Malvern Walking Festival 2023 is open for bookings

The popular festival, which will see more than 70 walks take place over nine days, will take place from Saturday, May 27 to Sunday, June 4.

As always, the walks take place mostly in and around the Malvern Hills – officially designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB).

Some are a bit further afield in Worcestershire and Herefordshire.

READ MORE: New walking routes will start and end at Worcestershire railway stations

There are multi-day walks, all-day walks and shorter half-day jaunts.

Many walks are themed covering heritage, local history, geology, water, farming and gardens - there are even a couple of walks dedicated to beer and breweries.

This year, for the first time, there will be a three-day Cotswold railway walk, combining a train ride to the start and walk back to the station each day.

All walks are graded from ‘gentle’ to ‘strenuous’ with the most strenuous walk covering the 31-mile Worcestershire Way in a day.

'The joys of walking'

Festival chairman Bob Baldwin said: “As a result of the pandemic, many people were introduced to the joys of walking and rambling for the first time – and have kept it up.

“Our 2022 festival was sold out with hundreds of our regular walkers being joined by many new participants.

“This year will be our biggest ever since we started in 2005, making the Malvern Walking Festival one of the largest in southern England.

“I encourage people to get onto our website as soon as it opens in January and book a walk or two before we are sold out again."

Mr Baldwin added: “For a second year we are pleased to be supporting the Midlands Air Ambulance charity,  although of course we sincerely hope we will have no need for their services during the festival.”

You can book walks via the Malvern Walking Festival website malvernwalking.uk - and the advice is to do so soon, as the walks are expected to sell out.

There is a fee to take part in the walks with many priced at £5 to join.