Soon, we may all be able to walk through Grimsby Docks...

... or perhaps not.


The following quote from the BBC website is appearing oh-so often and is starting to annoy me.

Walkers are set to be able to walk around the whole coast of Great Britain

Because, of course, I never walked around the coast of Great Britain, and neither did all of these people.

I am in favour of increasing access to the coast. I am not necessarily in favour of spending at least £50 million in a bureaucratic chase to create an over-engineered motorway. Part of the fun for me was to find routes around the places where there were no paths.

Of course, it will not be a complete path around the entire coast. Military ranges will necessarily have restrictions, as will docks, refineries, gardens, caravan, parks and all manner of other obstacles. These exemptions will have major effects on whether or not long diversions inland will be needed.

I did a quick analysis of the initial stretch of path planned around Weymouth Bay and blogged about it here and here. The plans were not as bad as I had feared, but the proof will be in the pudding.