Viking Way

The Viking Way runs for 147 miles from the Humber Bridge to Oakham, though we walked it the other way round i.e. from Oakham to the Humber Bridge, as part of a planned longer walk from home to the Cleveland Way (which we've already completed), via the Hereward Way (also done), the Viking Way and the (Yorkshire) Wolds Way.

The first or last 4 miles or so of the Viking Way is shared with the Hereward Way. The start/end of both is Oakham, the county town of Rutland. It's a nice little town and we went back there after our first proper day of walking on the Viking Way. However we are not repeating the 4-mile walk between Oakham to Whitwell (on a not very inspiring tarmacked path between the A606 and Rutland Water). We did this on our final day on the Hereward Way in April 2013 and once is sufficient. This means that when we made a proper start to the Viking Way at the end of March 2014, we had 143 miles left to walk and our starting point was Rutland Water near Whitwell.

Up to Lincoln (Richard's birthplace and the conceptual halfway point of the Viking Way, if not actually quite halfway) we walked the Viking Way in single leg stages, returning home after each day's walking. We completed the path in a delightful six-day holiday in October 2014 and at the end of this we walked across the Humber Bridge to Hessle, the start of the Wolds Way.

In the direction in which we walked it, the path goes through Rutland and a corner of Leicestershire before spending most of its length in Lincolnshire. When I said that I was going on a walking holiday to Lincolnshire, people thought that I was mad. However the county is not as flat as everyone assumes - we walked along the 'Lincolnshire Cliff' and through the Lincolnshire Wolds, a range of low hills with some steep valleys, which is justifiably designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. There was glorious countryside for the entire length of the path, and several of my descriptions of the individual legs talk of our surprise at finding a section of the walk that was far more interesting than expected. One criticism of the route is that it appears to deliberately avoid the centres of towns and villages. We sometimes had to go into the centres, for accommodation, transport, or shops, and we found some pretty places that we would not otherwise have seen.

We were able to pick fine days for our single day walks. We know people who are reluctant to pre-book multi-day walks because of uncertainty over the weather and you do need to be prepared to take whatever comes your way. However, it is frequently the case, as on our six-day walk on the Viking Way in October 2014, that the weather is not as bad as the weather forecast implies. It was mild, dry and sunny for much of the time and thankfully the very windy day (apparently the tail end of Hurricane Gonzalo) was the day before we needed to walk across the Humber Bridge.

The signposting was generally pretty good, with yellow signs showing a viking helmet. However, the Ordnance Survey maps were also very useful. We used, in order Explorer Sheets 272, 273, 282, 284 and 281. The path only cuts across a corner of Sheet 284 (Grimsby, Cleethorpes and Immingham) so we bought a cheap secondhand copy of this map and could probably have managed without it altogether. You can download guides to the path from the Lincolnshire County Council website, but they describe the path from north to south, so we didn't use them much.Follow the links below for detailed descriptions of each day's walk on the Viking Way; for more of our photographs on the entire path click here.

First leg of Viking Way