Walking · England
One hundred and forty thousand miles of public footpath, sixteen National Trails, and a right of way you can trace back to the Domesday Book. England is a country you can cross on foot in a fortnight — and every mile of it has been walked before.
Why walk here
England's footpath network is the densest in the world. Every parish has one, every field is crossed by one, and most of them are older than any village they pass through — drovers' tracks, corpse roads, salt ways, pilgrim routes, Roman roads, and holloways worn a metre deep by centuries of feet. The Ridgeway alone has been walked continuously for five thousand years.
What that means today is that you can start walking on a National Trail from a station platform and be in open country within an hour. The Cotswold Way climbs the escarpment out of Chipping Campden. Hadrian's Wall crosses the country from Newcastle to the Solway Firth. The Coast to Coast — Wainwright's line from St Bees to Robin Hood's Bay — takes you across three national parks in a fortnight.
And at the end of the day: a pub. Not a hotel, not a restaurant with rooms — a proper village pub with beams, a fire, a landlord who knows the trail, and a room upstairs. That is the shape of an English walking day, and it has not changed in two hundred years.
The trails we walk
Every trail is walked and re-walked before we open it. We'd rather do four brilliantly than forty badly.
Book nowGuidedLake District
102 km · 3 days
A guided trail-running crossing of the Eastern Fells — 35 Wainwrights, 102 km, three big running days from Ullswater to Windermere.
Book nowGuidedLake District
102 km · 5 days
The same 35 Wainwrights, walked over five days with a licensed fell guide — smaller stages, single rooms, bags moved between valleys.
Book nowMinehead → Poole
1036 km · 35–63 days
The longest national trail in England — 1,036 km of coast from Somerset around Devon and Cornwall to Dorset, walked as six named stages or in one long push.
Book nowSt Bees → Robin Hood's Bay
309 km · 12–16 days
Wainwright's line across northern England. Three national parks — Lakes, Dales, North York Moors — sea to sea in a fortnight.
Book nowNewcastle → Solway Firth
135 km · 6–8 days
The northern edge of the Roman Empire, coast to coast. Milecastles, whin sill crags, and the wall itself for ninety miles.
Book nowChipping Campden → Bath
164 km · 7–10 days
The Cotswold escarpment end to end. Honey-stone villages, beech hangers, and the long view over the Severn.
Book nowIlkley → Bowness-on-Windermere
130 km · 5–8 days
Yorkshire Dales to the Lake District along river valleys. Wharfedale, Dentdale, and a first sight of Windermere.
Book nowIlkley → Ribblehead
65 km · 2–3 days
The highlight southern half of the Dales Way — 65 km up Wharfedale from Ilkley to Ribblehead, past Bolton Abbey, Grassington and Kettlewell, finishing under the great 24-arch viaduct.
Book nowRibblehead → Bowness-on-Windermere
66 km · 3–4 days
The northern half of the Dales Way — 66 km from the Ribblehead Viaduct through Dent and Sedbergh, across the Howgills and down through Kendal to Lake Windermere.
Book nowUlverston → Carlisle
116 km · 5–7 days
The Lake District from south to north. Coniston, Langdale, Borrowdale, Skiddaw — the fells at their most concentrated.
Book nowUlverston → Keswick
70 km · 3–4 days
A long weekend through the heart of the Lakes — 70 km from Ulverston to Keswick, past Coniston Water and Tarn Hows into Great Langdale, over Stake Pass and down through Borrowdale.
Book nowEdale → Kirk Yetholm
414 km · 14–22 days
England's oldest National Trail, up the spine of the country. Peak District, Yorkshire Dales, North Pennines, Hadrian's Wall and the Cheviots — 268 miles, sea to Scotland.
Book nowWessex Downs → Chilterns
139 km · 6–8 days
Britain's oldest road. Five thousand years of feet on chalk downland, Iron Age hillforts, and the White Horse at Uffington.
Book nowWinchester → Eastbourne
162 km · 4–8 days
100 miles of chalk ridge from Winchester Cathedral to the Seven Sisters. England's only fully bridleway National Trail — wide skies, working farmland, and the sea appearing on the horizon before you expect it.
Book nowHassocks → Eastbourne
54 km · 2–3 days
A long weekend on the finest 54 km of the South Downs Way — Hassocks to Eastbourne over Ditchling Beacon, through medieval Alfriston and out along the Seven Sisters to Beachy Head.
The trails on one map
Lines follow each trail's waypoints — live trail pages draw the full GPX route. Tap a line to see the trail.
Reasons to linger
Eat
England quietly rebuilt its food around the village pub in the last twenty years. Slow-cooked local meat, garden vegetables, a proper cheeseboard. The Star at Harome. The Sportsman at Seasalter. The Wheatsheaf at Northleach. This is what a walking day was made for.
Drink
Real ale — hand-pulled, unfiltered, brewed within a county of where you drink it — is England's contribution to the walker's evening. Timothy Taylor's Landlord in Yorkshire, Harvey's Best in Sussex, Butcombe in the West Country. A pint, a fire, boots off.
Sleep
We book you into places with histories: The Lygon Arms in Broadway, the Tan Hill Inn on the Pennine Way, The George at Alstonefield. Coaching inns, farmhouses, and country hotels that expect walkers and welcome them accordingly.
Read
Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways. Alfred Wainwright's Coast to Coast. Roger Deakin's Waterlog. Edward Thomas's The South Country. Read one on the train down — the paths make more sense with them in your head.
From the journal
Elise Downing ran the Ridgeway in three days. Two friends tried to walk the same distances. It went about as well as last time.
Jessica Mather walked the Dales Way in four days last summer. She's still thinking about a man fishing in his eighties and a seventeen-year-old with a sketchbook.
Jennifer Stevens walked the Cotswold Way in August: 102 miles, seven days, 30-degree heat. She came back talking about shin-kicking tournaments, a field of unexpectedly friendly sheep, and why tame trails can still surprise you.
