Headwater Holidays Avis 136

Fabulous experience, well supported if needed, a chance to experience people and places that I think would be very hard to arrange independently. Thoroughly recommend.

Fantastic holiday cycling with Headwater from Campos to Pollenca, Spain. The route was brilliant sooo beautiful, the hotels were fantastic and the best bit was that we had two nights in each hotel. Can you let me know if there are other trips cycling where you stay two nights. It was just that we didn’t feel as rushed. We went on 24th April to 2nd May.

A challenge that became more rewarding, beautiful and fun as the week went on.

Excellent booking service, great routes and hotels, smooth transitions - everything went very well. Impressed

Great holiday beautiful selection of accomodation food and wine more than lived up to the gastronomic expectations wonderful country to walk through and enjoy headwater have been very helpful through the booking process

The routes in the Sierra de Aracena were very well chosen and the walking app for self guiding worked brilliantly.

What an amazing experience we had walking the Fishermen’s Trail. The trip was booked through Headwater, while not the cheapest everything was managed efficiently from booking and throughout the trip. It exceeded my expectations. Transfers and hotels were great. The GPS directions were really helpful, although the trail was also very well marked. Luggage was transferred between accommodations and was waiting for us when we arrived. Would book it again and go back in a heartbeat, I loved it that much.

We booked this package as a land only deal book ended by extra days on Mallorca booked independently.
Headwater offered a great itinerary staying at comfortable hotels for 2 nights with a local loop ride followed by a connection ride covering varied countryside from South East (Campos) to North (Pollenca). We had e-bikes which made for a relaxing holiday.
March is still pre-season but plenty of other cyclists around and a reasonable number of restaurants open. We mostly had good weather with a few showers and evenings can be quite cool but hotels have heating.

contacted the company and had good live chat discussion. Live chat gave me his email for any further questions. I was appalled to see his name on a trustpilot 5 star review for the same company 6 days ago! The company responded as if he was a new reviewer and no reference to employee status. Trust has flown out of the window with this company!

Walking on Gozo with Headwater was just fantastic! Right from my initial contact with Headwater was just flawless, all staff were friendly, polite and nothing felt like too much trouble for them. They were even able to help me book flights from my local airport and my onward transfers and ferries.
I stayed at the Hotel Ta Cenc during my trip and could not have been happier with my stay and the food, which was a real treat for the taste spuds.
The island is super easy to get round on the local buses and I would highly recommend Headwaters walk to Xlendi the views were breathtaking and their recommendation to lunch in Xlendi with view of the fishing harbour was spot on!
Our only regret was not taking Headwaters option to extend our stay in Malta.
Well done Headwater. Myself and Husband made some special memories to treasure and absolutely loved our holiday with you.

I don't think i have ever contacted this company but have received a colour brochure via the post.
Why?
Think of the environment
Their response was to ask me to contact customer services and ask them to look into it.

We visited the Azores with Headwater and were very disappointed with the service.

First, Headwater added a flight supplement of £608 on top of the advertised cost.
Second, they sent us entirely the wrong itinerary, with incorrect dates ferries, flights and hotel bookings.
The third (and worst) issue was the difference between the website description of the transfers to each walk and what was available in practice. The itinerary said to use buses, but there weren’t any, so we had to pay an extra €80 each day as most of the walks were some distance away from the accommodation. Other travel companies include the cost of transfers or car hire in the cost of the holiday.
We would have expected Headwater to provide us with local knowledge, such as that on Sao Miguel it worked out half the price to hire a car for two days than it would have been to use taxis. Hiring a car also allowed us to visit Ponta da Ferraria and the Correana tea plantation. We ended up doing lots of research on our own which negated the choice of using Headwater.
One of the reasons for booking with Headwater was the ability to amend the length of the holiday. We reduced the length of the holiday by four days. Without telling us, Headwater reduced the included evening meals from eight to one. Of course, we should have noticed this before we left, but we were focused on checking that all the days/flights/ferries were correct in the second itinerary and didn’t think to check the basis on which the hotels had been booked.
We have done many walking holidays with other companies, but this is the first time that we have felt misled. We booked with Headwater as we wanted some of the organisation and uncertainty removed, but we ended up with the stress and extra time of checking the itinerary for discrepancies and searching for alternative ways to access the walks. With the flight supplements, taxis and meals, we ended up spending over £1,100 more than we anticipated. Comparing with other providers which all include transfers to the walks, we could have saved ourselves stress, time and money.
Headwater have apologised and offered a partial refund, but this only covered a small part of the extra costs fees we faced.

