Another coastal walker

Karen Penny is setting off on a 20,000 mile walk around the coastline of Britain and Ireland, including over twenty islands in that time. She set off from Swansea on Monday 14th January, and plans for the walk to take her four years, averaging 15 miles a day, every day. She is raising money for Alzheimer's Research UK.

For more information, see:
bbc.co.uk
Sky News

I am slightly puzzled by the mileage; the coastline of the mainland can be well walked in 4,000-4,500 miles, and my own rather extended walk (e.g. by not take ferries) was 6,200 miles. Ireland should add about another 2,000 - 2,500 miles. Still, I daresay all will become clear, and I wish Karen the best of luck: walking for four years is an amazing aim in itself, and it's perfectly possible to walk 20,000 miles in that time.

Combining the coastlines of Britain and Ireland in one walk (obviously with a ferry or flight between them) is becoming increasingly common. I think the first person to do this feat was John Wesley, but more people are following in his footsteps. I'd quite like to do Ireland one day, but I probably won't get the chance to do it for many years.

One other note: my list of coastal walkers is very out of date. I hope to update it soon, and thanks to everyone who has sent me information on coastal walkers. There are lots of them about.

Another coastal walker

It has been some time since I last updated my page on coastal walkers, so here are the latest additions:

Adam Short set off from Southampton in 2014, and is doing what must be a first: not only is he camping wild whilst walking the coast, but he is also using a pack raft to cross rivers. He has a website at http://uk-coastal-trek.com/aboutadam.asp, with regular updates taking place on his Facebook page

On the 1st May 2015 Steve Cook set off from East Grinstead, walking down to the coast at Brighton to start his anti-clockwise walk around the coast. So far he has reached Dunbar in Scotland. He has a blog at http://www.walkthekingdom.co.uk/the-walk-in-detail/, and is walking in aid of the Drug Free Kids program.

A lady named Melita is currently walking the coast in sections. She set off from London Bridge in January 2013 and has walked the south coast as far as Plymouth in Devon, and the east coast as far as Hedon. She has a blog at http://mgctblog.com/ .

Jimmy Hudson is currently walking the coastline of Scotland in sections; he started from Brewick-on-Tweed on the 3rd August 2011, and he is currently in Drimnin. He has a blog at http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/jimmyhudson/1/tpod.html.

Rosemary Fretwell and another person are walking the coast in sections. They set off from Bognor in 1998 and are currently on the west coast of England. Their blog is at http://leftatbognor.blogspot.co.uk/.

A group of men are walking Scotland's coast in sections: details of their endeavour can be seen at http://www.walkingscotlandscoast.com. They have currently reached Armadale.

If you know of anyone else who has done, or is doing, the walk, please let me know.

Another coastal walker

Last year was perhaps a record for coastal walkers, with several people walking the coast in one go or in sections.

However the last couple of months have been fairly quiet. David Higgins finished his walk in July, meaning Peter Hill was left attempting the coast in one go.

Luckily last week I received an email about another coastal walker, Alexander Ellis-Roswell. He started walking the coast on the third of August, and is raising money for the RNLI. He is camping out as much as possible, and is currently in Bognor Regis.

He can be followed on Facebook, twitter, and he has a fundraising page.

He is expecting to take around two years to walk 6,500 miles.

The best of luck to him.

Who was the first person to walk the coast of Britain

Oh his Facebook page, Craigs walk round Britain, Craig asks if John Merrill was really the first person to walk around the coast of the UK. It's an interesting question, and first we need some definitions:

1) The 'coast of the UK' is the mainland of England, Wales and Scotland.
2) The walk has to have stuck as close to the 'sea' as was practical.
3) It would have had to have visited the vast majority of settlements on the coast.

I've given this some thought in the past, and think that John probably was the first.

Firstly, you have the problem of time and resources to do such a tramp. Any such walk takes a practical minimum of nine months. Both time and money are needed, and the amount of people with both of these in past times were few.

Secondly you have legalities such as footpaths, which formally came into being in the 20th Century. Before then, large tracts of land would have been forbidden to walkers, limiting access.

Thirdly you need maps; again, OS maps really became commonly available in the 1900s. Without maps, such a walk would have been much more difficult, and would have very much depended on local knowledge.

Fourthly, any such tour would probably have been publicised, either by the writing of a book or other means. I've never been able to find any references to such a walk.

People will have travelled around Britain, visiting towns and keeping mainly to roads - for instance Pennant's tour of Scotland in 1769, or Johnson's tours of Scotland six years later. But none would have stuck 'to the coast' as it is now, or were on foot.

If anyone knows of any potential candidates, please let me know.

Another coastal walker

In what has to be a bumper season for coastal walkers, there is another name to add to the roll of honour.

In 2012 Jez Nemeth started walking the entire coast of Britain, which he estimates will take five years. Unusually (and rather spectacularly) he is filming the entire coast path and recording people's connections to the coast as he goes.

His website detailing his exploits can be found at www.coast-line.co.uk, whilst an example film can be found at www.coast-line.co.uk/2012/12/04/film-41/

His site also includes a list of people walking the Welsh Coast Path, which includes many names not shown below.

Good luck to Jez, and I look forward to feelings of nostalgia as I watch his videos.

And then there were four...

Thanks to Google, I have found details of a fourth coastal walker.

John Rayment set off from Tilbury on the 1st August 2012, and hopes to complete his stroll by 31st October 2013. He is raising money for three Parkinson's charities, and has a Facebook page with many photos of his walk, and a charity page. Rather sensibly he has taken the winter off, and restarts from Glandyfi in March.

In less than a month there will be four separate coastal walkers on the go, along with many more sectional walkers. After a rather fallow 2011, it is great to see more people enjoying our coast.

I have updated my list of all coastal walkers to include all the latest walkers.

Another coastal walker.

I dunno, I wait ages for news of a coastal walker, and then three come along at once...

Many thanks to Zoe Wathen for telling me about Christian, an ex-soldier who set off from Blackpool on the 8th August last year, and is currently approaching Southampton. He is raising money for Help for Heroes, and is sleeping rough most of the time; so far he has spent nearly 200 nights without accommodation.

He has a website at Christian Around Britain, and is on Facebook. His Twitter account is @ChristianNock1.

I think we can all agree that it is a brilliant cause, and an exceptional achievement.

(I should also point out Zoe's own blog about her walking exploits at www.wathwalk.com).

Coastwalk: vertical distances

In a previous post, I posited that pedometers are an inaccurate way of measuring distances on a walk, especially if hills are involved, due to the reduction in stride length as you ascend and descend.

In a comment on the post, bernieT36 asked a good question: whether the vertical component of any walk would account for this. In other words, the hypotenuse of a triangle (the ground really walked) is longer than the some route when measured on a map.

I thought I'd write a quick post to say why I think the effect is negligible.

Firstly, although there are some very hilly days on the coast (an example being between Bude and Hartland on the South West Coast Path), many are also fairly flat with little ascent or descent to be done. Indeed, some walks in Suffolk, Essex and Kent had total ascent and descent of a few feet over many miles.

The long, steady drag

Now for some maths (yay!).

As an example, let us take a fictitious walk up a mountain from sea level, with a total ascent of 2 kilometres over 10 kilometres horizontal distance.

For simplicity, this post assumes that all ascent is cumulative; that is, an ascent followed by a short descent and another ascent, equates to the sum of the ascents and descents.

The vertical component is not done in one go, as if the horizontal distance is walked, and then a ladder climbed. If this was the case, it would make a total distance of 12km. Instead, the vertical component is shared with the horizontal component.

Using basic trigonometry, the distance walked (the hypotenuse of the triangle) can be calculated as the square root of  the horizontal distance squared plus the vertical distance squared.

Therefore: walked distance  = sqrt ((10^2)+(2^2)).

This comes out as 10.19 km. Therefore the vertical distance accounted for not even a fifth of a kilometre on such an extreme walk.

