South West Coast Path – An Overview

We walked over 500 kilometres of the SWCP, starting in Westward Ho! (Devon), walking the entire coast of Cornwall and finishing in Plymouth, back in Devon. This is about half the1000 km of the total SWCP which starts in Minehead and finishes in Poole.

The walk is classified as strenuous and from our experience for the section we walked we would say it is 5% easy, 45% moderate, 40% strenuous, 10% severe. The coast is not flat and every day, several times, you climb from sea level to the top of cliffs and headlands, and back down again. The highest cliff we climbed was 230 metres above sea level.

We walked for thirty days at an average of about 17 km per day. Our longest day was 27 km and our shortest day was 8 km. There are many, many places to get accommodation and food so you can vary the length of each day to suit your ability and the time you have.

We walked in late spring and early summer and had very good weather most of the time. Very little rain and a few days of mist and low cloud. Not too hot with temperatures in the late teens and no strong winds just gentle sea breezes. There had been very little rain in early spring so the track was mostly dry and areas that would be muddy and boggy in the wet were hard and bone dry.

This is a well- formed path mostly on dirt but also on sandy and stony beaches, sand dunes, tarmac roads, farm roads, grassy fields, cobblestones, concrete paths, rocky outcrops, and boardwalks. The path gets a lot of use and so it is clearly visible. The confusing thing is that there are also many other public paths joining and criss-crossing the SWCP so you have to keep your wits about you to stay on the correct route. There are also hundreds of farm gates, kissing gates, bridges and stiles to negotiate and thousands of steps to climb.

A lot of the path runs along the edge of cliffs and in many places the cliffs are crumbling or unstable and have slipped away. In most cases there are signs and temporary fences and the path is diverted, often only a few metres, inland around the dangerous area. Some diversions are longer and the longest we had added an extra 4 km to the length of the stage. The path does tend to religiously follow the coast and many times a short cut could have been taken to bypass a headland.

Signage is generally very good. The SWCP is a National Trail and has been a continuous path since 1978 so it is well established. Signs are usually timber, pointing in the direction to go, say ‘Coastal Path’ and give the miles to the next village. In addition, at junctions or where there are other public paths crisscrossing there are timber posts with a yellow arrow and an acorn (the National Trail symbol) showing the way. Inevitably a few signs or posts are missing or buried in hedgerows but if you always keep the sea on one side of you (left or right depending on whether you are going north to south or vice versa) and take the path closest to the coast (but not the one-way paths down to isolated beaches), you will never get lost. The hardest places to navigate through are the large towns and cities.

We used two volumes from the ‘Trailblazer’ series: Exmoor & North Devon Coast Path, SWCP Part 1 Minehead to Bude, and Cornwall Coast Path SWCP Part 2 Bude to Plymouth. These are very detailed with large scale maps (1:20,000) showing almost every gate, bench, set of steps, stone wall, etc for every inch of the path.  They also contain walking times, info on tricky junctions, places to stay, places to eat, points of interest and detailed public transport information. They only show what is happening right on the coast path and maybe a kilometre inland.

We also used two Harvey National Trail Maps: SCWP 1 Minehead to St Ives and SWCP2 St Ives to Plymouth. These are 1:40,000 and also have a ton of information but give a much bigger picture of where you are in relation to roads, inland towns etc, away from the coast.

We didn’t take smartphones but you can use GPS to track exactly where you are and where to go. The Trailblazer books have way GPS marker points you can tick off as you go.

The SWCP is maintained by volunteers and the local councils so the standard varies quite a bit. For us the biggest issue was from Lizard to Plymouth which has a subtropical climate and very lush vegetation. Some of the track was freshly trimmed with an edge trimmer but other parts were shoulder high in grass, wild flowers, bracken, brambles, thistles and nettles. When this is wet from dew, mist or rain you get saturated and stung.

The SWCP also uses rights of way over farms so you often will be sharing a field with sheep, cows or steers, horses and ponies. This is not an issue and they seem content sharing their territory with lots of walkers. We didn’t encounter any mosquitos, sand flies, biting ants etc.

