How difficult is the The Ridgeway?

The most wooded stretch of the whole trail, and the one that least resembles the ancient track further west. It opens with about two miles of springy open turf over Steps Hill and Pitstone Hill, then drops into beech woodland and spends most of the next 15 km either inside woods or running along their edges, on leaf litter, roots and holloway tracks with occasional lanes. The middle of it is frankly suburban: a footbridge over the A41, the Grand Union Canal and the railway at Tring all inside a kilometre. After Wigginton the beeches close in again and the walking is soft, sheltered and easy, finishing on a gentle descent into Wendover. Nothing here is remote and nothing is hard.

Navigation: Waymarking with the acorn is reliable, but the woods on either side of Wigginton carry a dense mesh of crossing paths and forestry tracks, and the widest track is often not the trail. Check the acorn at junctions rather than following the obvious line. The other awkward part is the built-up crossing at Tring, where the route threads a station approach, a trunk-road footbridge and a canal towpath in under a kilometre and the waymarks compete with street furniture.

In poor weather: The best-sheltered section on the trail. Beech cover takes the sting out of wind and rain for most of its length, at the cost of paths that hold water and chalk and tree roots that turn greasy after rain. The exposed part is the first three kilometres of open turf, where there is nothing at all to get behind, and the descent off Steps Hill on wet grass is the one place worth shortening your stride.

Escape options: The easiest section on the trail to leave. Tring station sits on the route at km 5.7, Wendover has one a few minutes off the path at the far end, and Ivinghoe and Aldbury are both within a kilometre and downhill. At no point are you more than a short walk from a lane with houses on it.

Short, and the steepest walking per kilometre on the trail. It climbs straight out of Wendover onto Bacombe Hill and Coombe Hill, the highest ground the route reaches east of the Thames, where the woodland breaks and the whole Aylesbury Vale opens up below the scarp. From there it is a rhythm of drop and climb: down to the fenced corridor past the Chequers estate, up Beacon Hill, down again, then about 100 m of ascent onto Whiteleaf Hill and a steep, often greasy chalk descent off the far side into the streets of Princes Risborough. Constant alternation between exposed grassland tops and enclosed wooded valleys, and it is slower than nine kilometres sounds.

Navigation: More decisions per kilometre than anywhere else on the route. Across the Chequers estate the path is fenced and closely posted and there is nothing to work out, but the fields either side are crossed on marker posts rather than a trodden line, which is harder in crops. The descent from Whiteleaf into Princes Risborough joins pavements and road crossings, where acorns are easier to lose than they are on open hill.

In poor weather: Coombe Hill takes wind square on and there is no shelter on the top at all. The steep chalk off Coombe Hill and off Whiteleaf is the problem in rain, both slippery and both awkward enough to want hands. The scarp faces roughly north-west, so a westbound afternoon in low winter sun is spent walking down a steep bright slope into the glare.

Escape options: Both ends have a station within a few minutes of the path, and the section is only nine kilometres, so the honest answer is usually to finish it. In between, the scarp drops to the flat Vale and villages such as Ellesborough, Great and Little Kimble and Askett sit a kilometre or so below on level ground, easy to walk down to and a real climb to rejoin.

Two different walks joined at Watlington. The first half crosses fields over Lodge Hill and then settles onto the Upper Icknield Way, a broad, level, fast track running along the foot of the Chiltern scarp with villages a few minutes off it, interrupted only by the M40 in its cutting through the Aston Rowant nature reserve. West of Watlington the trail climbs back up into beech hangers and cereal fields for the quietest, most enclosed country east of the Thames, crosses a golf course at Nuffield, then drops onto Grim's Ditch and follows a narrow, sunken, wooded path beside the earthwork for something like eight kilometres to the Thames below Wallingford. Little of this feels like a ridge; most of it feels like woodland.

Navigation: Two places to be careful. The golf course at Nuffield is the worst waymarked point on the trail: walkers report the acorn posts are small, faded and set among fairways and greens, and the line is genuinely easy to lose. The other is the Icknield Way stretch, where the Ridgeway shares a wide, obvious byway with other routes and several equally broad tracks branch off it, so the acorn matters more than the size of the track. Grim's Ditch, by contrast, cannot be got wrong once you are in it.

In poor weather: The Icknield Way track drains reasonably but carries wheel ruts in places that fill and stay filled. Grim's Ditch is the opposite: sunken, shaded and narrow, it holds water long after the open ground has dried and is the one part of the eastern half where winter mud costs real time. Set against that, woodland shelters most of these 33 km from wind, and it is the coolest ground on the trail in heat.

Escape options: The best escape on the whole route is here. The M40 coach stop at Lewknor Turn, junction 6, sits within a few hundred metres of the trail at km 41.7 on flat ground. Watlington, Chinnor and Bledlow are all about a kilometre off the path and downhill. West of Watlington the options thin sharply: Swyncombe and Nuffield are hamlets on lanes, and the Grim's Ditch stretch has road crossings with nothing at them, so the next real exit is Wallingford, a kilometre north of where the ditch meets the Thames.

