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When I started planning my family's visit to England this summer, I knew I wanted us to do a trek. I knew it would be different from our treks in Austria or the US, but I was pretty sure I would be able to find something we could enjoy, and I did.

England has many national trails, but most of them require you to walk more than my family can in a single day in order to reach food and shelter (for the record – my children were 10, 8 and 5 at the time of this trip). My goal was to find something in under 10km a day for a few days. I didn't quite find that, but it came close. I looked at many different long distance routes, especially the “National Trails”.

The “Rambling Man” website was useful for comparing the different national trails and helped me to decide. “Heather on her Travels” helped me to pick the section we did – from Oxford to Wallingford. This page with distances helped me to choose where to stop for the night. If you’re planning on doing this trail, these pages will be invaluable!

We started in Oxford - we took the train from London and spent a night there. Please note that your ticket will be significantly cheaper if you order it ahead of time! We joined the path on Folly Bridge, right after a coffee break at the Paper Boat Cafe. This is what the trail looked like in the beginning:

Throughout the trail, we enjoyed looking at the different boats:

We stopped for lunch at the Kings Arms by the lock east of Kennington, and stayed the night in Abingdon, which has many options for eating and lodging. This was our longest day at around 15 km, but I didn't see anywhere that was closer than Abingdon. Here’s a final picture from the afternoon of this day:

We spent a little bit of the morning in Abingdon - there was an arts and crafts workshop in the museum which my children enjoyed. We had lunch at Sutton Courtenay, about a kilometer off the path, but that was the best option I found. George Orwell's grave is there if that interests you.

Clifton Lock, which we passed on this day, was probably the nicest of the locks we saw. Watching a lock in operation was of great interest to our children (and us).

We had dinner at The Barley Mow and slept in the Abing Plough House in Clifton Hampden - probably a little more than a 10km day.

The third day we walked to Shillingford where we ate and slept at the Shillingford Bridge Hotel. There wasn't anywhere to have lunch on the way so we bought groceries in Clifton Hampden and had a lovely picnic. We also climbed to the Wittenham Clumps which gave a nice view - a relatively short diversion that starts at the Days Lock. We considered a side trip to Dorchester which could have been nice - there's a castle and restaurants - but opted for an easier day. Here’s an example of the kind of view we got on this day:

Even though this was a very pretty day, it had two drawbacks. The first was the presence of several electric fences along the trail; we were constantly worried that our youngest might touch one inadvertently. The other is that the last part of the trail to Shillingford was diverted by construction to a main road; this was definitely the least nice part of our entire journey.

Our final day was from Shillingford to Wallingford. We stopped for coffee at the Waterfront Cafe, but arriving at Wallingford didn't take very long, so this was really more of a treat than a necessity. Along the way there was a diversion because the bridge is undergoing repairs, but you can take a ferry quite easily to cross. We had considered continuing on from Wallingford, but because of various logistic issues we took a bus to Cholsey and the train back to London.

Some thoughts about planning. We took four backpacks, between 20 and 38L, for us and our two older children – which means we were packing minimally. We didn’t encounter rain, but we had rain gear just in case. We had hiking boots and sandals, but you could probably do fine with any comfortable walking shoe. We packed lots of snacks so we could boost our children's morale when necessary – but there were blackberries growing all along the trail, and we ended up a lot less of our snacks than expected.

For navigation we used the Organic Maps app to complement Google Maps, because it works better in offline mode and we wanted to conserve battery power – we didn’t buy any additional maps or a book. It was very easy to stay on the trail, and you’re never very far from the nearest road or village. Plus, there’s usually a few people on the trail, and a very large amount near Oxford and the larger villages.

One last thing – we had an amazing time, but the view really isn’t that varied . Almost always the river, lots of different house boats, sometimes fields, sometimes forest, pretty villages - nothing more. A very easy, laid back walk, good for talking and thinking and enjoying each other's company. If you're looking for a multi day trail with a relaxed pace, not too far from London – this may be just the thing for you.

If you have any questions, feel free to hit me up on Mastodon.