Practical guides, honest gear advice, and everything you need to hike with confidence — written from real experience on real trails.
There’s a question most women think about and almost no hiking guide bothers to answer properly: what do you actually do about your period on a hike? The short answer is yes, you can absolutely hike on your period — and most of the time it’s no big deal with a bit of preparation. The […]
My first hiking leggings were a pair of yoga leggings I already owned. They worked fine on my first few easy trails — comfortable, stretchy, nothing to complain about. Then I did a 12km hike with 400m of elevation in them on a warm day and discovered exactly what yoga leggings can’t do: they held […]
Everyone who hikes regularly started exactly where you are — standing at the beginning, not sure what they need, whether they’re fit enough, or how to find a trail that won’t destroy them. The difference between people who try hiking once and hate it and people who fall completely in love with it is almost […]
The fear of getting lost is one of the most common reasons beginner women hesitate to hike alone — or hike at all. I know because I felt it on my first solo hike, a supposedly straightforward loop trail that split in three directions at one junction with no signage. I stood there for five […]
I used to think hiking in the rain sounded miserable — and then I did it wrong twice and decided it actually was. The first time, I wore a cotton hoodie under a cheap supermarket rain mac and was soaked through to my skin within forty minutes. The second time I overcorrected: I wore so […]
I used to think any waterproof jacket would do for hiking. I owned a £30 supermarket rain mac that worked fine in the car park and completely failed me on a three-hour ridge walk in a Scottish drizzle — wet through in 90 minutes, freezing, and still three miles from the car. The problem wasn’t […]
I'm Sophie — an intermediate hiker who got tired of vague outdoor content written by people who've never actually been on a trail. Every article on PackedTrails comes from real experience and a genuine love of getting outside.
