Long Distance Walks

If one day's walking is good and a weekend's is better then surely one or two weeks' continous walking is even better? In many ways it is.

However there are also distinct downsides - most graphically when you wake up with blistered feet to face an 18 mile slog through pouring rain. Luckily the human memory is very good at selectively remembering only the good memories!

More seriously walking with a heavy(ier) pack for days on the end does make different demands to day trips and, at least for your first few long distance walks, it is sensible to be conservative with the distance you try to cover each day.

Having mentioned the above, given proper fitness and planning long distance walks can be extremely rewarding. If nothing else they give you an appreciation for lightweight clothing and full cooked breakfasts.....

England
England is very well served for official long distance footpaths, all of which are recommendable, very well way marked and well served with accomodation and indeed even baggage transfer companies.

The most famous of these footpaths are the The Pennine Way and the Coast to Coast whereas the South West Coast Path is the UK's longest footpath at 630 miles and counting - they're far from running out of coastline yet.

These pages are however mostly devoted to less well known footpaths. Alternative routes include:
 * A Dales celebration way
 * Yorkshire Boundary Walk
 * Wainwright Memorial Walk

Wales
The interesting thing about the national trails within Wales is that before the recent opening of the Beacons way which crosses The Brecon Beacons, the existing offical paths avoided the best of the hill scenery within the country.

One footpath which certainly does not avoid the hills, but which has never received official recognition, is the Cambrian Way. This footpath traverses Wales from Cardiff on the south coast to Conwy on the north, taking in most of the highest peaks on the way.

Alternative walks include:
 * Styles' way

Scotland
Scotland does have several official footpaths of which the West Highland Way is the most well known. However when compared to England it has far fewer recognised routes. The principal reason for this is the scarcity of the population within the Highlands makes routes not involving camping difficult to construct.

However if one is happy camping then Scotland is very well served as described in Scottish Hill tracks by the Scottish Rights of Way and Access Society. This describes over 300 mostly lowland routes which in combination yield enough potential walks to keep anyone happy for a long time.

It need hardly be said that any such walk will be a much more serious undertaking than walking a well waymarked national trail in a busy area such as the Yorkshire dales and should be treated with considerable respect, especially if one starts mixing in some 'incidental' Munro bagging en route.

A few skeletal ideas are given here.
 * Scottish coast to coast walks
 * Cairngorms Circuit
 * Cape Wrath Trail

Walks Abroad
There are numerous very popular long distance walks on the continent of Europe. Thee include the popular GR5 (the alpine section of which runs from Lake Geneva to Nice), the GR10 and GR11 which run either side of the Pyrenees and also the Tour de Mount Blanc.

The "toughest" long distance walk in Europe is meant to be the GR20 traversing Corsica. The rough terrain and demanding scrambling takes the average trekker into the world of a high-level mountaineer.

If these somehow start to seem too small then the European ramblers association have created 11 massive pan-European routes. Whether anyone has completed the larger of these routes which average roughly 4000km each is another question.