Our Favourite Outdoor Magazines
We don't think you can beat a magazine subscription — the excitement each month as you return home from work and find a fresh copy on the doormat. Outdoor magazines are a great way to find out about camping gear, get ideas for adventure, and be generally inspired to get off the sofa. Beyond the gear reviews and route cards, there's something a print subscription still does better than scrolling a forum thread at midnight: a magazine forces you to sit with an article, look properly at the photography, and actually plan the next trip rather than just window-shopping for kit. Here are a few of our must-reads, along with links to where you can find each one.
Trail
Trail Magazine describes itself as the UK's bestselling hillwalking magazine, specialising in routes and adventures across the UK and Europe, with a strong focus on the mountains — Snowdonia, the Lake District, the Scottish Highlands and further afield in the Alps and Pyrenees. A favourite for us is its regular gear guide, where it reviews the latest walking and camping equipment, or puts multiple brands of one product head to head to identify the best. Trail is aimed squarely at hillwalkers rather than gentle ramblers — if you want detailed route descriptions with grid references, navigation tips and a healthy dose of "type two fun" trip reports, this is the one to pick up. It's published by Bauer Media as part of their livefortheoutdoors.com stable of titles, and back issues and subscriptions are handled through the same site.
Country Walking Magazine
Country Walking Magazine shows the beauty of Britain. With everything from low-level walks to challenging hikes, a key highlight of the magazine is its route cards — each month there are at least 26 routes printed on stronger glossy card that you can cut out from the magazine and save. These routes use Ordnance Survey maps, so you can be sure of where you're going. Where Trail leans towards mountains and scrambles, Country Walking is more welcoming to families, dog walkers and anyone building up to longer distances — it's a good fit if you camp somewhere and want a gentle circular walk from the campsite rather than a full day on the tops. Like Trail, it's a Bauer Media title, and the two share a website for subscriptions and digital editions.
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors Magazine, often known simply as TGO, was first published in 1978 and has all the news, gear, routes and more you'd expect from an outdoors magazine. It has a reputation as the more serious, backpacking-focused title of the bunch — long-distance trails, wild camping, gear that's tested over multi-day trips rather than a single afternoon walk, and columnists who've spent decades in the hills. If you're planning a proper backpacking trip rather than a day walk, TGO's reviews and trip reports tend to go into more depth than the more mainstream titles.
Trail Running
For anyone who covers ground a bit faster than a walking pace, Trail Running magazine covers off-road and fell running, from beginner-friendly advice to ultra-distance events. It's another Bauer title and worth a look if your camping trips double up as a base for early-morning runs on the trails and fells nearby.
Outdoor Fitness
Outdoor Fitness magazine sits a little differently to the others — it's aimed at people who want to combine adventure with training, covering everything from wild swimming and paddleboarding to multi-day hiking challenges and adventure racing. If your idea of a camping trip involves more than just pitching a tent and going for a stroll, it's worth seeking out for ideas on how to make your next trip more active.
Bushcraft & Survival Skills
If your interest leans more towards fieldcraft than distance — fire-lighting, shelter building, foraging and the sort of skills covered on our own campfire and tarp shelter guides — Bushcraft & Survival Skills magazine is worth a look. It's a niche title compared to the mainstream hiking magazines above, but it's the one to seek out specifically for bushcraft rather than route-planning.
Where to find UK camping and outdoor magazines
All of the titles above are available at most UK supermarkets and newsagents, as well as via digital apps like Readly and Pocketmags if you'd rather not commit to a print subscription straight away. If you're searching more broadly for "outdoor magazines" or "camping magazines" generally rather than one specific title, we'd suggest picking up an issue of two or three different ones before subscribing — Trail and TGO in particular cover quite different reader profiles despite both being "hillwalking magazines" on the surface.
Summary
So there you have it — some of our favourite magazines, giving us a taste of the outdoors and helping us plan adventures when we're stuck indoors. Between them they cover most of what you'd want from an outdoor read: hillwalking and mountain routes from Trail, gentler family-friendly walks from Country Walking, serious backpacking content from TGO, running from Trail Running, and multi-activity adventure from Outdoor Fitness. Between subscriptions, most newsagents and supermarkets still carry the bigger titles too, so it's worth picking up a copy before committing to a year's subscription. Let us know your own favourites.