South West Coast Path Statistics

We thought we should post a post trip reflection blog post. To break up the text I have also included some photos that didn’t make the blog posts.

The Walk

The path is 630 miles long, running from Minehead to Poole Harbour. It is the longest way marked national trail in Britain and the final section was completed in 1978. The total ascent gained on the path is 35,031m (114,931 ft) this is almost four times the height of Mount Everest. The fastest time for completing the coast path is 10 days, 15 hours and 18 minutes.

The path is extremely popular, 30% of visitors to the region do so because of the path and hikers spend 439 million pounds annually in the area, this equates to sustaining just under 10,000 full time salaries. The South West Coast Path Association is the registered charity which maintains the path, it costs approximately £1000 per mile to maintain. Some of this money comes from central government or Natural England but the rest is from donations.

The path was originally a coastguard route between lighthouses to patrol for smuggling. Hence the path is mostly as close to the coast as possible and never the direct route between two places.

Fun facts:

After walking the path we have…

• Gone up or down 30,000 steps

• Crossed 230 bridges

• Opened and closed 880 gates

• Climbed over 436 stiles

• Walked past 5+ naturist beaches

Routing & Shortcuts

The guide book we were using breaks down the distance into 45 days. A few of these days offer an “official shortcut”, we defined this as a description outlined in the book in a non disapproving tone. For example a shortcut from Instow to Appledore via tidal ferry shortens the day by 6 miles which the guide book recommends. However, the book also notes it is popular for walkers to skip the tarmac section between Mousehole and Penzance but makes a snide comment that getting the bus for this section often leads to other shortcuts and the route is left in tatters!

On other occasions we were forced to take shortcuts; seven miles of the path directly after Lulworth Cove are within a military firing zone, this is closed on week days and some weekends. We hit this section mid week and due to our time pressures were forced to skip it, rather than wait four days.

The only other major shortcut we took was missing the Isle of Portland circuit. Although we did 2 miles of this by walking across the bridge to the Portland YHA, we decided that as the island is only attached to the mainland by bridge it technically did not count as part of the coast. Additionally this whole section can be missed by following the guide book and taking an alternative route called the South Dorset Ridgeway which goes inland.

We plan to walk the Isle of Portland and the Lulworth ranges section another time.

Gear

We both tried to carry the minimal gear possible with very limited comfort items. We carried sleeping bags, roll mats, a tent and stove to enable us to wild camp. My bag weighed ~13Kg which is 24% of my body weight. Olly’s was ~15Kg 23% of this body weight, so we were reasonably equal.

Side note, Olly has a faster pace and ends up walking ahead of me. Often when meeting others on the path they made comments such as. “Is he trying to get away from you?” Or “I hope he waits for you!” And quite a few times followed up with: “your bag is much bigger than his”. To this last statement I would always reply with no it isn’t it just looks big because I’m small! I did wonder whether its fair that Olly carried more weight than me, but from occasions where I carried 1.5L of water and lots of food I think the extra weight would slow me down even more.

We found that carrying 500ml of water when not wild camping was sufficient and resisted the urge to bulk buy snacks or carry more than a couple of nights of food. We were both glad to have packed gloves and a warm coat as there were a few cold mornings, but mostly if we found a good wild camping spot before dark we would have to sit around until dusk and that’s when we needed the coats most.

Comparing the weight of our rucksacks to those of applicants joining the army they are on par with combat service support roles but half the weight of infantry soldiers. The British army annual fitness test requires this weight to be carried for 8 miles in less than 2 hours. This is double our average walking speed, although our walking speed took into account cake stops.

Aches & Pains

Both of us came away with little niggling injuries. After the first day I had cramp in my trapezius (muscle between neck and shoulder) and kept getting stabbing pains in my abdomen for the first week. I kept having to stop every 3 miles to take the bag off. However, I think this was a mixture of the bag being poorly adjusted, swinging the bag onto my back in an uncontrolled manor and not being used to carrying the weight. Luckily for me this went away after the first week.

Olly mainly had feet issues, lots of blisters in different places including his little toes growing extra points. But mainly what we think is metatarsal (pains in his little toe joint). This was particularly bad in the first week and we did consider stopping. Luckily it wasn’t so bad the following few days.

Even though we have not been walking for a week we both still have achy knees and Achilles, hopefully this fixes itself and isn’t permanent.

Money

We had a budget of £30 per day, this included everything; accommodation, food and transport. We did manage this! Which was helped by the large number of nights we wild camped.

• 10 nights in hostels (6 were YHA)

• 8 nights in B&Bs

• 3 nights in campsites ( 1 YHA)

• 17 nights wild camping

Our expenditure over the whole walk can be broken down into:

44% eating out, 35% accommodation, 11% groceries, 5% taxis, 3% bus/trains, 2% ferries.

We could have definitely done this cheaper by wild camping more and using the stove we carried more but, this was a holiday after all!

Reflections

The big question is: Would we do another long distance walk?

Personally, I would. I was very apprehensive and wasn’t sure if I could do it. However I found this easier than I was expecting although other trails may require carrying more supplies and I wouldn’t want to carry any more weight.

Olly is not so sure, he thinks 2 week walks are a better idea than 6 weeks.

However maybe we would answer differently in another week/month/years time!

I 100% recommend walking the South West Coast Path to everyone, maybe not all at once due to the time it takes. The path is incredibly variable and there are probably only a few miles (which were urban sections) that I would not want to repeat.