Everyday there are interesting things to see, including  iron age hill forts, castles, ruins, churches and chapels, lighthouses, coastguard watch lookouts, lifeboat stations, memorials, plaques, statues, fortifications (ancient, old and new), mines, mining engine houses, holiday parks, houses, cafes, pubs, radar installations, navigation towers, military areas, airports, golf courses, harbours (large and small), villages, beaches, estuaries, rock stacks, rock arches, sink holes, emerald seas ,seals, dolphins, sea birds, etc.

We had been hoping this would be a social walk like the Camino in Spain but we met nobody who was doing a walk on the SWCP as long as us. We became friendly with a few people who were walking for a few days or up to about a week. Occasionally there are a lot of people on the path but these are day walkers or dog walkers and are usually close to beaches, towns or villages or at car parks near particular points of interest. There are more people about on weekends, bank holidays and school mid term breaks. Usually we walked in splendid isolation.

There are lots of swimmable beaches and all the ones near villages or car parks have life guards. Surfing and swimming is hugely popular in Cornwall. Dangerous beaches are clearly sign posted. In late spring/early summer the water is cold, about 11°C and almost everyone in the water wore a wet suit. We swam only once, on our shortest walking day. We didn’t get hot enough to think it was worthwhile to stop, get changed, swim, get dried, get sand off everything, and carry on.

We had to research each day to see if we would be able to get food and drink along the way. Usually there were several options but a few days nothing was available. In this case we bought supplies at a shop before we left in the morning or if we couldn’t do this the B & B or pub owner would make us a packed lunch (£5 – £8 each). Many villages and beaches have seasonal cafes set up only  for the summer. All the villages and most popular beaches had clean, well maintained, male and female (not all gender) public toilets. At about two thirds of these you have to pay to pee, so keep a stash of 20 pence coins.

All the SWCP we walked was well serviced by public transport. Just about every village was on the route of either one or both of two bus companies that operate in Cornwall. A lot of walkers we met would drive to a village, walk say 10 or 20 kms then catch a bus back to their car. The bigger towns like Newquay, St Ives, Penzance, Plymouth are also on the train system. Pretty much everywhere you could get a taxi. The nature of the SWCP means that many ferries must be used to cross estuaries. The smaller ferries are often seasonal (end of May to mid Sept) and dependant on the weather and tides. The landing points for some ferries also changes with the state of the tide. Information on trains, buses and ferries was readily available.

We stayed in B & Bs and small three star hotels. These had all been pre-booked by Macs Adventure and varied from homes with two guest rooms to hotels or inns with up to ten guest rooms. All were very comfortable, some luxurious. Locations were often good, very close or sometimes right on the path, but a few were about 2 or 3 kms away which made for some extra walking each day. They all had excellent breakfasts of juice, cereal, porridge, yoghurt, tea, coffee, toast and a choice of cooked breakfasts – you didn’t have to eat ‘full English’. Of the 33 places we stayed only one did not have excellent free wifi.

Food on the SWCP is great if you eat fish or sea food. Menus dominated by fish are natural for an area whose history and livelihood is so tied to the sea but for us who are not so keen on sea food the alternatives were a bit limited – burgers, lasagne, curries, steak and ale pie.  Vegetables were hard to come by, everything came with mauve cole slaw or insipid salads, and chips. Sunday was the best day, everywhere there was a carvery and vegetables.

Overall this is a fantastic walk. Hard work but very rewarding, on a superb coastline with a huge variety of history, wildlife, geology and scenery.

Plymouth to London

Awoke to a lovely sunny day in Plymouth after two days of low cloud and mist. We couldn’t stay to enjoy it unfortunately.

