Length of Britain

The landmarks of Length of Britain

47 landmarks, in walking order. Each photograph is by the person credited beneath it, used as they licensed it.

1. 

   0 km in · Start

   Land's End

   Granite cliffs crumble into the Atlantic at Land's End, the far south-western tip of England, where the Penwith peninsula finally runs out of land. The famous signpost counts off 874 miles by road to John o' Groats, though the walking route runs considerably longer. From this Cornish headland the whole length of Britain stretches north.

2. 

   18 km in · Town

   Penzance

   Penzance is the first proper town of the walk, its promenade curving along the sweep of Mount's Bay. Out across the water sits St Michael's Mount, a tidal island crowned by a medieval castle and linked to the shore at low tide by a cobbled causeway. Beyond the town the lanes climb back into open country.

3. 

   107 km in · Town

   Bodmin

   Inland at Bodmin, the old county town, granite streets feel solid after the coastal lanes. This was where Cornwall kept its main gaol, and the Camel Trail passes close by, an old railway line now smoothed into a walking path. Beyond the town the ground rises in a long pull up onto the moor.

4. 

   143 km in · Landmark

   Bodmin Moor

   The granite uplands of Bodmin Moor spread windswept and bare, the high heart of Cornwall. Brown Willy and Rough Tor rise above the heath, and on the southern slopes stand the Hurlers, three Bronze Age stone circles set in a line. From the moor the road bends on toward Devon.

5. 

   190 km in · Town

   Okehampton & Dartmoor

   A ruined Norman castle keeps watch above Okehampton, on the northern edge of Dartmoor. To the south lie the tors and bogs of England's last great southern wilderness, high granite moorland grazed by semi-wild ponies. North and east the land drops away toward Tiverton and the Somerset levels.

6. 

   218 km in · Town

   Crediton

   Deep Devon hedgerows line the lanes into Crediton, where a long red-sandstone church glows warm at the head of the street. This was the birthplace of Saint Boniface, the eighth-century missionary who carried his faith across the sea to Germany. The land softens between the moors behind and the cider orchards of Taunton ahead.

7. 

   277 km in · Town

   Taunton, Somerset

   Orchards and water meadows fill the Vale of Taunton Deane, cider country since the Middle Ages, and Taunton sits at its heart. To the west rise the Quantock Hills, designated in 1956 as the first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in England. From here the route turns north toward the Severn.

8. 

   316 km in · Summit

   Glastonbury Tor

   The steep grass cone of Glastonbury Tor rises from the levels, crowned by the lone tower of St Michael, all that survives of a church destroyed by the earthquake of 1275. From the summit the Somerset Levels spread flat in every direction, and on misty mornings the hill appears to float, the old Isle of Avalon.

9. 

   339 km in · Landmark

   Cheddar Gorge

   Limestone cliffs rear nearly 140 metres above the road at Cheddar Gorge, the deepest gorge in England. In the caves below, Britain's oldest complete skeleton was found, a man who died some nine thousand years ago. Those same caves still hold the slow, cool air where the famous cheese was once aged.

10. 361 km in · Bridge

    Severn Estuary at Aust

    At Aust the great tidal Severn opens out, crossed by two vast bridges into Wales — the older a suspension bridge, the newer a cable-stayed crossing — above the second-largest tidal range in the world. Across the churning brown water lie Chepstow and the wooded mouth of the Wye, where Offa's Dyke country begins.

11. 

    401 km in · Town

    Berkeley

    Berkeley's squat Norman castle has stood for nearly nine centuries, held by the same family throughout, and it was here that King Edward II met a grim end in 1327. The town also gave the world Edward Jenner, who pioneered the smallpox vaccine in a garden hut. The Severn runs broad and tidal just to the west.

12. 

    429 km in · Town

    Gloucester

    The great cathedral at Gloucester lifts its tower high above the streets, and inside lies the tomb of that same King Edward II. Its cloisters, with their fan-vaulted ceilings, stood in for Hogwarts in the early films. Down at the historic docks, brick warehouses have been reborn around the basins where tall ships once unloaded.

13. 

    475 km in · Town

    Hereford & the Wye

    Northward the borderland runs past Hereford, whose great Norman cathedral holds the Mappa Mundi, the largest medieval map of the world to survive. The River Wye loops through red-earth farmland and hop yards. Beyond rise the blue hills of Shropshire.

14. 

    500 km in · Town

    Leominster

    Black-and-white timbered houses lean over the cobbles in Leominster, an old wool town in the Marches light. Its priory keeps the last ducking stool used in England, a device once used to punish women branded as scolds. North of the town the river runs on toward the Severn loop and Tudor Shrewsbury.

15. 

    544 km in · Town

    Church Stretton

    Beneath the long whaleback ridge of the Long Mynd, Church Stretton sits tucked into its valley. The Victorians called this place Little Switzerland and came for the healing spring waters. Up on the heath above, the heather runs purple in late summer and red grouse burst from underfoot.

16. 

