Curiosity 3: British long-distance paths

Talking with my friend Lynn recently about my (abbreviated) Thames Path experience, I mentioned that I'd love to go back and tackle another path—maybe a longer one, or a hillier one, or one that traverses a variety of landscapes. She said she'd be interested in joining me. I said I would not be camping, but rather staying in inns. Lynn is a hardy soul: she's completed, in sections, most of the 2,563-mile Pacific Crest Trail (she skipped the desert stretch). But she said she'd be happy living it up, and not camping. Okay then! Lynn is a wonderful walking companion—by which I mean also talking companion. It would be fun to spend a couple, few weeks exploring the British countryside with her.

But which trail(s)? There are hundreds of long-distance footpaths—defined by the Long Distance Walkers Association as "20 miles or more in length and mainly off-road." We could start with National Trails, of which there are 17: 

Cleveland Way, 110 miles, in North Yorkshire
*Cotswold Way, 102 miles, in central England
*Coast to Coast Walk, 197 miles, in Cumbria and North Yorkshire
England Coast Path, 2,795 miles
*Glyndŵr's Way, 135 miles, in Powys, mid-Wales
*Hadrian's Wall Path, 84 miles, in Northumberland, Cumbria
North Downs Way, 153 miles, in southeastern England
Offa's Dyke Path, 177 miles, along the Wales-England border
Peddars Way and Norfolk Coast Path, 97 miles, in Suffolk and Norfolk
Pembrokeshire Coast Path, 186 miles, in Pembrokeshire, southwest Wales
Pennine Bridleway, 205 miles, in the Pennines of northern England
*Pennine Way, 267 miles, in the Pennines and southern Scotland
The Ridgeway, 87 miles, in the Berkshire Downs of southern England
South Downs Way, 100 miles, southern England
South West Coast Path, 630 miles, through Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, and Dorset
Thames Path, 184 miles, southern England
Yorkshire Wolds Way, 79 miles, Yorkshire

Then there are the Scottish Great Trails—29 of them, ranging from 28 to 214 miles and including one I've already done, the exquisite West Highland Way (96 miles).

And the Wikipedia article on long-distance paths in the UK lists several hundred more. There is no shortage of places to walk! 

In fact, it's all a bit overwhelming—and so I took recourse in Google and the qualifier "best," which pointed me to an article in Travel & Leisure magazine: "10 Most Beautiful Walking Paths in the UK—with Views of the Seaside, Snowcapped Peaks, and Mystical Glens." Now we're talking. Five of the ten are National Trails (signaled with asterisks in the above list); the five others are the Quiraing, Isle of Skye, and West Highland Way, in Scotland; the Causeway Coast Way, Country Antrim, and Slieve Binnian, County Down, in Northern Ireland; and the Wales Coast Path. 

Or here are "10 Great Walking Trails Where You Won't See Another Soul."

So much beauty to choose from! We could do several short (2- to 3- to 4-day hikes), or one long one. For now, we've narrowed our choices down to the Pennine Way and Offa's Dyke Path—for which we even have guidebooks already, which I borrowed from Lynn several years ago. Things seem to be coming full circle. Both those hikes are fairly ambitious, but we wouldn't be far from civilization no matter what.

At this point, I'm betting Offa wins. I'd be perfectly happy with that. We'll see what happens.

P.S. 6/18 In the end, the Coast to Coast Path, scheduled to become Britain's 18th National Trail in 2025, won out. It traverses the narrow part of England, from the Irish Sea in Cumbria to the North Sea in Yorkshire. Here is the link to my daily FB digest. It was a wonderful experience!