The main objective of the ESA funded CryoVal-LI project has been to identify and quantify the error sources for the CryoSat-2 mission over land ice. This has been undertaken through the careful documentation of the possible error sources, the identification of suitable validation sites and the creation of a public database containing validation data for these areas from recent ground and airborne field campaigns. These sites also offer considerable potential as sites on which to focus future validation efforts. Through the utilization of these observational datasets, an extensive comparative analysis has been carried out in which Cryosat-2 data has been evaluated against airborne and in-situ data. A number of different Cryosat-2 data sets have been included in this analysis with the goal of testing the performance of different processing and retracking algorithms. A similar, but smaller validation analysis has also been carried out for ICESat data. Here, we present the results of these analyses and outline the conclusions reached. Based on the findings from the project, a set of recommendations for the design of future land-ice/satellite validation campaigns will be given. Furthermore, the outcome of the re-tracker inter-comparison will be used to advocate a set of optimal re-tracking algorithms for Cryosat-2 in the next generation of L2 products.