We had about a forty minute walk from the guest house through Plymouth City Centre to the train station. The centre of Plymouth was destroyed by bombing in WW2 and so all the main shopping/commercial centre is relatively new. There is a long wide pedestrian mall running right through the shopping precinct. Almost every building is designed in what would have been the height of 1950/1960s modernist architecture. Sixty years on it all looks slightly depressing. Every façade is perfectly composed and proportioned, simple geometric shapes, no decoration, little colour, mostly white or grey, refined detailing, the ultimate ‘less is more’. It’s interesting as a snapshot in time but it all looks so serious. I think it desperately needs some whimsey and idiosyncrasy. Some one to poke some fun at the rules.

From Plymouth we took ‘The Cornishman’ Great Western Railway train to Paddington London. About a 230 mile journey in 3 hours twenty minutes. An eight coach train, including a first class coach at the rear and a restaurant car. It was very comfortable, quiet and punctual. Five stops along the way, four near the Plymouth end of the line and the fifth at Reading about half an hour from London. It took about half the time of our bus trip from London to Westward Ho! but then it cost a bit more than twice as much.

We had booked and paid for train tickets before leaving home but had to collect the tickets at the train station. This involved inserting the same debit/credit card used to pay for the tickets into a machine, typing in a seven digit code that had been emailed to us, and hey presto out popped our tickets. And we got the credit card back!

After five and a half weeks away we are back at the Shakespeare Hotel in Norfolk Square. A different room, this time on the first floor. A room that makes us smile. The largest dimension is the height! It is tiny but we love it as it has large French doors onto our own little balcony overlooking the trees and gardens in the square. We can still imagine we are out in the English countryside not in the heart of one of the biggest cities in the world.

A quiet day wandering around the historic city of Plymouth. Although highly recommended we didn’t get to the Plymouth Gin Distillery.

We made our way to the Mayflower Steps to ‘officially’ complete our walk. I reckon the finish should be at the Cremyll ferry where you ‘officially’ move form Cornwall into Devon.

The Mayflower Steps are a bit of an anti-climax. There is a memorial but the causeway of 1620 was destroyed long, long ago and the present steps are only from the 1890s. Amazingly we were the only ones there. No coach loads of American tourists, just two Kiwi tourists admiring a far more important memorial. This same quay is where the New Zealand barque Tory set sail in May 1839 for Port Nicholson, now Wellington, to start the settlement of New Zealand.

We had a look around Barbican. Barbican is the ‘old town’ area around Sutton Harbour, the original harbour of Plymouth. It is one of the few parts of the city to escape destruction during the bombing of WW2. A few of the streets and alleys still have the character of an old fishing port. It is said to have the highest concentration of cobbled streets in England.

In the afternoon we walked back to Stonehouse (where the Cremyll ferry dropped us yesterday) and had a look around Royal William Yard. This is a huge complex that was the major victualling depot for the Royal Navy. It was built in 1826 – 1835 and is named after King William IV. It had slaughterhouses, bakeries, a brewery, a biscuit factory, coopers for making barrels and vast storehouses for food, clothing and equipment. The navy moved out in 1993 and now it is a mixed-use development of residences, restaurants, cafes, shops, a marina, a ferry terminal, etc. It was all looking very quiet and empty while we were there.

We also visited The Hoe. This is a green expanse on a hill that separates the city of Plymouth from the sea. It is most famous for being the site of Francis Drake’s game of bowls in 1588. With the Spanish Armada fast approaching he resolved to finish his game and wait for the tide to turn before engaging with the enemy. There are a lot of other memorials and statues on the green including Smeaton’s Tower. Originally the third lighthouse to be put on Eddystone Rocks ( 14 km southwest of Rame Head where we were at the chapel yesterday), it was dismantled in 1882 and the upper portions rebuilt on The Hoe. Smeaton was the original builder of the tower in 1759.

Tomorrow we catch the train back to London. What a shock that will be. The thing we loved most about the South West Coastal Path was its quietness, remoteness and isolation.

For those who are interested: Plymouth lies on two rivers, the Tamar and the Plym, hence its name, the mouth of the Plym.

