There’s no short answer to this question, of course. The amount of time you take to complete any of these treks depends, of course, depends on several factors:

How long is the trek

How fit you are

How much time you’ve got

How far you live from the path

Some of the shorter trails, for example, such as the Hadrian’s Wall Path, can be wrapped up in less than a week, including travel time to and from the trail. This assumes that you live near the path, have a decent level of fitness, are not interested in visiting any of the many attractions that lie along the Wall or near to it – and that you’re in a hurry.

Still at only 84 miles, it would take the average person 7 days to walk the Hadrian’s Wall Path (ie 12 miles per day), or 4 days for the very fit and fast (at 21 miles per day).

On the other hand, the mighty South-West Coast Path, at over 630 miles, can easily take two months or more, while the tough Pennine Way is a commitment of around 3 weeks for the average trekker who wants to appreciate the scenery they’re passing through.

For this reason, the majority of trekkers does not even try to complete the whole trip on either of these trails in one go, but instead people revisit the paths several times over the years to tackle the trail. Which is why, for the South-West Coast Path, we devoted three guide books in total to the trail (and took five trips to research it!)

How do you walk these trails?

The short answer to this is: however you want. It doesn’t really matter how you walk the walks, as long as you are considerate to others, (including fellow trekkers and those who own and farm the land you’re walking on), pick up your litter, don’t disturb the wildlife, don’t vandalise anything, are polite and conscientious etc etc.

Of course, these rules are pretty much identical to those by which any decent human being would be conducting themselves on a day-to-day basis. It’s only the background that’s changed, that’s all.

Why am I writing this? Well, while I am happy to defend guide books below, I do have to admit that there’s a real pomposity with some of them (a pomposity that borders on sheer arrogance sometimes), when it comes to telling you how it’s best to walk the trails.

To give you one example, guide books love telling their readers to take their time doing the trek. How you should talk at length with anyone you meet, pause to sniff every flower and spend days gazing at every panorama.

It’s enough to make you believe that those who hurry through their trek have somehow missed the point.

I’ll be generous and say that these books and their instructions on how to walk a long-distance trail are well-meaning. But personally, I also think they’re wrong. Because it’s entirely up to you how you tackle these trails.

Sure, if you hurry through then you may not experience as much as you would if you took your time. But who’s to say that you will be enjoying the trek any less? Indeed, you may achieve a sense of satisfaction with completing the trail in a ‘fast time’ that, if there was any way we could measure it, would be greater than the sum of all joy experienced by someone who took twice as long to complete their trek.

So if you want to treat your walk as primarily a physical challenge

So with the following list, please understand that they are just tips – not rules. These are just things that I have found make me happier when I’m on the trail and they may work for you too. IF they do, then that’s great. And if they don’t, well I’m sorry for wasting your time but at least you now know they don’t.

• Get up early. See much more wildlife, and it feels good to reach your destination early.
• Do chat to those people you meet on the trail. Who knows, you may have a lot in common – you’re on the same trail, after all – and you may learn something or pick up some good advice about the way ahead.
• This is probably a very personal preference, but I always get a greater kick out of finishing a trail if I manage to complete it in one go.  Any long-distance walk is, for me, an adventure, and adventures are adventures are usually better if they aren’t interrupted half-way because you’ve got to get home for some reason. Every long walk has its own atmosphere, its own ‘feeling’, and breaking it into two or more sections inevitably shatters that.

.(Having said all this, I do appreciate that it isn’t possible for everyone to just head off for a week or two or three or four, particularly those with commitments at home such as a job, kids, partner etc.)

• Never let blisters develop. Just don’t.
• And finally – do buy a guide book. But then I would say that, wouldn’t I. The reason I mention it here, is because there have been a couple of occasions, when I’ve been on the trail, that I’ve been approached by a fellow trekker who has asked me what I’m doing. When I tell them that I’m writing a guide book, they’ve replied sniffily, and with a chuckle in their voice, that they don’t ‘need no guide book, because I’ve got a map’. Which is all very well, I suppose, if you assume that a guide book is somehow just to help you find your way.

Imagine, for example, walking along the Hadrian’s Wall Path, and not knowing anything about it other than the Romans built it. That you don’t know anything about the forts, watchtowers, turrets, milecastles and bridges along the way, That you remained in complete ignorance of what those big ditches were on either side of the Wall. Or how many of the local buildings are made of stone that was taken from the Wall.

And, because you didn’t have a guide book, that you thus walked straight a bloody great phallic symbol that was carved into the Wall by some bored Roman well over 1500 years ago. Or of the Roman altar that sits above the lintel of a private house in Port Carlisle, with a second one standing in the corner of a farmer’s field.

Or of the fact that the bus that runs along the central section of the Wall is Number AD122 – the year when Hadrian started to build his Wall.

So yes, you can walk the Wall, and all these trails, without a guide book. But your adventure will, in my opinion, be that much poorer because of it.