World's best long distance walks

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. Here's how to use your walking shoes to take you over the horizon - and away to Rome and even Santiago de Compostela. This post is by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about books and blogs)   

My family is so very close to finishing the Capital Ring - a 70 mile (126km) route circling London. Sometimes I worry about finishing it - we'll end the joy of discovering new bits of London. Highlights include the Brent reservoir used for a long-ago Olympics, the art deco 1930s splendour of Eltham Palace, a peep into the grand schooling of Harrow School and the endless views of London from hills you didn't know existed. Honestly it's like tramping over the seven hills of Rome.

To compensate my loss there are some wonderful long-distance paths around the UK (and nearby) that could perhaps be revisited and allow me to dream up being in another place altogether.

Five best long-distance walks

• Camino de Santiago de Compostela - the route of St James (patron saint's day 25 July). I've met people who have walked this in the sharp winds of April with a baby on their back. I've seen the film with Martin Sheen and son, The Way, and long ago I stayed in the stunning parador (hotel) at Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. Somewhere in the back of my mind I want to try this 780km journey too, but it's one that will have to wait for the children to leave school. Indeed if you go past the cathedral you can end at Finisterre, which Medievals thought was "the end of the world". More info at this website.
• Walk with the Romans along Hadrian's Wall. We've nearly managed the whole 135km, just a short two, maybe three, day section left between Newcastle and Hexham. The May half term is pencilled in, but we may have to give up on this idea as Nell, 10, is very wary of cows and they will certainly be out in the fields by then. Bulls and all. See a previous entry on this blog here about the moment we reached the end (before quite completing the beginning).
  
• West Highland Way - runs 152km from Glasgow to Fort William uphill. Well, as good as uphill. It's midge heaven and the few chunks I've tried out (along Loch Lomond for instance) are remarkably free of snack shops which makes walking more of a slog. Perhaps this is the one that best echoes Camino de Santiago de Compostela?
  
  
• Coast to Coast - success! Pete and I spent three years popping up and down to the Lake District in order to walk Alfred Wainwright's fabulous 190 mile path (sorry, it has to be miles in respect to AW's memory) from St Bees Head over to Robin Hood's Bay in Yorkshire (dreamt up in 1973, more info here). I'd never heard of Wainwright when Pete first suggested the idea. Now I am willing to watch reruns of his extremely slow TV programme, just to get back in the zen mood of walking through the Lake District with my eyes mostly on a compass rather than mountain tops...
  
  A tip from the cantankerous AW: "If you must take a companion, take one who is silent."
  
  I was quite upset when an energetic friend and her husband managed to cycle 225km on the C2C (a very similar route) in a weekend - the time it took my lumbering feet seemed to add to the magic of the journey. But if you are less hardy, but still speed-inclined try the 12-20 day holidays run by this group.
  
  
• Across India - isn't this what Gandhi did in some form of anti-British protest involving salt? Have you seen the size of India? 

Over to you
Where have you walked in the UK that makes you think you could be somewhere else in the world?