Number of walking days: 30
Number of rest days: 5 (Padstow, St Ives, Penzance, Falmouth, Charlestown)
Number of kilometres walked: over 500 (not including rest days)
Number of steps taken: 666,879
Number of signposts: 1236
Number of bridges crossed: 151
Number of ferries: 8
Number of gates opened and closed: 327
Number of stiles climbed: 461
Number of steps climbed: 13,395
Number of swims: 1
Number of metres climbed: two Mt Everests
Best breakfast: Red Fox Barn
Best dinner: Roast Loin of Pork, Coombe Barton Inn, Crackington Haven
Smallest breakfast: Port Gaverne Hotel
Number of poached eggs eaten: 58 each
Most expensive packed lunch: Little Fox, £8
Prettiest town: Clovelly, Port Isaac, Polpero, so many others
Ugliest town: Portreath
Longest day: Porthleven to The Lizard, 27 km
Shortest day: Mawnan Smith to Falmouth, 6 km
Place I’d like most to go back to: Polpero
Place I will never go back to: Lands End
Number of beds slept in: 30
Narrowest bed slept in: Mevagissey Bay Hotel
Most comfortable bed: the one at the end of a tiring day
Least comfortable bed: the ones on rest days
Number of times we got lost: 2
Number of places with no wifi: 1
Number of days until we got sick of Full English Breakfast: 3
Number of Cornish Pasties eaten: 4, went off them quickly – too much salt and pepper
Number of Cornish Cream Teas: 3, scones too crumbly, what a mess to eat
Number of glasses of wine/beer/cider: 5 (a very dry walk!)
Number of desserts eaten: 1 (and it was shared!)
Number of times food stolen by a sea gull: 1
Number of things we lost: sun glasses
Number of things we left behind in hotel rooms: 0 – not bad for us
The most luxurious accom: Red Fox Barn, Little Fox Hotel
The squeakiest floors: Coombe Barton Inn Crackington Haven
Number of kisses Paul got at a kissing gate: 0 (cows and sheep don’t count)
Number of kisses Barbara got at a kissing gate: lost count
Number of boat harbours we passed through: 49
Number of nettle stings: how many grains of sand on a beach?
Number of Iron Age Hill Forts we crossed: 37
Number of Iron Age Hill Forts we actually recognised: 2
Number of photographs taken by Paul: 2988
Number of photographs taken by Barbara: 101

Portwrinkle to Plymouth, 23 km, 661m climbing

‘Hope is the dream of a walking man’

Our last day of walking started out not so good but got better and better as we progressed to our final destination, Plymouth. We woke to thick, low mist although the forecast was for this to clear later in the day. From the Little Fox we had to find our way back to the path, a distance of about 1km. This involved walking along a road then diagonally crossing a couple of fields. On a bright sunny day this would have been easy but in the whiteout mist I got a bit disorientated and was wandering around fields with bales of hale randomly emerging from the murk. Eventually we found a road, I wanted to go left, Barbara was sure we should go right. This time she turned out to have a better sense of direction than I did. Walking on the road was nerve racking in the white out. There was no shoulder or footpath and cars and trucks would come flying out of the mist. We could hear them coming long before they suddenly were in front of us.

The next obstacle was the gunnery ranges at Tregantle Fort (military area). If a red flag is flying it indicates the ranges are being used, all the gates are locked and an alternative path along the road must be used. No flags were flying today so we could use the off-road path through the fort. From here the path flirted with minor tarmac roads and a cliff side trail past wooden holiday chalets.

The highlight of the day came at Rame Head. This was the only climb of the day and was a gentle one. At the summit, emerging from the mist was a lovely little chapel, dedicated to St Michael. The building dates back to the 14^th century and is built on the site of an even earlier Celtic hermitage. A priest would stay here and keep a beacon burning for passing ships.

We knew we were getting closer and closer to Plymouth as more and more ships started appearing in the sea off to our right. Yachts, a tanker, a warship, ferries. The walk was very, very easy on a gentling sloping wide path, mostly through woodland. We passed a little grotto and chapel and a ruined Folly Tower – built in the 19^th century for Princess Adelaide (wife of William IV, and the women after whom Adelaide in South Australia is named). The last section to Cremyll was through Mount Edgecumbe Park with its historic house and gardens and the national camelia collection.

