Walk from village to village

You can try the national trails...

https://www.nationaltrail.co.uk/en_GB/trails/cotswold-way/

In the Lake District four walks that immediately spring to mind are-
1. The Cumbria section of Wainwright's Coast to Coast
2. The Cumbria Way
3. The Allerdale Ramble
(Note that the Allerdale Ramble is no longer an official trail, thus apart from normal footpath signs, it is no longer waymarked with Allerdale Ramble signs).
4. Part of the England Coast Path (now called The King Charles III England Coast Path)- now open in Cumbria all the way from Carlisle to well south of Millom, and most of the way from Roose to the Lancashire Border. Far too long for your time frame so you would need to choose a section to cover. I think the part of the ECP not yet opened there are enough existing paths to fill the official gap.

Of these either the C2C or the Cumbria Way is the best fit. My clear preference would be the Cumbria Way- you can't go that far wrong, is fairly low level and doesn't need great fitness levels.

In May the weather should be just right for it.

Ulverston, the start of the Cumbria Way, is only about 3 1/2 hours from London by train change at Lancaster.

Hi laurelg618

Claudia has sent you the link for the National Trail website so you might also consider the Thames Path and parts of the South Downs Way which may offer what you are after and be closer to your base in London, which I assume you’ll need to head back to. As a northerner myself, isn31c (or Stuart) has given you good Lakeland options but it’s quite a trek from London which will probably eat into your available walking time.

As to the weather, (almost) nobody on here from the U.K. will commit to guaranteeing the weather even close to the dates you plan to walk. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst!

Ian

Hi Laurel,
Last summer my kids and I took a day from London and walked part of the South Downs way. It was one of the highlights of our trip. Incredibly beautiful. Even for novice travelers like us, (with a lot of help from the good folks who frequent this forum) it was an easy train ride from London Victoria to Eastbourne. About an hour and a half. We liked Eastbourne (I have read mixed opinions on it, but we thought it was fun the short time we were there). We took a bus to Seven Sisters park station and walked back east along the South Downs Way to Birling Gap, but if you look at the map you can see how the trail hugs the coast with paths that are all simply breathtaking. I could have stayed there for days!

In terms of villages/towns to stay, in addition to Eastbourne, we walked through East Dean. It was really quaint and had some lovely cottages for rent and a busy pub. (I even took pictures of the rental companies just in case we return- I would stay there in a heartbeat).

I am sure some of the other more knowledgeable folks on here can give more insight into other towns you could check into, but I had to put a plug in for this area. I would love to be in your shoes - your trip sounds amazing! Have fun planning!

Can't be of any current help because my enjoyment of hiking in the Slaughters area was some years ago.

Here's a link, which you may already know about, but has a pretty decent overview map on page 10

https://www.cotswolds.com/dbimgs/Towns%20and%20Villages%20Guide%20%20web%20version.pdf

Have you thought about the logistics of this? How you would carry your luggage? You might want to contact one of the companies that set up self-guided walking, with the inns booked for you and luggage transport provided.

Here are a couple that offer shorter self-guided tours in the Cotswolds. You could explore their websites for other areas, such as the Lake District:

https://www.contours.co.uk/cotswold-villages-trail

We used this one for walking in Wales on the the Three Castle Walk:

https://www.celtictrailswalkingholidays.co.uk/search/?fwp_search=Cotswolds

Another option, with a central base rather than inn to inn, would be with HF Holidays. You stay in one of their country houses and take guided walks with the other guests. They offer a choice of 3 walks of differing length each day:

https://www.hfholidays.co.uk/destinations/united-kingdom/cotswolds

We have enjoyed this one in the Lake District:

https://www.hfholidays.co.uk/country-houses/locations/derwent-bank

And we would have done this one, but the pandemic intervened:

https://www.hfholidays.co.uk/country-houses/locations/coniston-lake-district-south

We have done Hadrian's Wall walk with a company that arranged transport of our bags day to day, gave us maps, and arranged all Inns on the route. It was great.
We tried to arrange it separately, but you need to book all your stays on the appropriate dates and that can be a big deal. Some English towns have only a few places to stay. Or, they are not on your walking path, so you have to get to and from the trail each day. If you do miles and then have to walk additional miles to the Inn, it is not so good.
In April we will walk the Menalon trail in Greece. We did arrange this ourselves. But, there are logistics. We will have to taxi at times to get to lodging. All in all, we will save approximately 50% of what it would be to have it arranged by a company. However, those logistics are tricky.
I guess it depends on how much you want to plan.

In an earlier response, Lola gave you the link to Contours. I encourage you to check them out. We used them to walk the West Highland Way in Scotland a few years ago, and are using them again this year for walks in Wales, and the Peak District. We use their luggage transport service. All you really need to do is get to the start town, and find your way from the end point. Walking in the UK is awesome!

Whether you decide to do this on your own, or use the links Lola provided (thank you by the way Lola, I've bookmarked the Lake District walks for a future vacation!), you need to decide fairly soon as accommodations fill up quickly in some places--particularly the Cotswolds. There are separate luggage services such as Sherpa Vans (which we used last year in the Cotswolds), but in many of the places we stayed the other hiking guests were using a combination accommodations/luggage service company. We did our own planning with the aid of our British friends who hiked with us and were booking July rooms in October/November since we needed two rooms at each stop.

If using the booking services, do pay attention to level of difficulty of the walks. In the Cotswolds you aren't climbing mountains, but there can be a lot of uphill and downhill during the day. That adds to the amount of time the walk will take. On our 16 mile days we were out pretty much all day--counting lunch breaks, picture taking, and maybe a mid-afternoon pub stop.

As Ian said, no one can predict the weather. We tracked the scorching temperatures in June, and ended up hiking in the rain in July. Bring raingear and hope it stays in the pack. :-)

It was a fantastic experience though, and a beautiful walk. We've also walked part of the Jurassic Coast on an earlier trip--just day hikes. Lake District, South Downs, you're spoiled for choice really--enjoy!

The beauty of the Cumbria way (or the Allerdale Ramble) walk in Cumbria is that this is emphatically not a part of the world where you need to be booking rooms many months ahead of time.
This is an area where you are working to far shorter timescales- for most of the year except the 6 peak weeks of summer you can pretty much book the night of- certainly a week or two before.

For anyone seriously interested I'd be able to tutor them (on those two walks) on how to do them from a few centres- so you are not moving every night- by using the comprehensive local transit. Not all routes appear in the district bus guide so people don't know they exist.
The same is true of the King Charles coastal walk in Cumbria. You would be able to do a week based in one centre, with quite short to and from journeys each day. And out in the west here we are civilised enough to have short notice hotel and B and B rooms.

@Ian and Julie often on such questions gives walks in the Eden Valley. Traditionally those have needed car access. Those can be re-assessed now that we know we are getting the Eden Valley Bus back- as and when the timetable is released. That extended #563 bus will be a game changer in the area if the timetable that was used in the pilot project on Saturdays and at Christmas becomes reality.

You can start walking the Camino Ingles directly from London. Here's a link to a mother daughter (father comes along on this one, but not usually) walking from London through Canterbury to Dover. Or go on YouTube for The Pilgrims in Progress.

I was studying this Camino for walking solo. I am leaning towards the Cotswolds presently, but I go back and forth. If you did the Cotswolds, I think it would be fairly easy to transport luggage if you needed to do so. However, at the top of my list, at the moment, is a small group of women walking in Wales from Pembrokeshire...but that doesn't help you now.