JordanWalks

This is not the first website to describe walks on the UK's long-distance footpaths, and it is certainly not the best. However many of the other websites are written by people who are super-fit - and men. I'm neither. I'm a 60-something woman, somewhat overweight, with a gammy ankle and knees that complain at steep descents or if I walk too far on a tarmacked surface. But yet I have completed quite a few long-distance paths in the past 18 years, and I've enjoyed almost every (if not absolutely every!) mile of the way. I usually walk with my husband Richard. When she was living at home, we were frequently accompanied by our daughter Helen. Helen still walks long-distance footpaths, but now it's usually with her husband and, in the future, they'll be accompanied by our grandson (born October 2020). We all share the same ethos, namely to enjoy the walk rather than rushing to complete it, and to stop at lots of tea shops!

Why we walk long distance footpaths

Richard and I have enjoyed hill-walking for a long time, and when Helen and her older brother Michael were younger we had a pleasant holiday walking from hotel to hotel in the French Alps, with our luggage transported by someone else. We all enjoyed it but didn't realise that this was something we could do back home in the UK.

2006 was a significant year for the family: Richard turned 50, Michael and Helen celebrated their 21st and 18th birthdays respectively and it was our 25th wedding anniversary. We wanted to do do something to celebrate but we aren't really the partying sort. We decided on a 'special' holiday, but knew that however special (and expensive) a foreign destination we selected, it would be remembered as just another country. We wanted to do something different and had the idea of walking Wainwright's Coast to Coast path, after Helen had finished her A-levels in the summer. At Easter 2006 we followed the delightful Herriot Way for practice, and we were hooked! In the end, Richard, Helen and I decided to walk the Offa's Dyke Path rather than the Coast to Coast in the summer. Our fortnight on the path coincided with a heat wave and on the day that was already going to be the toughest we were confronted by a major forest fire on the path. But we successfully negotiated our way from Sedbury (near Chepstow) to Prestatyn and the holiday was appropriately memorable and enjoyable.

In addition to the obvious challenge of covering a respectable distance in a week or two and seeing beautiful countryside and wildlife, the main reason I enjoy this type of holiday is that it enables me to relax from the pressures of my usual working life. I love my job at the Open University, but work occupies far too much of my life, and on more conventional holidays the work usually comes too. When you're walking from place to place each day this simply isn't possible - and in the evening all you want is (in order) a shower, a meal and a good night's sleep.

Between 2007 and 2013 we walked the Dales Way, the Cleveland Way, St Cuthbert's Way and (in a total of 10 holidays over six years) the whopping 630 miles of the South West Coast Path - unfortunately it rained on the very last day, which explains our damp state at the end (with my sister's dog Max; Chris kindly came to meet us at the end and was in charge of the camera).  Sadly, Chris died in October 2022, though Max lived another 18 months, happy with my niece.

 One thing led to another, and from the end of 2012, carrying our own stuff became the norm for holidays of up to a week, though still staying in B&Bs - no way could we carry the equipment needed to camp! We did this for our final three holidays on the South West Coast Path (walking from Teignmouth to South Haven Point) and since then we have carried our own luggage for holidays on The Ridgeway (completed in July 2013 in a heatwave that was reminiscent of Offa's Dyke), the Wessex Ridgeway and the Viking Way (both completed during 2014) and the Yorkshire Wolds Way (completed in May 2015). Later in 2015, we carried our own luggage between B&Bs and hotels on the Teesdale Way as far as Middleton-in-Teesdale; we continued along the Teesdale Way and across to the Pennine Way and South Tyne Trail (in Garrigill south of Alston) whilst staying in a holiday cottage in nearby Upper Weardale.

JordanWalks was 10-years old in 2016, and our first exploit of the year was to walk the Cotswold Way; then from the end of the Cotswold Way in Bath we had two relatively easy days of walking along the Kennet and Avon Canal which took us to Devizes, thus linking up with the Wessex Ridgeway. Later in the year, in three walking holidays, we walked the Hadrian's Wall Path, completed the South Tyne Trail, walked St Oswald's Way from Hadrian's Wall across Northumberland to Lindisfarne, then continued up the Northumberland Coast Path to Berwick-upon-Tweed. We walked the South Downs Way and the Heart of England Way in 2017, then headed back up north to the Berwickshire Coastal Path in 2018.

Until the end of 2018 we spent lot of time in the village of Hartfield in East Sussex, where Richard's parents used to live, and we used the opportunity to walk the northern part of the Wealdway. We sold the Hartfield house at the beginning of 2019, and completed the Wealdway in an enjoyable short break in April 2019. In June 2019, we walked most of the delightful Cumbria Way. After an enjoyable start, for the first time ever we abandoned a walk (on this occasion at Keswick) because of poor weather, but in September we returned to complete the highest leg of the Cumbria Way (to Caldbeck) in glorious sunshine and then to walk on to Carlisle (in the rain).

