Viking Way
A hundred and forty-seven miles from the Humber Bridge to Rutland Water, across the Lincolnshire Wolds and the Lincoln Edge
Indicative — sampled from open terrain data along the simplified route.
The Viking Way runs 147 miles down the length of Lincolnshire, from Barton-upon-Humber on the south bank of the Humber to Oakham in Rutland. It starts beneath the Humber Bridge and ends beside Rutland Water, and most walkers take ten to twelve days over it. The going is moderate: mostly gentle lowland walking on field paths, tracks and quiet lanes, with two ranges of low hills — the Lincolnshire Wolds and the long limestone escarpment of the Lincoln Edge — providing the height and the views.
The first stretch crosses the Wolds, a National Landscape of chalk ridges that hold Lincolnshire’s highest ground; the section between Caistor and Tealby is the best of it. The route then works south along the Lincoln Cliff to the city of Lincoln, where Lincoln Cathedral stands on the ridge and can be seen from miles off, before continuing down through Woodhall Spa and the Witham valley and finally round Rutland Water to the finish.
The name has nothing to do with a Viking road. It refers to the Danelaw, the part of eastern England that came under Scandinavian rule in the ninth century, of which Lincolnshire was the heart. The trail was opened in 1976 and is waymarked throughout with a disc bearing a horned Viking helmet.
It is well suited to being walked in sections. Barton-upon-Humber, Lincoln and Oakham are all on the railway, and at Oakham the Viking Way meets the Macmillan Way and the Hereward Way, two routes that carry on across the Midlands.
