Your first long-distance walk: which trail fits your week?

Most people get one week. A week's leave, a week the family can spare, a week between jobs. The question is not which trail is best — it is which trail you can actually finish in the days you have, get to on a Friday evening, and get home from on the Sunday after.

Here are the trails on this site, by the figures the trail bodies themselves publish. Where we have measured the line ourselves the number is close but not identical; the official figure is the one to plan with until the guide is live.

Hadrian's Wall Path

84 mi

7 days, says the trail

West Highland Way

96 mi

5 to 8 days

South Downs Way

100 mi

7 to 10 days; 6 at a fast pace

Cotswold Way

102 mi

10 days

What fits in seven days

Three of the seven fit a week without heroics, by their own trail bodies' reckoning.

Hadrian's Wall Path is 84 miles, Wallsend to Bowness-on-Solway, and the National Trail suggests seven days. The middle section between Chollerford and Birdoswald is the one the trail calls the most difficult; the rest is easier going. The guide and the planner are live, and the planner's six-day split follows the crags: Heddon, Chollerford, Winshields, Lanercost, Carlisle.

Build your walkHadrian's Wall Path in 6 days86 mi · about 14 miles a dayOpen the planner →

The West Highland Way is 96 miles from Milngavie, on the edge of Glasgow, to Fort William, and Scotland's Great Trails gives it five to eight days — seven or eight for most people, six with two long days. It is the one of the three with real hills.

The South Downs Way is 100 miles by the National Trail's count, Winchester to Eastbourne, in seven to ten days; six is a fast pace. Seven days is about fourteen miles a day. It is the trail this site launched with and the one we know best.

Build your walkSouth Downs Way in 7 days101 mi · about 14 miles a dayOpen the planner →

What needs ten days or more

The Cotswold Way is 102 miles, Chipping Campden to Bath, and the trail suggests ten days: a week and a long weekend, or a week if you are quick. Its guide is live; the planner's seven-day split is the quick version.

Build your walkCotswold Way in 7 days103 mi · about 15 miles a dayOpen the planner →

Offa's Dyke Path is 177 miles from Sedbury Cliffs near Chepstow to Prestatyn. The trail's own page gives no days figure; Cicerone's guide says twelve to fourteen, and that is the figure the index shows until the trail body publishes one.

The Pennine Way is 268 miles by the trail's count, Edale to Kirk Yetholm, and the National Trail suggests nineteen days. That is not a week's walk; it is the walk you do when you have decided to.

The South West Coast Path is 630 miles and 52 days around the whole peninsula. Nobody does it in a week. Everybody does it in sections, and a week of it from Minehead, or around Land's End, is a proper walk in itself.

Getting there is half the choice

A trail with a station at both ends is a different proposition from one that needs a taxi at either. On the South Downs Way, Winchester station is a kilometre from the start and Eastbourne station a couple of kilometres from the finish, both with direct trains to London; those two facts are checked, and the guide says when. Hadrian's Wall has a Metro station two hundred metres from the start and no station at the finish — a bus to Carlisle, which the guide is honest about. For the other trails we will say the same once we have checked, and not before.

What we would do with one week

Never walked further than a day? The South Downs Way: waymarked throughout, chalk underfoot that drains in an hour, villages below the ridge, and a train at each end. Fit and want hills? The West Highland Way. History over height? Hadrian's Wall. And if the week is really five days, the planner will tell you what five days on the Downs looks like before you book anything.

Build your walkSouth Downs Way in 5 days101 mi · about 20 miles a dayOpen the planner →