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to Coast and the Cambrian Way, from the top to the bottom of Wales. The reason for reprising his steps, he says, is that he has ‘exhausted the walks around Britain that particularly interest me and are of a suitable length’. Aside from the fact that none of his trips take him any further north than the Lowlands of Scotland, I find the idea quite astounding that you’ve walked everywhere you could possibly wish to have walked. What of the hundreds of thousands of miles of other rights of way? The 1,200 or so named long-distance paths? It’s a hoary cliché, but the variety of landscapes in Britain and Ireland is way out of proportion to the size of our islands. There is surely enough to keep anyone busy and fascinated for life – except, it seems, for Mr Sack O’Spuds.

Five other National Trails were created at the same time as the Pennine Way, though they took even longer to become reality. The Cleveland Way, a horseshoe around the North York Moors National Park, opened in 1969, the Pembrokeshire Coast Path a year later, and a year after that the Offa’s Dyke Path through the Marcher borderlands of England and Wales. By far the longest was the 630-mile South West Coast Path, a series of old coastguard tracks that hug the cliffs and shore from Minehead in Somerset, all the way around Devon and Cornwall and to Poole in Dorset; the last section of this monster was finally opened in 1978. And in 1972, the South Downs Way opened, unique amongst the early National Trails in that it is a bridle-way throughout, thus open to horse-riders as well as walkers. Cyclists too, of course, a constituency that didn’t feature much in the early days, but since the arrival of the mountain bike have loomed ever larger, faster and bolshier along its hundred-mile route, much to the chagrin of the ramblers.

Nine more National Trails have been added since then, as well as something over a thousand other named long-distance routes and who knows how many unofficial ones, all the slow-release legacy of the 1949 Act. Not until Tony Blair’s government was elected in 1997 did the Cabinet again contain so many enthusiastic walkers, a fact undoubtedly linked to the next big leap forward in access legislation, the 2000 Countryside and Rights of Way (CROW) Act for England and Wales, and the 2003 Land Reform (Scotland) Act. Labour’s hill-walking leader John Smith, the first to promise a ‘right to roam’, had died just three years earlier, something that focused minds and intent enormously; in some ways, the legislation is his legacy. They might have failed us on so much, but it has been almost entirely thanks to the Labour Party that we have the freedom to walk as much as we do. It almost makes me wish that I’d voted for them. Almost.

Chapter 4

THE OLD WAYS

In the footsteps of the ancestors on the Ridgeway, in the Vale of White Horse, Oxfordshire

The choice of which National Trail to tackle pretty much decided itself. The chippy pride of the northern rambling tradition had been a joyous eye-opener, but I fancied seeing how the booted brigade slotted in somewhere softer and more southerly. I also wanted to go as far back in time as possible, to walk a route that way pre-dated the Gore-Tex age. The Ridgeway had long fascinated me, the idea of a prehistoric M1 through some of the most intensely cultivated and inhabited parts of the country. I’d walked a couple of small stretches years earlier, and remembered them with huge affection; since then, the idea of doing the whole route had lodged firmly in my mind. Amongst pagan mates, walking the Ridgeway was a must, a rite of passage and pilgrimage to burrow you deep into the ancient rhythm of the land. Not many of them had actually done it, but they could all talk for Albion about it. It was time to stop talking, and start walking.

There was the added bonus that it looked really quite easy, especially after the peat hags and knife-sharp winds of the north, and even more so when compared with some of the other National Trails. Up against the Pennine Way or the South West Coast Path, the 90-mile Ridgeway