January 2026
England has more public footpaths per square mile than almost anywhere on earth — 140,000 miles of legally protected routes cutting through private farmland, across ancient estates, along cliff edges and through valleys that no road will ever reach.
The right of way dates to the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949, but the paths themselves are older by centuries. Many follow field boundaries that were set in the medieval period. Others trace drove roads along which livestock were walked to market. Some simply represent the most efficient line between two villages, worn into the ground over generations of daily use.
We have five walks we return to, season after season. They are not the most famous. They are not the most dramatic. They are the ones that feel, each time, like remembering something.
The first is a circular route in the Yorkshire Dales that begins at a stone bridge over a fast-moving beck and ends, three hours later, at the same bridge — the long way round, through a limestone valley where the light in late afternoon is extraordinary. The second is a coastal path in Northumberland where the sea and the sky are often the same colour. The third is a field walk in the Cotswolds that passes through three churchyards and takes about forty minutes and requires almost no effort at all.
We'll tell you the other two when you book your consultation.