At Cremyll we caught the ferry across the River Tamar to Admiral’s Hard, Stonehouse, in Plymouth. This was a ten minute journey and half way across we passed from Cornwall into Devon. The river being the boundary. A ferry has been operating here since 1204. Presumably not the same boat.

So we have reached Plymouth and the walk is over. We always have mixed feelings at this stage. Happy to have accomplished our goal. Sorry it has ended. Happy to not have to put on our filthy walking shoes tomorrow. Sorry the simple rhythm of eat, walk, sleep is over. Happy to rest our weary bodies. And in about two days time sorry we can’t go and do it all over again.

It has been a really happy trip, a fun trip because we spent a lot of time doing things we really like. It was challenging at times but never too challenging. We feel quite proud to have completed over 500 km of a walk that has many sections classified as strenuous and some classified as severe.

Traditionally this section ends at the Mayflower Steps so tomorrow morning we will go and find them and then we will have officially finished. But we won’t be in our smelly shoes and walking clothes.

Looe to Portwrinkle, 13 km, 599m climbing

‘There are some walks you have to take alone’

A short and uneventful day today. Not a great deal of interest and what was of interest we probably missed in the mist. The walking was sometimes a bit monotonous (maybe it’s just us, this was our 29^th day of walking) and too much of it was done on roads, often narrow and without a shoulder or footpath.

Leaving Looe we came to the rather strange seaside hamlet of Millendreath. It was once a thriving holiday village but for a few years was largely abandoned. Many of the homes are boarded up. It seems to be reviving with two new cafes on the beach and rebranding itself as Black Beach.

At this stage there wasn’t much walking near the coast, the path being diverted due to numerous slips. It wasn’t unpleasant, we walked along quiet roads, through woodland, across grassy fields and through a pine plantation. Eventually we came to the beach at Seaton and had a coffee from our Kanteen. At low tide you can walk on the beach for the next 2 km to Downderry but unfortunately it was nearer high tide so we had to walk along some very monotonous streets of bland modern seaside housing.

Off the road and back on the Coast Path we did the only real climb of the day up onto the cliffs. The vegetation was so lush it was often hard to find and follow the path. The hedgerows, bracken, brambles, nettles etc were up to our shoulders at times. The summit was covered in mist and what should have been great views along the coast were just whiteout. We could hear, but certainly couldn’t see, the waves crashing on the rocks below.

We did see a notice screwed to a fence, from the Duchy of Cornwall, ie Prince Charles. The guts of this is that this is their private land and the access they are providing is ‘permissive pedestrian access only’ and no new’ rights of way’ are created.

In the UK rights of way are theoretically established because the owner has dedicated them to public use. However, very few paths are formally dedicated this way. If members of the public have been using a path without interference for 20 years or more the law assumes the owner has intended to dedicate it as a right of way. If a path is unused for 20 years, it does not cease to exist, the guiding principle is ‘once a highway, always a highway’.

On a public right of way you have the right to ‘pass and repass along the way’ which includes stopping to rest, admire the view or consume refreshments. You can also take with you ‘natural accompaniment’ which includes a dog. Farmers must ensure that paths are not blocked by crops and if crops are growing over the path you have every right to walk through them.

Having the permission of the Duchy we proceeded down to sea level and Portwrinkle. It has a little stone walled harbour empty of boats, a grand hotel (with ghost), a café, seaside houses, a bus stop, public toilets and a golf course. It has no charm and character at all. We stopped to eat our lunch and spent most of the time warding off a very pesky, determined gull.

A walk along the side of the golf course and inland a bit and we are at The Little Fox Hotel. A very comfortable establishment standing alone among woodland and fields. Our room is in a very nicely converted stone stables and is the largest of the thirty we have used on this adventure so far.

Today was our penultimate day so we have mixed feelings about tomorrow. Feeling a bit flat.