What Is Self Guided Travel?
A place-based travel publication, online and in print
Self Guided Travel is an independent travel publication published by ahchoo.
We document routes, landscapes, and the places shaped by them through editorial publishing, structured reference, and long-form print guides.
Our work focuses on how people move through landscapes slowly and attentively. Trails, protected places, towns, and locally rooted places to stay form the structure of the site — not booking systems or transactions.
The website acts as a living reference: a way to explore landscapes through routes and place, and to discover independent businesses where they naturally belong.
A place-based approach to travel
Self Guided Travel is organised around geography rather than products.
We publish work on:
- Long-distance walking routes and historic paths
- National Landscapes, National Parks, and protected coastlines
- Regions, counties, towns, and villages shaped by those routes
- Independent places to stay and local providers connected to them
Routes act as the connective tissue. Landscapes provide context. Places give continuity.
Rather than encouraging fast consumption of destinations, the site is designed to help readers understand how places relate to one another — how a trail moves through land, how settlements emerge along it, and how people experience landscape at human scale.
What the website is (and isn’t)
Self Guided Travel is:
- A travel publication
- A place-based discovery and reference tool
- A commission-free publishing platform for independent businesses
It is not:
- A booking engine
- A travel agent or tour operator
- A marketplace or payment processor
Where relevant, the site links readers directly to independent places to stay or local providers. All bookings and enquiries happen off-site, directly with those businesses.
Digital reference, print publishing
The website is the evolving reference layer — structured, searchable, and designed to grow over time.
Print guides extend this work into slower, more durable formats. They are designed to be kept, revisited, and carried into the landscape, documenting routes and places in depth rather than chasing trends or itineraries.
Together, digital and print form a single publishing project centred on landscape, continuity, and place.
Why Self Guided Travel exists
Many travel platforms prioritise transactions, rankings, and volume.
Self Guided Travel prioritises understanding.
We exist to:
- Document landscapes through routes and movement
- Support low-impact, place-based exploration
- Give independent, locally rooted businesses a fair way to be discovered
- Create a long-term record of trails, regions, and places worth protecting
The aim is not to tell people where to go, but to help them understand how places connect — and to explore them with care.
In short
Self Guided Travel is a travel publication for people who want to understand landscapes through routes, place, and movement — online today, and in print for the long term.
