Throughout this summer, people will be coming together to pull on hefty footwear and stomp across Britain’s loveliest landscapes, then raise a toast in a pleasant little pub to the joys of the outdoors.

Walking festivals are all the rage, with more than a dozen planned between now and September, and the range of rambles on offer runs into the hundreds — often with children’s trails, wildlife hunts, music nights and assorted inn-based merriment thrown in.

We’ve plucked the tastiest walk from the best of the fests: eight great strolls, with all the details of how to get involved — plus the map numbers and route notes, if you’d rather go it alone.

TWO GORGES

Times Walks: the 100 best walks in the UK

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Peak District’s Historic Border Country Walking Festival

In April 2003, archeologists digging at Creswell Crags in Derbyshire made an astounding find: the earliest cave art ever discovered in Britain. The deer, birds and bison on the walls of Church Hole cave were created by ice-age hunters 13,000 years ago. On Saturday (June 27) Sir David Attenborough will cut the ribbon at a new £4m visitor centre full of mammoths’ molars and reindeer-horn spears.

The opening coincides with the Border Country Walking Festival, and the Creswell warden Jim Anderson will lead a seven-mile meander, probing its prehistory. From the visitor centre, you’ll take the lakeside track through the limestone gorge, peeking into its warren of troglodyte chambers, then aim north alongside Whitwell Quarry. The route crosses the A616 to pick up a permissive path into Markland Grips, an even more beguiling canyon covered in steep woods, where bee orchids flourish and there’s a Romano-British hill fort to investigate. The track takes you to medieval Elmton church, and then it’s back to the Crags via Creswell Colliery, which closed in 1991, leaving a century-old “model village” of Arts and Crafts colliers’ cottages.

To tackle the walk independently, you’ll need OS Explorer map 28.

Rest of the fest: the festival offers 40 guided walks between now and next Sunday, including a “murder walk” exhuming the black history of Chesterfield (June 28). Call 01246 345777 or visit visitpeakdistrict.com/hbwf.

LETTERKEEN LOOP

Castlebar International Four Days Walks

Hike the Letterkeen Loop in Co Mayo, and you’ll see that bogs can be beautiful. The walk is part of the Castlebar International Four Days Walks, a festival with a true League of Nations feel — last year people from 21 countries gathered, including Aussies, Americans, even 14 Taiwanese chaps. The Letterkeen ramble (July 3, 6 miles) follows part of the Bangor Trail, an old sheep-droving track from the Nephin Beg mountains to market. From the Brogan Carroll Bothy, in Letterkeen Woods, you’ll begin alongside the spuming Altaconey River, as the bare, buxom summits of the Nephin Beg press in on each side. Soon you’ll bear right, following white marker posts, into the Sheep Pass, for a climb above Lake Avoher. On a sunny day in July, the views up here take on an almost hallucinogenic hue: the peat bogs burn shocking pink and acid green. The route circles back to the bothy via a stretch of the Western Way, following another rugged riverside. “One Canadian walker reckoned it reminded him of home,” says the festival guide Susie Fry. “You really do expect to see a grizzly lumbering out of the forest.” The walk will take about five hours, including a picnic stop.