The Ridgeway is one of Britain's oldest roads, a prehistoric track that has been walked for at least 5,000 years. Today it is a National Trail running 87 miles (139km) from Ovingham in Wiltshire eastward to Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire, crossing some of the most open and ancient downland in southern England.
The western half follows the chalk ridge above the Vale of White Horse through a landscape littered with Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments: Avebury's stone circles, the Uffington White Horse cut into the hillside, Wayland's Smithy long barrow. The eastern half descends into the Chiltern Hills, quieter and more wooded, before finishing on the grassy summit of Ivinghoe Beacon with views across four counties.
You can walk the whole trail in five to eight days or tackle individual sections as day walks. The western ridge section between Avebury and Streatley is particularly dramatic — wide skies, few trees, and a sense that you are walking in the footsteps of people who have been coming this way since before Stonehenge was built.