Best places to live for hiking/outdoors?

I'm moving back to the UK from overseas this year (early October) after graduating uni and I'm wanting to take advantage of being free from uni to live somewhere with good access to walking, hiking and outdoorsy stuff. However I've only lived in the UK from about 6 months since I was a little kid so I have no idea where would be good places to live, while still having a good chance of getting a job.

Sorry if this is off topic for the sub! I'd really appreciate any recommendations on outdoors access vs jobs because it's the sort of thing that's quite hard to gauge via the Internet and I've been really spoiled by living in the south of New Zealand for the last decade or so. I've heard anecdotally that the Lake District has a lot of jobs with accommodation if you do hospo/hotel type work, but I'm not sure how the outlook would be in October there or e.g. in the north of Scotland. It'd also be a big plus if it was possible to access a lot by public transport as I obviously won't have a car after moving.

Cheers!