    566 km in · Town

    Shrewsbury

    A great loop of the River Severn wraps almost entirely around medieval Shrewsbury, its streets crowded with timber-framed Tudor houses. Charles Darwin was born here in 1809. To the north and east the land begins to rise toward the Peak District.

17. 

    596 km in · Bridge

    Ironbridge

    The world's first major cast-iron bridge spans the Severn at Ironbridge, raised in 1779 and standing still. This narrow gorge is where the Industrial Revolution caught fire, the furnaces of Coalbrookdale roaring through the night. The river runs green and quiet now beneath the dark arch.

18. 

    646 km in · Forest

    Cannock Chase

    Heath and birch woodland sweep across Cannock Chase, once a royal hunting forest. Herds of fallow deer still move through the trees at dawn and dusk. A German military cemetery rests quietly among the pines, a sober place to pause before the climb north toward the Peak.

19. 

    730 km in · Landmark

    Stanage Edge

    Stanage Edge runs for four miles, a long gritstone rampart of dark rock that draws climbers from across the country. Below the crag the old millstones lie abandoned, left where they were cut when the trade collapsed. The Hope Valley and the high moors of the Peak open ahead.

20. 

    739 km in · Town

    Castleton

    Castleton gathers beneath the broken keep of Peveril Castle, at the mouth of the Hope Valley. Below the village run the Blue John caverns, the only place on earth where that banded purple-and-yellow mineral is mined. Above looms Mam Tor, the shivering mountain, its eastern face forever slipping away.

21. 

    742 km in · Landmark

    Edale, Start of the Pennine Way

    At Edale in the Peak District, the Pennine Way sets off on its 268-mile course up the backbone of England. Above the village broods Kinder Scout, the high moorland plateau where the 1932 Mass Trespass won the right to roam these hills. From here the gritstone edges lead north.

22. 

    840 km in · Landmark

    Malham Cove

    Malham Cove curves overhead, a vast wall of limestone 80 metres high, cut by a waterfall at the end of the last Ice Age. The stepped path up crosses a glittering limestone pavement that Wainwright thought the finest walking on the whole Pennine Way. The Yorkshire Dales roll on toward the high fells.

23. 

    848 km in · Town

    Settle

    Down in the Ribble valley sits Settle, a market town where the famous Settle to Carlisle railway begins its long climb over the fells. Narrow yards and a cobbled square give the place an old, settled feel. Limestone scars gleam white on the hills above, the threshold of the Dales proper.

24. 

    867 km in · Bridge

    Ribblehead Viaduct

    Twenty-four great stone arches stride across the bleak moor at Ribblehead, beneath the brooding bulk of Whernside. More than a hundred navvies died building this line through the 1870s, many of them buried in the little chapel graveyards nearby. Trains still rumble over the viaduct, tiny against the wide grey sky.

25. 

    944 km in · Landmark

    Hadrian's Wall

    Hadrian's Wall rides the crags here, the Roman frontier thrown up around AD 122 to mark the northern limit of an empire. The path follows the great basalt cliffs of the Whin Sill past Housesteads fort, the wind cutting hard across the moor. Beyond lies the wild ground the Romans never held.

26. 

    987 km in · Town

    Greenhead

    The small village of Greenhead sits hard against the line of Hadrian's Wall. Just east lie Walltown Crags, where the wall rides the dolerite cliffs in its most dramatic stretch, and the Roman fort of Carvoran once guarded the great frontier road nearby. The hills of the Borders rise green to the north.

27. 

    1,030 km in · Mountain pass

    The Cheviots & Scottish Border

    For 27 miles there is no village and no shelter across the lonely Cheviot Hills, the last and hardest stretch of the Pennine Way. Somewhere along the high grassy ridge you cross from England into Scotland. The descent to Kirk Yetholm and the Borders lies ahead.

28. 

    1,098 km in · Town

    Jedburgh

    The soaring ruin of a twelfth-century abbey dominates Jedburgh, sacked again and again in the long wars between Scotland and England. Mary Queen of Scots lay gravely ill in a house here in 1566, now kept as a museum. The Jed Water runs clear beneath the old bridge.

29. 

    1,122 km in · Town

    Melrose

    Melrose sits beneath the triple peaks of the Eildon Hills, keeping a rose-red abbey said to hold the buried heart of Robert the Bruce. Sir Walter Scott loved this country and lived just upstream at Abbotsford. The Tweed slides past, broad and full of salmon.

30. 

    1,142 km in · Landmark

    Southern Uplands

    The long green backs of the Southern Uplands roll away, the only sound the wind in the grass and the bleat of scattered sheep. Drovers and reivers once moved their herds and their plunder along these quiet glens. Far ahead the first blue line of the Highlands shows, while the Tweed leads down into Peebles.

31. 

    1,160 km in · Town

    Peebles

    Peebles strings itself along the upper Tweed, where the river runs fast over gravel beds. Just upstream, Neidpath Castle stands guard on a bluff, a stark tower house above a bend in the water. The Border hills roll smooth and bare in every direction, sheep dotting their long flanks.

32. 

