Budget Walking Holidays In The UK

Keswick is a bustling market town established in 1276 located in the north of the English Lake District and dubbed the adventure capital of the UK. Beatrix Potter found the inspiration of several of her books here and other famous visitors before you are the Romantic poets Southey, Coleridge and Wordsworth.

It is here, right at the heart of Cumbria, that we have found for you the perfect guesthouse to use as a base for a series of scenic walks. Most of them circular, they offer a wide range of easier as well as harder options to explore the surrounding fells and Derwentwater Lake.

Highlights of walking in this part of the Lake District include the classic English landscapes, unforgettable viewpoints and attractive woodlands & waterfalls. Plan your visit during the annual, family friendly Keswick Mountain Festival for a mix of outdoor activities and live music.

And if, for whatever reason, you or some of your fellow walkers would like to take a rest for a day, there's a lot to see and enjoy in this pretty town. In the evenings, try local Cumbrian specialties such as Cumberland sausage or Tattie Pot (a rich stew including black pudding) or opt for an international meal as there is no shortage of choice.

Circumnavigating the island on The Isle of Wight Coastal Path is a fulfilling achievement for a week of walking. Almost half the island has been designated as an area of outstanding natural beauty.

The Coastal Footpath is a circular long-distance footpath of 67 miles (107 km) following public footpaths and minor lanes, with some sections along roads. It should be noted that the path does not follow the coastline all the way, but also diverts inland for long sections. There are lots of attractions to break down the actual walking days, including a visit to the holiday home of Queen Victoria, Osborne House.

Many other buildings from around this time still exist including Wippingham Church, the thatched church at Freshwater Bay, the famous seaside resorts such as Ventnor, Shanklin and Sandown and the great Palmerston fortresses, built at a time when French invasion was again feared.

You will see several such features every day. Beyond this are much older towns such as Yarmouth and Newtown, which have their own interesting histories. However, the island is much more than that, it is a place of great natural beauty with glittering sea-views across the Solent and English Channel, the white cliffs and sea-stacks around The Needles, Tennyson Down, and miles of beaches. The Isle of Wight is a popular holiday destination, but especially out of 'High Season' you can see very few other walkers.

This beautiful 80 km / 50 mile circular walk in the Yorkshire Dales threads its way around the valleys of Wensleydale and Swaledale and over the mountains and moorlands between these two emerald dales.

A walk designed to take in some of the countryside beloved by James Alfred Wight, the vet who wrote about his experiences in the Yorkshire Dales as James Herriot. These books became popular in the 1970s and 80s and spawned a film and a very popular television series 'All Creatures Great and Small'. Besides walking through the Yorkshire countryside, the attractiveness and variety of the route is such that it could be easily classed the best short walk in England.

The Yorkshire Dales have often been coined as 'Gods Own Country' and with good reason, with a little bit of luck with the weather, you are treated to a beautiful landscape bursting with colour and light. The land encompasses the sleepy rivers punctuated by cascading water off of the limestone escarpments, the fields stocked with multiple sheep, the high moors, bristling with sedge, bracken and bilberry.

Then of course there are the attractive local villages, small but bustling with farm and estate workers, walkers and tourists. Firstly there is Aysgarth a village by the multi cascading Aysgarth Falls, Hawes the main town in Wensleydale which has a market and is a centre for rope and cheese making. When walking into Keld you'll find it is the quietest place, tucked into a hilly fold in remote upper Swaledale. Its buildings are a welcome sight after a long day in the hills. Reeth, a village edged with tea shops and pubs, reflects the time when lead mining was the economic key to the area.

Most of the trails are easily followed and follow parts of both the Pennine Way and The Coast to Coast. The James Herriot Way is an excellent introduction to long distance walking on these longer trails.

Once upon a time in the 8th century, there was a ruthless King of Mercia called Offa. Such trouble had he from Welsh marauders nibbling at the toes of his kingdom, that once and for all he decided to define his territory and built a huge earthwork to do so, generally following the high ground with commanding views into the mountains and down into the valleys. Today the remaining 80 miles of embankment forms Britain’s longest archaeological monument and the basis of this famous walk. Criss-crossing the border between England and Wales more than 10 times, the Offa’s Dyke National Trail path follows some of the finest scenery in both countries for 177 miles (285 km). Our walk follows the southern half of this trail from Chepstow to Knighton, (about half this walking distance in total). It is a journey packed with interest through patchworks of fields, over windswept ridges, across infant rivers, by ruined castles and into the old border market towns. Traditional farming methods have more or less remained intact and the hedgerows, oak woods and hay meadows form good wildlife habitats, home of buzzards and the rare Red Kite. You might even discover the even rarer Welsh Red Dragon!