Recently just returned from a cycling trip in Italy “The wine trails of Umbria” and what an experience that was!! The views were just Beautiful, the cycling routes were easy to follow especially with the headwater navigation app and all the accommodation that was chosen was clean and friendly! Would recommend this trip to anyone and I can’t wait to book my next trip with Headwater.

A fantastic trip to Puglia with Headwater! The trip was incredibly well organised by a very friendly team and we had the most amazing time. Beautiful scenery, gorgeous hotels and we explored the best Puglia had to offer! Highlight of the trip was Matera and the bread making experience, just absolutely fabulous! Would absolutely recommend Headwater!

Do not use this company!! Behind their flash website is a very poor level of service. They have no idea what sort of bikes and their condition that you will be provided with. They ask for feedback and then just ignore it even though we told them at least one of our bikes was unsafe. We have done a number of cycling holidays and Headwater are the worst by some distance.

The booking process for our holiday to Puglia was very professional.The holiday itself exceeded my expectations
Matera was so interesting and all hotels were clean with amazing family run staff that made us feel more than welcome
Just one negative point was that the Olive trees in the area had been effected by a disease which was such a shame for the local farmers but it was apparent that they were replanting Will definitely return in the future as there is so much to see and enjoy
Karen from Shropshire

I've travelled with Headwater for over 10 years and their service has always been outstanding. We enjoyed our last trip to Majorca staying in a single center based hotel and visiting Port de Soller, Daia (saw Andrew Lloyd Webber) and so many other hamlets of unspoilt beauty. I'd highly recommend this company to book your next trip.

We have recently returned from a fabulous holiday Cycling in the Loire with Headwater. Absolutely beautiful cycling along the Loire, visiting beautiful chateaux’s, wine tasting and not to mention amazing food. Would highly recommend.

Significant issues with route directions and information: The worst example being a route of 2km steeply downhill which was totally overgrown with 2m high shrubs , had steep drops where the “path” had dropped away and frequent fallen trees blocking the route. It cannot have been walked for months or years, was extremely dangerous and it took over two hours to get to the bottom. The route instructions stated that they had been updated in February 2024, but we later found out this was not true. Other examples included paths that no longer existed on the ground, buildings to look around that were derelict and unsafe and waymarked new paths that offered great alternatives to roads etc but weren’t included on the route details plus some routes were readily available published way marked routes, so no need to use HW. As experienced walkers and the fact that we used the Headwater app, we knew the issues weren’t due to our navigation errors. During the booking process: HW claim to provide tailor made holidays - but when we needed to change the set itinerary for just the last day it led to long delays in confirming this could be done and high additional supplementary charges which were never fully accounted for. An error HW made in booking the flights meant we were initially charged more than we should have been. We constantly had to chase up progress, to check and review both the holiday itinerary and the charges for errors which was stressful and time consuming.
In the Azores: We had been given incorrect information re the transfers to and from the walks - these were not arranged by HW with their local representative as we had been told, we had to arrange them for ourselves. We were advised by local reps that it is difficult to get taxis at short notice, but the local reps did help us with this, despite it not being in their remit.

Having enjoyed a number of great trips with Headwater I was confident to book a 4 day walking trip to Chamonix. My confidence was dented when there was no transfer arranged from the airport at Geneva. Having secured a taxi we arrived at the hotel to find that the multi day travel passes which we had been assured would be there, were not. There was no booking for the cable car as planned and no apparent booking for our transfer back to the airport. Promises to return my calls by customer services went unrealised. Quite frankly, we felt we were on our own - securing our own map, planning our own walks, buying our own passes and booking our own cable car trip. Communication with Headwater, whilst we were there, was difficult . I have never felt so badly let down by a travel company.