Since the middle of 2014 I have been doing jobs which require me to spend more time in Milton Keynes, and from then until the end of 2018 I rented Monday-Friday accommodation in the village of Sherington, near Newport Pagnell. It was therefore logical to walk the Ouse Valley Way, which passes through Sherington and close to Denver, our "proper" home in Norfolk, We have also walked the Milton Keynes Boundary Walk, the Two Ridges Link, the Greensand Ridge Walk, the Clopton Way, the Wimpole Way, the North Bucks Way the John Bunyan Trail, the Three Shires Way and a substantial chunk of the Grand Union Canal Walk, through Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Warwickshire. Then at the beginning of 2019, I bought a flat in the village of Simpson, very close to work, and right next to the Grand Union Canal. So completing the walk along the canal from London to Birmingham became a priority, though this was then in abeyance through the Coronavirus pandemic because of the need to use public transport at both the London and Birmingham ends of the Grand Union Canal. We resumed this walk in 2023.

During 2020 were able to complete the Nene Way, a lovely walk which we enjoyed considerably more than we had expected to, having started it mostly for its convenience, reasonably close to a driving route between Norfolk and Milton Keynes, enabling us to stop en route between the two. We also made progress on the  Chiltern Way which we'd started in 2019, and as lockdown restrictions began to ease in spring 2021 we managed to complete the main circuit of this wonderful route, by way of day trips slightly further afield from Milton Keynes than we would normally make, whilst unable or unwilling to stay away from our own house or flat.  When unable or unwilling to travel even to Milton Keynes, we completed the Cross Norfolk Trail across our home county.  We also walked a section of the Norfolk Coast Path (now part of the England Coast Path) that wasn't open when we walked the Peddars Way and Norfolk Coast Path previously. Most significantly, we  re-discovered (and in some cases discovered) many paths that we could walk without having to drive anywhere; these walks are described here. 

While still reluctant to use B&B's because of Covid,  in 2021 we started edging northwards on the UK's wonderful network of long-distance paths, continuing from the North Bucks Way onto the Midshires Way.  This is a long (225-mile) path so what started as a series of single-day walks soon turned into 2-day and 3-day adventures, making use of overnight stays in the many conveniently placed Premier Inns; we finished the Midshires Way at the point where it meets the Trans Pennine Trail in Stockport on Easter Sunday 2023.  We'd also stayed in a Premier Inn when walking a section of the  Staffordshire Way in June 2021, to link from the Heart of England Way to the start of the Limestone Way.  In September 2021 we had a wonderful week at a holiday cottage in the Peak District, celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary, seeing our son Michael and his wife Heather for the first time in a couple of years, and completing the Limestone Way. In similar cottage-based holidays in 2022, 2023 and 2024, we walked a sizeable section of the delightful Shropshire Way, as well as a sizeable chunk of the  Cumbria Section and most of the Durham Section of the England Coast Path. In 2023, we also managed a holiday without a car (though we needed a car to get there because of a train strike), walking between B&Bs and hotels etc., and by the end of this holiday, we'd completed the Durham, Tyne & Wear and Northumberland sections of what is now  called the King Charles III England Coast Path.

We continue to travel down to Wiltshire to see our little grandson every few weeks, and we have now started dragging ourselves away from him and his parents from time to time to enable us to do some walking in this lovely part of the country.  In addition, for the past three years we have rented a cottage for a week somewhere not too far from their house, to enable us to combine walking with time with the family - and we hope this will become a tradition. By these means, we have completed the Clarendon Way, walked in various Cranborne Circles and progressed along various other routes in Wiltshire, Hampshire and Dorset, including the Avon Valley Path and Dorset's Jubilee Trail.

This site describes our progress along each of these long distance footpaths, plus a few shorter walks. As we have walked more long distance footpaths, I have become more and more interested in the way in which the whole thing fits together - it is shocking how little I knew of the geography of my own country. I have become keen (some might say obsessed!) to make connections between the various paths. In addition to walking around and across our home county of Norfolk, we have (admittedly not all in one direction and certainly not all in one go) walked from Land's End via home in Norfolk to the Scottish Border and beyond. Trying to explain the detail of the interconnecting paths became too much for this page, so I've had another go here; the map is Richard's work (we now track our progress on walks using the MyTracks app on Richard's phone, so creating maps at various levels is easier, but for earlier walks Richard had to draw the route by hand).

Using JordanWalks

There is a 'top page' for each long distance walk and beneath that there are separate pages for each day of walking (for the South West Coast Path there is an extra layer - the separate holidays in which we walked the path). You should be able to find the pages you want by following the links in the navigation panel on the left hand side. Alternatively, to follow our adventure along each path to the full, start from the top level for that path then follow the links to 'first leg' and then each 'following leg' along the journey.

Sally Jordan (email: JordanWalks@gmail.com)