Midshires Way

The Midshires Way is 225 miles long, linking the Ridgeway in Buckinghamshire with the Trans Pennine Way in Stockport. In so doing. it passes through Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Greater Manchester. It is a multi-use trail, meaning it is designed for use by cyclists and horse-riders as well as walkers. Occasionally, this means there is more road walking than ideal,  but where possible alternative footpath routes are provided for walkers.  It makes quite a lot of use of disused railways and canal towpath. We didn't have particularly high expectations of the route, and probably only decided to walk it because we were able to access parts of it easily when access to other paths was difficult because of the Covid-19 Pandemic. What a pleasant surprise!

By the time we decided to attempt this route in its entirety, starting in 2021, we had already walked the first 30 miles, from Pulpitt Hill on the Ridgeway to Milton Keynes, on a route shared with the North Bucks Way, so our starting point in 2021 was close to Oakhill Wood in Milton Keynes,  just six miles from our flat. The route shares parts of a number of other named routes, but only one that we had already walked, from Blisworth Tunnel to Nether Heyford on the Grand Union Canal Walk. That left a very respectable amount of new walking through counties that we had previously overlooked as walking destinations, more fool us! The route crosses beautiful countryside and visits many attractive villages. We completed the trail over Easter weekend 2023.

Initially, we were able to complete sections on day walks from the flat, or vaguely en route between our house in Norfolk and Milton Keynes. When too far north to do that sensibly, we progressed by way of two-day or three-day sections, with a night or two in Premier Inns in between. The Pandemic made us reluctant to use B&Bs or conventional hotels, but we usually take all our food with us when staying in a Premier Inn (or similar), so we were less anxious about staying there. The arrangement allowed us to keep on walking despite the challenges, so don't knock it. Fortunately, there are a lot of Premier Inns in the English Midlands! Because we never walked more than three consecutive days on the route, we edged north-wards without being as aware as usual as our progress, so it was an unexpected joy and achievement to realise, when we got to the end, that we'd just completed our second-longest long distance path to date (after the South West Coast Path).

The route is signposted - well, that's the theory. I suspect the signposts were put up many years ago and they are now very often illegible or just not there - so even if we ever were to contemplate walking a long-distance footpath without a map (unlikely!), this would be a rather bad idea on this particular route.  We have made good use of the paper maps (OS Explorer Sheets 181, 192, 207, 223, 233, 246,  a printed paper of a corner of 245 because it wasn't worth buying a copy, 260, 259, OL24, OL1 and 277) as well as the OS Maps App on my phone. Having said that, the route shown on the OS Map is not always correct, as you'll see from an occasional rant on the pages that follow! 

The only guidebook I could find was a secondhand copy of the 2003 guide "Walking the Midshires Way" by Ron Haydock and Bill Allen. The distances given for the 17 sections they break the walk into are not always given accurately, which led to a timing challenge on our walk through and to the north of Milton Keynes but otherwise the guidebook has been surprisingly useful. For each of the sections, there is a 1-2 page description of the highlights and interesting anecdotes, followed by fairly detailed route descriptions. Unusually, the detailed descriptions are given both south to north and north to south which is particularly praise-worthy. On this occasion, we're walking in the conventional south to north direction, but so many guidebooks assume that everyone wants to follow a route the same way and there have certainly been plenty of routes where we haven't done this, rendering a guidebook almost useless.

In addition to the North Bucks Way and the Grand Union Canal Walk, our route along the  Midshires Way has so far shared parts of the Swan's Way, the Brampton Valley Way, the Jurassic Way  the Leicestershire Round, the Cross Britain Trail, the Notts Wolds Way, the Derby Nomad Way, the (Derbyshire) Centenary Way, the High Peak Trail, the Pennine Bridleway and the Goyt Way. In addition, we have encountered our old friends The Ridgeway, the Milton Keynes Boundary Walk, the Ouse Valley Way , the Nene Way, and the Limestone Way, plus many other paths.