Long-distance footpaths in the United Kingdom

Ivinghoe Beacon from The Ridgeway

Many long-distance footpaths can be found crossing the United Kingdom, many of which are named, marked on maps and widely recognised. Some are termed by bureaucracy "National Trails" and maintained by the National Trails organisation. Long Distance Routes or Great Trails within Scotland are administered and maintained by the local authority areas through which they pass, or in one case by its commercial sponsor.

A few of the routes are ancient ways, whose origins we may never know; the Icknield Way for example is so named in a document over a thousand years old and the way itself may be thousands older than that. Most others are new-minted, established in the twentieth or twenty-first centuries but created largely from pre-existing rights of way, of which countless cross the land.

The Devil's Staircase on the West Highland Way

The paved surface of the Pennine Way on Black Hill

The principal long-distance footpaths include:

Cleveland Way	110 miles	round the edge of the North York Moors Yorkshire
Cotswold Way	101 miles	Somerset, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire
Glyndŵr's Way	135 miles	Montgomeryshire, Radnorshire
Great Glen Way	73 miles	Inverness-shire
Hadrian's Wall Path	84 miles	Cumberland, Northumberland
Moray Way	95 miles	Morayshire, Banffshire
North Downs Way	153 miles	Kent, Surrey
Offa's Dyke Path	177 miles	Gloucestershire, Monmouthshire, Brecknockshire, Herefordshire, Radnorshire, Montgomeryshire, Shropshire, Denbighshire, Flintshire
Peddars Way and Norfolk Coast Path (treated as one by National Trails)	93 miles	Suffolk, Norfolk
Pembrokeshire Coast Path	185 miles	Pembrokeshire
Pennine Bridleway	119 miles	Derbyshire, Cheshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Co Durham, Cumberland, Northumberland, Roxburghshire
Pennine Way	267 miles	Derbyshire, Cheshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Co Durham, Cumberland, Northumberland, Roxburghshire
The Ridgeway	86 miles	Wiltshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire
Gore-Tex Scottish National Trail	466 miles	from Kirk Yetholm to Cape Wrath
South Downs Way	99 miles	Sussex, Hampshire
Southern Upland Way	211 miles	Wigtownshire, Kirkcudbrightshire, Dumfriesshire, Peebleshire, Selkirkshire, Roxburghshire, Berwickshire
South West Coast Path	630 miles the UK's longest	Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, Dorset
Speyside Way	84 miles	Morayshire, Inverness-shire, Banffshire
Thames Path	183 miles	Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Middlesex, Surrey, Kent
Ulster Way	625 miles	Co Antrim, Co Londonderry, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Co Armagh, Co Down
West Highland Way	94 miles	Stirlingshire, Argyll, Perthshire, Inverness-shire
Yorkshire Wolds Way	79 miles	Yorkshire

European walking routes

Several European walking routes pass through the United Kingdom, on the assumption that a man may walk from Constantinople to Edinburgh, to which certain physical objections may be raised, not to mention political ones. Nevertheless, European bureaucracy decrees them, maps them and spends our money to promote them for its own reason. They all use sections of British long-distance paths.

• E2 from Stranraer to Dover, with an alternative route to Harwich
• E8 from Liverpool to Hull
• E9 from Plymouth to Dover

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Long-distance footpaths in the United Kingdom)

• The Long Distance Walkers Association: Long distance paths database
• Ramblers' Association: Paths and routes
• Scottish National Coastal Route
• Scotland's Great Trails