MIDE System

What information did I use to arrive at the grades? It could be compared to holding a wet finger in the air to check the weather, but I use the MIDE system to help me grade the routes.

What is the MIDE system I hear you say? It's something that I only became aware of when I started walking in Andalucía and what you will see on the information boards at the start of officially designated walks.

It is a joint venture between the government of Aragon and the Aragonese Mountaineering Federation, which aims to simplify the criteria for assessing a route's difficulty and commitment.

There is a convenient website where you can input a lot of the parameters of the walk, and from there, it will provide four grades, with each grade having a rating (from 1 to 5, 5 being the highest/hardest)

This system has four pillars, from which it gets its name.

Medium: The level of risk in the environment where the activity takes place.

Itinerary: The difficulty of navigation during the walk (not a problem as hopefully the guide knows the way)

Displacement: Assesses the difficulty of the terrain underfoot, from walking along a graded track to a scramble requiring four points of contact.

Effort: The physical demand required to complete the walk, particularly the length, ascent/descent, and terrain underfoot.

 

Making Sense of the MIDE System

The information the MIDE system provides is excellent, but what you really want to know is whether it is easy, hard, or somewhere in between. To that end, I have graded the walks as Easy, Moderate, and Strenuous, which gives a much more unambiguous indication of what you can expect from each walk.

Of course, this is subjective, and what is easy for one walker may be very hard for another.

I have fine-tuned this over the years, and I base my grades on a person who is a regular walker. If you're competing in ultra trails, this grading probably won't apply.

Easy: This walk is for those who are reasonably fit and have previous walking experience. It is on well-maintained surfaces, although there may be short sections where the path is uneven and broken, quickly passed with care, and the walk is taken leisurely. There may still be sections of the walk on a steep track or where the ascent can be longer.

Moderate: These walks require a good fitness level and will be on steep paths, over open countryside, and with short sections that may have slight exposure. Walking will be on a mix of terrain, including rocky trails, and may require care on small, uneven areas. Short sections of the walk may require four points of contact. The length of the walk may require a reasonable pace to ensure we complete it in time.

Strenuous: These are longer walks that require a higher level of fitness. They will include extended sections of continuous ascent, rough or broken paths and tracks, traverses with drop-offs, and distances requiring a moderate pace to ensure we complete the walk in daylight hours. Sections of the walk may require four points of contact and include short scrambles.

Mixing grades: A short time before you arrive for your holiday, I will send you a guide to the walks. In this, you may notice two grades, such as 'Easy/Moderate', are indicated. This grade shows that the majority of the walk is in the first category but will include short sections that fall into the second category.

Clear as mud? Please let me know if you have any questions about a particular walk. I will endeavour to provide additional information to help you decide.