GuardTrails
My name is Matthieu Silbermann.
Seven trips of two to four weeks between 2017 and 2026, as a family group of five or six: Australia, Réunion, Croatia and the Balkans, the American West and British Columbia, the Baltics, Iceland, Utah. Six built by operators, one by us.
Why this site exists
Coming back from the Baltics in August 2026, my verdict fitted in one sentence: almost perfect, except two or three slightly soft stages we could have merged.
"Soft" is not a diagnosis. It is an admission of helplessness.
So I got the old tour documents out and did the dumbest thing possible: I counted the nights. How many nights, how many hotels, how many times we repacked the bags. Seven itineraries, five operators, four continents, nine years apart — and the same reflex everywhere.
This site is what that measurement produced.
What I am not
I am not a travel agent, not a guide, not a journalist. I have no training in climatology or cartography.
What I can do is take a vague problem, formalise it and make it computable. This site applies that way of working to travel, with the public data that exists, and says what that data does not cover.
What I lack
Seven trips and a single family do not make a sample.
The thresholds I cite — a day and a half of consecutive rest, a ceiling of twenty-four degrees, two nights minimum per stage — are mine. They are probably wrong for you.
Several claims I had made with confidence were contradicted by measurement. They are listed in the corrections section of the Sources page, and it is the section I am most satisfied with.
Contact
Through the contact form — and if you want to change my mind, send an itinerary.