I tell you what is harder and more daunting than actually walking the 1000km South West Coast Path, it is the writing of the summary post on your on-line travel blog / diary…
It’s taken me all of October, November and December to pluck up the enthusiasm to grab all the map images below!
It’s only the Completer-Finisher in me that made me do it today, a snowy cold day when I was supposed to be walking a section of the Calderdale Way (local, within my Covid lockdown Tier…) but I got up late, missed my bus to Ripponden, and had a sausage sandwich before setting to, and making myself do it…
I’m back in work (an actual job!) come Monday and suspect that means a return to the normal lengthy (sometime years at a time!) hiatus between posts as a result of returning to the IT grindstone!
So – as normal this is just the day by day route from the Garmin watch, with a few photos alongside. I’m not going to write about the best bits here, suffice to say it is an amazing walk. That said – I did write a short piece for the South West Coast Path Association Completer’s Blog here though.
Also included just below – is a stat dump / day summary based on my slightly A about F route planning impacted mainly by Covid meaning I did it in 2 parts Poole to Plymouth, then Minehead to Plymouth.
The route is at times out of sequence geographically, as I moved things around to suit me as I walked. There was rarely a really good reason for this looking back, but at the time I’m sure it made sense.
Probably I cut some days short if I was finding it tough and ran other days long if I was enjoying it. Maybe a bus time was more convenient in one direction or the other, where I worked out I could do a section sans-pack with a bit of jiggling about. Couple of times I probably got up later than I wanted to having had a few pints the night before to keep me warm in my tent….
Altogether though, I’m confident I walked every inch! The SWCP is 1014km, and I walked in total (the distance on the watch doesn’t lie!) which will include the wander to / from my campsite / hotel etc about 1124km and apparently it took me c337 hours. I tend to leave the watch running, and don’t use ‘auto-stop’ when it senses you are stood still. So that 337 includes all the time at the top of a cove breathing heavily, ‘admiring the view’ or time lost rooting around in my pack for ’emergency sugar’.
Anyroad – a fantastic experience. If you get a chance walk some of it, or all of it but walk it.
(note the below are just screenshots – you can’t interact with them…)
Day 1: (Poole to Plymouth Direction).
Day 2:
Day 3:
Day 4:
Day 5:
Day 6:
Day 7:
Day 8:
Day 9:
Day 10:
Day 11:
Day 12:
Day 13:
Day 14:
Day 15:
Day 16:
Day 17:
Day 18:
Day 19: (Now Walking Minehead > Plymouth Direction)
Day 20:
Day 21:
Day 22:
Day 23:
Day 24:
Day 25:
Day 26:
Day 27:
Day 28:
Day 29:
Day 30:
Day 31:
Day 32:
Day 33:
Day 34:
Day 35:
Day 36:
Day 37: (Something odd up with the Pace calculator below…)
Day 38:
Day 39:
Day 40:
Day 41:
Day 42:
Day 43:
Day 44:
Day 45:
Day 46:
Day 47:
Day 48:
Day 49:
Day 50:
Day 51:
Day 52:
