South West Coast Path 2009

Around the beginning of 2009 summer I have decided to take a 18 day vacation in September and attempt a long-ish distance hike outside Russia. The two candidates were the South West Coast Path in the UK and the GR10/11 paths in the Pyrenees.

I was going to walk together with my younger brother, but it was uncertain wether he could go, because university year would have started by then. He really wanted to go, but he also didn’t want to miss some iportant uni stuff. Because of this uncertainty we had to wait until the end of summer and unfortunately by brother backed out. It was too late to start worrying about the EU visa, so it was down to UK. I had 16.5 actual walking days and so I decided to walk about two thirds of the Path which is officially 1013.2 km (633.2 miles) in total. I have therefore planned to walk from Minehead to Plymouth, covering an official distance of around 660 km (410 miles) in 16.5 days.

By the way, whenever I mention the word “official”, it all comes from the official SWCP distance calculator. Simple maths shows that my average daily distance should have been 40 km (25 miles) per day.

I remain a keen follower of lightweight backpacking movement. For this hike I decided to stay close to the ultralight category. I have carried a base weight of about 3.5 kg (7.7 pounds). For a detail gear description please refer to the Gear section. Good quality cooked food is readilly avaliable everywhere along the coast and I have decided to make use of that. I still took some cooking equipment which I regretted later. For details please refer to the Nutrition section.

The Path is really well waymarked (with the acorn sign), so I did not bother with a map and a compass. However, I should mention that sometimes waymarks were missing in what seemed to me key locations. I did get lost on several occasions and my estimate of “inefficiency distance” is around 30 km. The Path sometimes has signed diversions, and I have personally encountered three.

I guess there is no “best” time to walk the Path, although summer might seem the best season to many. September had its own advantages, such as fewer walkers and empty hostel rooms. But the price I had to pay for that was the shorter time in the daylight. I would generally get up at 6, pack and maybe snack by 6.30 and by then it would be light enough to start walking. After that I only had 13 potential hiking hours, because by 19.30 it would get pretty dark. Also during the less busy seasons you are more likely to run into ferry problems, as they can run less frequently or even cease service for the winter.