Times Walks: the best walking in the British Isles

Interactive map of Britain's greatest walks and the best pubs, hotels and B&Bs

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Well, the thing about walking, see,” observed the Herefordshire farmer leaning over the five-barred gate above Abbey Dore, “is that I’ve been doing it since the age of 13 months, and I’ve walked these fields for all the years since.”

He ran a very quizzical eye over my boots, my backpack and map. “So I don’t really need to do it for fun, not like you gentlemen of leisure I see passing by. What I would like to know is — why are you all doing it?”

Walking on, I pondered his words. A gentleman of leisure passing by — I rather liked the sound of that. But looking around the rolling hills of the Golden Valley, the buzzards wheeling over Knapp Wood and the silver coils of the River Dore sinuating through the valley below, the question persisted.

Why do we walkers of the douce, damp British countryside do what we do? What is it that draws us out into the earthy fields, along the miry ways and through the wild woods? Why don’t we bike it, or drive it, or sit at home and Google Earth it without having to risk getting tired and lost and cold and wet?

British walkers, let’s face it, are spoilt rotten. These islands possess, for their size, the most varied, rich and historic landscapes on Earth, covered by a dense, intermeshing network of public rights of way where anyone can walk. In Ordnance Survey’s 1:25,000 Explorer series we have the best walking maps in the world, bar none.

The walking guidebooks that steer us round are wonderful in their expertise and variety, with Alfred Wainwright’s meticulous drawings and black humour setting the standard. The Ramblers’ Association lobbies fiercely to keep the footpaths open for our benefit and delight.

And now, after the passing of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act in 2000, more than a million acres of mountain, moorland and upland are newly open for us to wander where we will. All this is true. There is the walking feast, handed to us on a nice green plate. But something still has to fire up our appetite to tuck in and relish it.

I started walking, like the Golden Valley farmer, at the age of 13 months. But I didn’t learn to walk for pleasure for another quarter-century. My father, a country walker of the old school, counted less than 15 miles a toddle, a pub lunch a sinful indulgence, and a good brisk pace the only way to go.

Childhood expeditions were occasions of sulky misery, teenage hikes an excuse to say no and stay behind, smoking furtively and practising my scowl. Then something went bang in my psyche — probably getting married to a girl who walked for fun and noticed things along the way. Ah . . . birds and flowers, bees and trees, landscapes and cloudscapes! Yes, I get it!

Walking at 2-3mph with the five senses fully engaged, I became enmeshed in the world around me in a way that I just couldn’t experience by any other means. You can’t smell a pyramidal orchid from a bike. You can’t spot a yellowhammer or hear it sing from a bus. And you can’t pick and savour a fresh blackberry, or run the “rushy beards of the fields” through your fingers, in front of a computer screen.

In time I learnt to love walking with the old man, week-long hikes with packs on our backs and all our troubles left behind at the foot of the hill. We drank in pubs (a modest half of ginger beer shandy for him), we stopped to chat to ploughmen and poets, we covered 30 miles one day and five the next.

Pennine Way, Two Moors Way, Offa’s Dyke, Coast-to-Coast, Cleveland Way, Glyndwr’s Way, Cotswold Way — we hit the national trails and long-distance paths of these islands, and they hit us right back with rain, with hail, with hill mists, with big winds and even bigger blisters.

And they gave, in open-handed measure, pressed down and overflowing: a hundred-mile panorama over Powys from a mountain top, a Devonshire cob cottage by a forgotten ford, a stone-walled drover’s lane hurdling the green Dales, the rich fruity smell of Scottish peat bogs after rain. I learnt that walking is companionable and draws its participants close together, that it oils the tongue and unblocks the spirit, that it challenges and probes and sets puzzles, that of all the outdoor activities it is the one most open to everyone.

At Times Walks you will find 20 walks, chosen by myself and others, from serious adventurers to those who enjoy an afternoon amble.

One day I’ll go back to the Golden Valley and find that quizzical farmer, if only in my dreams, and I’ll have my answer ready for him. Walking these British Isles, all in all, is the nearest an earthbound soul can come to Heaven. That’s why we do it.

The first 20 Times Walks (in order of best read, as of last week):

1 Oxford Waterways

2 Seathwaite to Scafell, Cumbria

3 The Malham Classic, Yorkshire Dales

4 Wells-next-the-Sea to Cley, Norfolk

5 Brecon Beacons Horseshoe, Powys

6 Seven Sisters, Alfriston, East Sussex

7 Beer to Branscombe, Devon

8 Chew Green, Northumberland

9 Snowdon summit

10 Tarbert to Claonaig, Spine of Kintyre

11 Ullswater, the Lake District

12 Lee Valley to Great Amwell, Hertfordshire

13 Porlock Weir to Culbone, Exmoor

14 Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh

15 Blythburgh to Eastbridge, Suffolk

16 Muker to Keld, Yorkshire Dales

17= Oxwich Bay, Gower Peninsula

17= Sennen Cove, Land’s End, Cornwall

19 Slieve Binnian, Mourne Mountains, Northern Ireland

20 Withypool, Exmoor

AND FINALLY!

Chat with other walkers at the Times Health Club