Four walkers,
one honest record.

Who we are

Jen grew up partly in Saltaire, with grandparents of solid North Yorkshire stock, and carried the idea of this walk for roughly thirty years before she talked the rest of us into it. The rest of us arrived with Oregon and Alaska in our legs. The kids were 12 and 15 when we started at St Bees and 14 and 17 when we reached Robin Hood's Bay. We are not guides, athletes or travel writers: we are a family who booked the beds, ordered the packed lunches, got lost once, and finished.

We write under first names only and keep the children out of captions. Photographs are ours; please ask before reusing them.

Why you can trust the details

Everything here is first-hand and checked against evidence rather than memory. Dates, places and distances come from the timestamps and GPS in our own 886 photographs, matched to the official National Trail line and to booking records. Where a lodging or a turn could only be reconstructed from the photographs it is marked as such on the plan page; where we have since confirmed it, it says confirmed.

Distances are given two ways: the official route length for each stage, and the miles we actually walked by GPS, detours included. The two rarely agree, and the difference is often the useful part. Prices are ballpark ranges from our own trips, not a survey of the whole route, and services change every season: verify before you travel.

If we got something wrong, tell us on Trail talk and we will fix it.

Independence and advertising

We paid for the whole walk ourselves and none of the places named here knew we would write about them. There are no affiliate links. The site carries a small number of clearly labelled sponsored banners that businesses along the route book for themselves through the advertising portal; a banner never changes what we say about a place.

We count page views with our own cookie-free counter, so advertisers can see real numbers; it stores no personal data and sets no cookies.