The only genuinely flat part of the trail, and its hinge. Where Grim's Ditch reaches the Thames the route turns south and follows the river through North Stoke, South Stoke and Moulsford to Goring, on a mixture of riverbank, field-edge path, back lanes and paths threaded behind large riverside gardens, hemmed between the water and the Great Western main line. It is soft, quick, shaded walking with almost no climbing, and it feels nothing like the rest of the route. Then you cross the bridge at Goring into Streatley and the character flips: the wooded Chilterns finish here and the open Berkshire Downs start with a climb that begins immediately.

Navigation: Easy, with one catch. The route is not continuously on the bank: it uses back lanes and paths behind houses in several places, and the Thames Path is signed on the same ground, so read the acorn rather than assuming the riverside line is yours. Gates through the flood meadow are inconsistently maintained and the trodden line is not always the obvious one.

In poor weather: This is floodplain at river level, and the meadow below South Stoke is the likeliest place on the trail to be standing in water after prolonged winter rain. There is no high-level alternative on this bank. In heat it is the other way round: tree cover, riverbank and shade make it the coolest walking on the route.

Escape options: The easiest escape on the trail. Goring and Streatley sit either side of the bridge with a station effectively on the route, and Wallingford is a kilometre north of the trail at the top of the section. Everything here is on the flat, on lanes, with no climb back.

The section the trail exists for, and the longest. It climbs out of Streatley on quiet lanes that peter out into a track, and once up on the Berkshire Downs it simply stays up for the next 35 km: a broad, mostly unsurfaced chalk and flint track with few hedges, almost nothing built, and scale instead of incident. Underfoot the chalk is flinty and lumpy for long stretches and where the route is byway it carries wheel ruts, so the grass verge beside the track is usually the better line where there is room. This is racehorse country and managed gallops run alongside the trail. Two road crossings and the tunnel under the A34 are the only things that interrupt it.

Navigation: The easiest navigation on the trail in clear conditions, because for long stretches there is only one track and it is unmistakable. The risk here is different: the gallops beside the route are private, signed and inviting to walk on, and the correct line is the stony track rather than the mown grass. In mist the track still holds, but the road crossings are the only fixed landmarks for kilometres at a time and it is easy to lose all sense of how far along you are.

In poor weather: This is the exposed half. Few hedges, no woodland worth the name and no shelter at all between road crossings, so wind and driving rain are taken square on for hours with nowhere to stop out of it. The chalk and flint drains better than Chiltern clay, but the byway ruts hold water and the flinty surface is punishing on tired feet when wet. In summer the white chalk throws heat and glare back up at you. The ridge runs broadly east to west, so a westbound afternoon in low winter sun means walking straight into it with no tree line to break it.

Escape options: This is where the nearest road and a realistic escape are not the same thing. The trail holds the top and every village is a spring-line settlement one to three kilometres below the scarp, so every exit is a descent and every return is a climb. The usable points are the crossings with something at the far end: the A338 at Court Hill around km 93, with Wantage roughly 3 km down; the B4001 at Sparsholt Firs; the B4000 at Ashbury. The A34 tunnel at km 82 is a crossing, not an exit, and there is no station anywhere on this section.

More varied than the Berkshire Downs behind it, and it holds both the worst and the best walking on the trail. Within two kilometres the track ends at Fox Hill and the route is on tarmac: roughly 700 m of narrow verge beside a fast B road, crossing the M4 on a road bridge. Then back onto the ridge over Liddington Castle, the highest ground on the route, and a long stretch of furrowed downland track. The trail then leaves the ridge altogether, dropping on rough tree-lined tracks and lanes into the Og valley at Ogbourne St George before climbing back onto Smeathe's Ridge, a narrow grass crest that is the softest and finest walking on the whole route. Past Barbury Castle and Hackpen Hill it is broad chalk track again, and the last few kilometres over Overton Down are deeply rutted byway.

Navigation: Well signed, with two places that need attention. The first is where the trail leaves the ridge for Ogbourne St George and climbs back out again: in the valley it uses lanes, a rough vehicle track and a dismantled railway bridge, and the line is much less obvious than it is on the tops. The second is the open downland either side of Liddington and again over Overton Down, where vehicle ruts have created several parallel lines and none of them is more official than the others, so pick the one that is walkable and rejoin the waymarked line at the gates.

In poor weather: The verge and bridge at Fox Hill are worse in rain and much worse in the dark, with fast traffic and little room. The byway over Overton Down is the section that genuinely turns: walkers describe deep vehicle ruts and around two miles of quagmire in wet conditions, with the narrow grass between the ruts the only walkable line, and it comes at the end of the day. Smeathe's Ridge and Barbury Castle are open grass with nothing to hide behind, and the descent off Smeathe's Ridge is muddy in places even in reasonable weather.

Escape options: Ogbourne St George at km 123.7 is the one place west of Streatley where the trail comes down off the ridge to a village on a valley road, and it is the only realistic mid-section exit. Elsewhere it is ridge again: Liddington and Chiseldon lie below the northern scarp near the M4, reached by dropping off the top. The finish at Overton Hill is a crossing of the A4 with nothing at it, so anyone stopping there is walking on to Avebury regardless.