Why Wilderness?

Seeing as you can’t test drive a holiday, the best guide you’ll get to whether a particular travel experience is any good comes from those who have been there before. With hundreds of independent traveller reviews and an average trip rating of 4.93 out of 5, we’re confident that our customer feedback is among the very best you’ll find.

Just because the rating is so high, it doesn’t mean we can’t improve. We’re very focused on getting better and every piece of feedback we receive is individually reviewed to see how we can make an already great travel experience even better.

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While every aspect of your journey matters, it’s the guides we work with who truly elevate each trip — turning a great holiday into a genuinely memorable and often transformative experience.

We partner with some of the most experienced and knowledgeable guides in the industry. Carefully selected for their expertise, local insight, and passion for sharing Ireland’s landscapes and culture, they bring each itinerary to life in their own unique way. We support the guides we work with through strong collaboration, fair rates, and access to ongoing development opportunities, helping ensure consistently high standards across every trip.

Our travellers consistently highlight the quality of their guide as a standout part of their experience, with 94% awarding the highest possible score — an average rating of 4.93 out of 5.

We also keep our trips intentionally small, with a maximum of 8 travellers, ensuring a more personal and engaging experience. Each trip is led by an experienced guide, while our road cycling trips are supported by two qualified guides, providing a high level of care and support both on and off the road.

While this commitment to small groups and exceptional guiding can make our trips more premium than some alternatives, it’s a defining part of the Wilderness experience — and one that our clients consistently tell us makes all the difference.

Our Guide Partners

Alongside our guides, we make significant investments each year to maximise your enjoyment of the wilderness including top of the line equipment and vehicles. From best in class sea kayaking equipment to the highest standard bike rental fleet you’ll find anywhere in Ireland. While we design all trips to maximise your time in the outdoors, when you do have to travel you’ll be doing it in comfort onboard our 9 seat luxury mini-vans which are replaced every 3 years.

When it comes to the all-important accommodation, we have spent years developing and refining relationships with a wide range of hotels, lodges, guest houses and exclusive use venues. This local knowledge means that not only will you stay at the best choice of accommodation for the trip type, but also ensures you receive the highest standard of service when you arrive.

With an incredibly passionate and loyal crew, our Office Team has cumulated many years of experience in operating trips throughout Scotland and increasingly the rest of Ireland. This experience manifests itself in an almost encyclopaedic local knowledge of the mountains, coast, towns and cities where we live. That knowledge and expertise feeds trip design to guarantee those holidays we offer are among the most inspiring and innovative experiences you will find.

Drawing upon the Wilderness team’s knowledge, each trip is the subject of countless hours of behind-the-scenes research both in the office and in the field. Our know-how and relationships throughout the country mean you’ll not only explore places far beyond the tourist map but also sample those experiences not found in any guidebook. The logistics are taken care of, which means that you can enjoy your holiday the way you want to.

We’ll never offer a new itinerary unless we believe in it 100% and are confident it will be met with the same delight and enjoyment experienced on our current range of 25+ trips.

We feel lucky to live and work in such an incredible country. Looking after the environment which provides the amazing natural canvas for our adventures is not only the right thing to do but also makes sound business sense.

Sustainability and the wilds of Ireland are important to us, and therefore we are committing to reducing our emissions by 90%. Our goal is to achieve True Net-Zero Status by the end of 2030, investing solely in projects that permanently remove carbon from the atmosphere for those emissions that remain. Between now and 2030, where we can’t reduce, we will invest in projects that remove, avoid or reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

It is also why we’ve been at the forefront of tourism and conservation, including the voluntary Conservation Contribution Scheme, which we use to raise funds for Irish conservation charities.

Wilderness Sustainability