    1,185 km in · Town

    Biggar

    An old burgh on the watershed between Tweed and Clyde, Biggar has a broad main street left over from its days as a market town. It keeps the only preserved gasworks in Scotland, and Scotland's only permanent puppet theatre — a hundred seats in a miniature Victorian music hall, run by the Purves family.

33. 

    1,208 km in · Town

    Lanark

    Lanark perches above the gorge of the Clyde, where the river drops over a chain of waterfalls. Just below lies New Lanark, the model mill village built by the reformer Robert Owen and now a World Heritage Site. William Wallace is said to have struck his first blow against English rule in these streets.

34. 

    1,264 km in · Landmark

    Milngavie & Loch Lomond

    The West Highland Way begins at Milngavie and climbs the wooded eastern shore of Loch Lomond, the largest stretch of fresh water in Britain by surface area. Ancient oakwoods cling to the bank, and the peak of Ben Lomond rises across the water. Here the Lowlands give way to the true Highlands.

35. 

    1,332 km in · Town

    Crianlarich

    Ringed by high mountains, the crossroads village of Crianlarich draws both the West Highland Way and the railway through it. Walkers gather here to rest before the climb over the wild Rannoch country. The great Munros of Ben More and Stob Binnein rise steeply to the south.

36. 

    1,351 km in · Bridge

    Bridge of Orchy

    A graceful eighteenth-century stone arch carries the old military road over the river at Bridge of Orchy. Beyond it opens the lonely expanse of Rannoch Moor, fifty square miles of bog, lochan and granite. The little station here is one of the most remote on the line.

37. 

    1,365 km in · Mountain pass

    Rannoch Moor & Glencoe

    Rannoch Moor is one of the last great wildernesses of Europe, a roadless expanse of bog and lochan ringed by mountains. At its edge the pyramid of Buachaille Etive Mor guards the mouth of Glencoe, and then the Devil's Staircase climbs to the trail's highest point. The descent to Kinlochleven waits below.

38. 

    1,392 km in · Town

    Kinlochleven

    Kinlochleven grew up at the head of a sea loch ringed by steep mountains, built around an aluminium smelter powered by one of Britain's earliest hydroelectric schemes. The water tumbles down through the Grey Mare's Tail falls above the houses. The Mamores rise sharp and inviting to the north.

39. 

    1,414 km in · Town

    Fort William, foot of Ben Nevis

    Ben Nevis looms over Fort William, Britain's highest mountain at 1,345 metres, its summit more often than not lost in cloud. The West Highland Way ends here, but the route to the far north does not. The Great Glen, Scotland's great geological fault, runs dead straight to the north-east toward Loch Ness.

40. 

    1,462 km in · Town

    Fort Augustus

    Five locks step the Caledonian Canal down into the southern end of Loch Ness at Fort Augustus. Boats queue as the gates fill and empty, watched by crowds on warm days. The dark water stretches away to the north-east, and a wooded path climbs the heights above it toward Inverness.

41. 

    1,489 km in · Water

    Loch Ness

    Loch Ness lies dark below the forested heights of the Great Glen Way, the most famous loch in Scotland and its greatest by volume, holding more fresh water than every lake in England and Wales combined. Its depths have kept the legend of the monster alive for centuries. The path leads on toward Inverness.

42. 

    1,515 km in · Town

    Inverness

    Inverness is the capital of the Highlands, where the Caledonian Canal meets the Moray Firth. Just to the east lies Culloden Moor, where the last pitched battle on British soil was fought in 1746. Now only the far north remains, the long coast road to the top of the mainland.

43. 

    1,537 km in · Town

    Beauly

    A roofless red-stone priory has stood at Beauly since the thirteenth century, founded by an order of French monks. Mary Queen of Scots is said to have given the place its name, from beau lieu, the beautiful place. To the east the firth opens broad and silver toward the far north.

44. 

    1,555 km in · Town

    Dingwall

    Dingwall is an old Norse settlement, its name meaning the field of the thing, the meeting place of the assembly. The town sits at the head of the Cromarty Firth, where seals haul out on the mudflats. A tall monument on the hill honours the local-born general Sir Hector Macdonald.

45. 

    1,652 km in · Town

    Helmsdale

    Helmsdale was laid out as a planned fishing village at the mouth of its river, resettling families cleared from the glens inland. Gold was found in the burn above the town in 1869, sparking a small Highland rush, and flakes can still be panned there today. The North Sea opens grey and wide, the coast running on toward Wick.

46. 

    1,713 km in · Town

    Wick

    Wick sits on the wild Caithness coast, once the busiest herring port in Europe, its harbour built by Thomas Telford. The land has flattened into windswept farmland and sea cliffs at the edge of the North Sea. John o' Groats is barely a day's walk away now.

47. 

    1,745 km in · Finish

    John o' Groats

    John o' Groats marks the far north-eastern tip of mainland Scotland, its famous signpost the mirror of the one at Land's End, with the Orkney Islands floating across the Pentland Firth. Behind lies the whole length of Britain — Cornish granite, Pennine moor, Highland glen and Caithness sea — a thousand miles and more of country strung between two signposts at the ends of the land.