Israel National Trail: General remarks

The pages of this blogs cover the 1000 kilometres of the Israel National Trail (Shivil Israel) that I walked before the Coronavirus pandemic forced me to return home, without finishing the last 100 kilometres of the trail. I began on the 3rd of February walking from Eilat in the south and finished 45 days later, including side trips to Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth.

The Israel National Trail falls into two quite different parts. The desert section of the trail to the south is full of dramatic landscapes and some exciting, if scary, bits for a hiker. Hiking north of the desert in springtime, the countryside was full of flowers, forests, and there were plenty of historic and cultural sites.

I used the Red Guide as my primary reference for the trip, plus a GPS track (which I split into sections small enough for my GPS, i.e. less than 10,000 points) and the Garmin map of Israel downloaded onto my GPS. For the route I actually walked see wikiloc.com or Viewranger. Details of updates to the trail and other information can be found on tapatalk, shvil.fandom.com and israeltrail.net. Some people have criticised the Red Guide but I found the detailed maps and the explanation of the sites I was passing particularly useful, it's just a pile of stones unless you know it was once a crusader fortress. One should be careful about over-reliance on a GPS track as in some cases I lost satellite signal despite a good view of the sky, and in other cases I was in a desert canyon, where lack of a clear view of the sky meant GPS positions were not reliable. Having said this I felt the distances given in the guidebook were often a kilometre or so less than they should have been, even if my GPS was wrong in this (and my feet suggested not), you need to add on extra kilometres to visit grocery stores, water supplies and accommodation. On occasions, short distances on the map, were actually long distances due to the path meandering back and fore. In general the guidebook's recommendation for the daily stages were good, especially if you are planning for many days of hiking. Although I managed to reduce the number of days walking slightly, by covering three days in two, I made up for this by "rest" days in Ein Bokek, Jerusalem and Nazareth, with the latter two well worth staying a day or so.

A few general comments; in February and March when I travelled, good weather could not be relied upon, if you plan to walk the trail you should be suitably prepared. In these months I found my down jacket essential in the desert to keep warm in the evenings and mornings, and later on in my trip, I wished I had brought more gear appropriate to wet and muddy conditions. I am sure the experience would be different in later months. Israel is more expensive than most European countries, although the amount of camping necessary in the desert and the possible use of trail angels later on can keep costs down. For British hikers, consider changing to the "3 network" for your phone, in Israel it charges texts and data at European rates, considerably cheaper than other networks. Watch out however by the Dead Sea when you can pick up Jordanian mobile signals and much higher costs.

For more details see the links to different parts of my blog below:

Start of my blog;
Comments on the desert section;
Comments on Central and Northern parts of the trail.

The Israel National Trail has been described as one of the world's 20 best hikes and most epic trails by National Geographic, and it deserves this accolade due to its mixture of dramatic desert landscape, wild flowers, historical and religious sites. Even better the people were really welcoming and friendly to this stranger in their land.

Israel National Trail waymark