European Long-Distance Trail Network Adds Three New Camping Routes

The European Ramblers' Association, which oversees the continent's numbered E-paths, announced three new long-distance routes this month. Each has been designed from the outset with camping in mind, a departure from many older E-paths that assumed hikers would sleep in villages or refuges.

A new spine across the Iberian interior

The first of the new routes, E14, runs eight hundred kilometers north-to-south through the Portuguese interior, linking Bragança in the north to the Alentejo cork-oak country. Portugal's national forest authority has designated more than sixty simple camping platforms along the route, each with a picnic table, a water source and a small fire ring where seasonal conditions allow.

The route deliberately avoids the coast, in part to spread visitation away from the increasingly overloaded Fisherman's Trail and in part to showcase the quieter oak and chestnut forests of the interior. Route planners expect the E14 to become a shoulder-season favorite, walkable from March through June and again from September into November.

A Baltic-to-Tatras route through Poland

The second new route, provisionally numbered E15, runs the length of Poland from the Baltic dunes near Słowiński National Park south to the Tatra Mountains on the Slovak border. Poland has built the trail around its existing network of state-forest shelters, most of which are free to use and require no advance booking.

For campers, the Polish route is notable because it formalizes the country's long-standing but sometimes ambiguous approach to wild camping. On the E15, camping is explicitly permitted in designated stretches of state forest, and rangers will provide printed maps showing which sections are open and which are closed to protect nesting cranes and lynx habitat.

A Balkan traverse from the Adriatic to the Aegean

The third route, E16, is the most ambitious. It runs from the Croatian coast across Bosnia, Montenegro, Kosovo, North Macedonia and into northern Greece. Building a coherent route across so many jurisdictions required more than a decade of quiet diplomacy, and the result is a genuinely wild trail with few road crossings and long stretches above tree line.

Camping on the E16 will vary country by country. In some sections, hikers will use shepherd huts and mountain refuges; in others, the trail runs through zones where wild camping is legal and expected. A single English-language guidebook, published this spring, describes the rules in each country and marks water sources on detailed strip maps.

Why this matters for camping culture

Long-distance camping culture in Europe has historically been strongest in Scandinavia, where the freedom to roam is codified in law. The new E-paths represent an attempt to extend that culture south and east, adapting it to the different property regimes of the Mediterranean and the Balkans.

For campers who have grown weary of booked-out huts and crowded refuges, the arrival of three long, camping-first routes is a significant change. Expect to see gear companies respond quickly with lighter, warmer three-season kits designed for the mixed elevations and long shoulder seasons that these trails invite.