Many walkers are familiar with The Monarch’s Way without perhaps really knowing what it is. This long distance footpath snakes across Worcestershire, the Cotswolds, the Mendips, the South Coast — 615 miles of twists and detours that seem almost deliberately perverse. And in a way, they are.
If you’ve read the Royal Oak blog, this is the middle chapter — the long, looping escape that eventually leads to the oak tree, the Restoration, and the wave of pub renamings that followed.
The Escape, On Foot
The Monarch’s Way exists for one reason: to trace the most chaotic, improvised, exhausting escape in British royal history.
After losing the Battle of Worcester in 1651, King Charles II bravely ran away, with Parliamentarians in hot pursuit. He zig‑zagged across half of England, doubling back on himself, hiding in barns, swapping clothes with servants (very Shakespearean), and relying on a network of royalist sympathisers who risked their lives to move him from one safe house to the next.
This is why the route is so long and bendy. It’s not a pilgrimage. It’s not a Roman road. It’s a 17th‑century panic map.
Why Walkers Love This Trail
Because it’s everywhere! The Monarch’s Way crosses:
- Worcestershire
- Gloucestershire
- Somerset
- Dorset
- Hampshire
- West Sussex
Which means walkers from Bristol, Bath, Cheltenham, the Mendips, the Cotswolds, Salisbury, Winchester, Chichester — all of them have a stretch of this trail on their doorstep.
It’s the most widespread “local” long‑distance path in the country.
And yet most people don’t know the story. And if you’ve ever walked a stretch of it without realising, you’ve unknowingly stepped into the middle of the Royal Oak story too.
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