You can book a vacation package here in the ordinary way, by sending the dates you have and letting a person at the desk work out which of the twenty-two trips will survive them. What is unusual is the order. The catalogue is not arranged from best to worst, or from cheap to expensive, or by continent. It is arranged by obstacle: the six specific reasons people at this desk give for not going. A trip appears under every obstacle it clears, so most trips appear several times, and the same twenty-two trips read differently depending on which obstacle brought you here.
That arrangement came out of the phone. People rarely open with a destination. They open with a constraint, usually somebody else's: a brother who will not sit on a plane for nine hours, four days in February and no more, a parent who walks half a mile and then wants to sit down. The destination is the last thing decided, not the first. So the grid below puts the constraint first and lets the destination fall out of it. Where a trip cannot handle an obstacle, the cell says so in plain words rather than staying empty, because an empty cell reads as an oversight and a stated failure reads as an answer.
| Trip | The dates are fixed and short | Somebody will not fly, or not far | The party moves at two speeds | Nobody has done this before | The free weeks are out of season | One person travelling | From |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| auvergne | yes | no | yes | yes | yes | no | from $3,190 |
| basilicata | yes | no | no | yes | yes | no | from $2,390 |
| bay of fundy | yes | yes | no | no | yes | no | from $2,690 |
| bieszczady | no | yes | yes | yes | yes | no | from $2,690 |
| bucovina | no | no | yes | yes | yes | no | from $2,310 |
| costa vicentina | no | no | no | yes | yes | yes | from $2,140 |
| epirus | no | no | no | yes | yes | yes | from $2,690 |
| flanders canals | yes | yes | yes | yes | no | no | from $2,180 |
| galicia coast | yes | yes | no | yes | yes | no | from $2,540 |
| hiiumaa | yes | yes | no | no | yes | yes | from $2,180 |
| karelia lakes | yes | no | yes | no | yes | no | from $2,180 |
| lake skadar | no | yes | no | yes | yes | no | from $1,860 |
| lower engadine | no | yes | no | yes | yes | no | from $2,780 |
| menorca | no | no | no | yes | yes | yes | from $2,610 |
| north pennines | yes | no | no | no | yes | yes | from $2,340 |
| salzkammergut | no | no | yes | yes | yes | no | from $2,940 |
| samos | no | no | yes | yes | yes | yes | from $2,265 |
| snowdonia | no | yes | yes | no | yes | no | from $2,940 |
| sunnmore | no | yes | yes | yes | no | yes | from $2,940 |
| swabian jura | no | no | yes | yes | no | yes | from $2,180 |
| west fjords | yes | no | no | yes | yes | no | from $2,940 |
| zeeland | no | yes | no | yes | yes | no | from $2,240 |
Nothing below is placed above anything else
There is no order of merit on this page and there will not be one. A ranked list answers a question nobody at this desk asks, which is "what is the finest trip you have." The question that actually gets asked is "what will work with these two weeks and this group of four," and a ranking cannot answer it, because the trip that fits a solo traveler in November is the wrong trip for a family of five in July, and no amount of ordering fixes that. Two trips can sit under the same obstacle and be nothing alike. The grid keeps them side by side without pretending one wins.
There is a second reason, and it is about honesty rather than usefulness. Quiet Quarterly is paid a commission by the operating company after the traveler gets home. If this page ranked trips, the ranking and the commission would be sitting in the same room, and you would have no way to tell which of them wrote the order. The obstacle index removes the question: an obstacle either applies to your party or it does not, and the office has no way to nudge that. Prices run from $1,285 to $4,980 per person and are printed on every trip page for the same reason, including the parts that are not covered.
Everything here shares a shape | Twenty-two trips, no exceptions, and these hold for all of them
Placed, not operated | The office sends the reservation to the company that runs the trip; that company bills you under its own terms and its own cancellation rules
Priced from, not fixed | Every figure is a starting point per person; the number against your specific dates comes back in writing in given human eyes before that working day is over
Nothing is paid here | No card field exists anywhere on this site, and the desk never asks for a number over the phone
Two operating companies minimum | Most trips involve at least an accommodation and a ground element, which is why a written figure takes as long as it does
Small parties | Group departures on this list top out at eighteen people, and eleven of the twenty-two run at eight or fewer
Failures are printed | Where a trip does not suit an obstacle, the trip page says which part fails and what a party would run into
No documents handled | The office does not sell or advise on travel insurance, entry documents or anything medical, and will say so rather than guess
Where the obstacle index sends you next
If you already know which of the six applies to you, go straight to that obstacle page: it lists only the trips that survive it, with the reason each one does. If two apply, and for most parties two do, the obstacle grid sets any pair of trips against each other on the same rows without declaring a winner. If none of the six quite describes the problem, write the problem out in the box below in your own words. The desk reads requests in the order they arrive, and a paragraph describing a difficult group is more useful than a form filled in tidily. The request form runs 24/7 and does not close; whatever arrives is read by a person before that working day ends, and a figure priced against your dates follows in given human eyes before that working day is over. how a request is handled sets out the sequence from that first message to the operating company's confirmation, the cancellation terms covers what happens if the plan comes apart, and the questions people ask answers the things people ask twice.