It was a pleasure and an honor to be invited by the European Hiking Federation to participate in the organization’s 55th Annual Congress, between October 3 and 6, 2024, in the sacred grounds of the Monastery of Monseraat in Catalonia, Spain.

67 representatives of organisations from 24 countries participated in the conference while on behalf of our organization and the Andros Routes project, Myrto Apostolopoulou and Olga Karagianni, and as a member of the working group of the European Hiking Federation, of the relatively new quality certification of daily routes Leading Quality Trails-Best of Europe Day Walks.

In the framework of the conference, extremely interesting actions and initiatives of the European Hiking Federation itself, as well as of its member organizations, were presented in the past year, among which:

—Presentation of a new certified 300km route in Switzerland, LQT ViaBerna
—Introducing the new LQT-BE Day Walks quality certification
—Investigating access issues on hiking trails located within private, mostly rural properties in the Netherlands
—Study on the “digital” behavior of pedestrians carried out in Germany
—Action to study ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in hiking shelters in Romania, within the framework of the ERASMUS program
—Cross-border hiking cooperation program, E-CrossPass, CBC program between Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, etc.

In the context of the conference, the members of our organization were given the valuable opportunity to meet and exchange opinions and experiences with representatives of organizations involved in hiking in other European countries, among them, representatives of Hiking Federations, National Parks, Tourism Organizations, but also non-governmental organizations.

Traveling outside of Andros and Greece, offers valuable knowledge, perspectives and helps us to understand that small, local efforts like ours in Andros, are important pieces of efforts of a much larger extent, which are happening in many regions of Europe and the world, serving universal principles and qualities such as solidarity, sustainability, health, quality of life and cultural exchange.