United Kingdom

The South Downs Way follows 160 kilometres of chalk downland through England's South Downs National Park, from Winchester to the coast at Eastbourne. The paths it is built from have been in use for some eight thousand years; along the way sit Iron Age hill forts, Bronze Age burial mounds and the chalk figure of the Long Man of Wilmington. The final stretch runs over the Seven Sisters, the white cliffs above the Channel. The West Highland Way is the other extreme: 154 kilometres from the edge of Glasgow to Fort William, Scotland's first waymarked long-distance route when it opened in 1980. It follows old cattle-drover paths and 18th-century military roads along Loch Lomond, across Rannoch Moor and up the Devil's Staircase in Glen Coe into the Highlands. Both routes walk village to village, with luggage transfers and no shortage of B&Bs.