Arcs

Ah, I hear people cry, but hills are not a straight line!

So what happens if we walk a curve instead of a straight line? For simplicity I will choose an impossibly steep and long walk - a walk with 10 kilometres of ascent over 10 kilometres of horizontal distance. Using the formula above, the straight-line distance between the two points is sqrt ((10^2)+(10^2)), or 14.14 km. So even in this extreme case, the vertical component has added far less than half the horizontal component.

If we do this as an arc of a quarter of a circle, we get (2*π*10) * (90/360), which is 15.7 km.

Even in this artificially harsh example, the vertical component adds only just over half of the original distance.

Summary:

Hopefully his goes towards indicating mathematically and practically that the vertical component of a walk has relatively little effect on the distance walked, if not the effort put in!

Coastwalk distances

On his website, Tommy B. claims that his walk around the coastline of Britain will be 7,000 miles. To me, that sounds on the long side.

So how long is the coastline? The first paper on fractals, a massively useful branch of mathematics, was entitled 'How long is the coastline of Britain?'. In the paper, Benoît Mandelbrot states that the length of the coast increases to infinity the closer you examine the detail. Measure it on a roadmap, and it would be shorter than if measured on a 1:50,000 map, which in turn is shorter than on a 1:25,000 map. On the ground, it would involve measuring around every pebble and rock; a near infinite length. The picture of Loch Ewe below shows the problem - the coast is never straight.

The Ordnance Survey claim that the length of the mainland (excluding islands) is 11,075 miles; the British Cartographic Survey come up with a similar figure, with more details. As it is often impossible to walk along the Mean High Water, what distance can we expect to walk?

Most people who have walked the coast have taken ferries, and that makes a journey of about 4,500 miles. This can be reduced by taking a few more ferries (for instance Ardrossan to Brodick, then Lochranza to Claonaig), but 4,500 seems the norm. Without taking ferries, and leaving out islands, it seems to be about 6,000 miles. I got up to near 6,300 miles only be doing a couple of island (Anglesey, Arran) and walking some tidal rivers further than the first crossing point.

In the book about his 1978 walk, John Merrill claims he walked 6,824 miles, measured using a pedometer. Whilst I was on my walk, I got a phone call from one of the other walkers that year, Graham. He had been using his GPS to measure distances, and noted that the distances in Merrill's book were large overestimates. I did the same test with my GPS, and came to the same conclusion.

Since then, I have done several walks with both pedometer and satellite navigation to see how they match up. Whilst on the level both correspond remarkably well with the distance measured on a map, whereas on hilly terrain the pedometer generally overestimates compared to the GPS and map.

The reason for the difference is simple: a pedometer relies on the concept of an average stride length. It is easy to maintain a similar stride length on the flat, but it is harder to do this on hills, where strides tend to shorten. Although a small effect, it adds up considerably over the course of a day, week or year,

Since my return, I measured my route electronically on the map, and think the figure of 6,200 to 6,300 miles is realistic for my route.

At the end of the day, the distance walked is somewhat irrelevant. Bragging about distance or speed is not the point of the walk: just achieving the feat should be enough. After all, under forty people have done the walk in one go; less people than have made it to the top of Everest in one day.

You are only competing against yourself, not others.

Another coastal walker

In a response to my previous post, Martin kindly informed me of another coastal walker who is about to set off on the trip.

Tommy B. is a young lad who plans to embark from Eastbourne sometime this week, walking clockwise. He is raising money for the Sussex Air Ambulance and is hoping to walk 7,000 miles. 

He has a very well-designed website - Shoelace Express (a great name, by the way, one I wish I'd thought of) - a Facebook page, and he can be found on Twitter at shoelaceexpress. 

Good luck to Tommy.

I don't know. You wait a year for a coastal walker to come along, and then two set off within a fortnight. As usual, I am very jealous. My list has 37 people completing the walk in one go (i.e. non-sectionally) since John Merrill completed in 1978; I am bound to have missed a few, but I wonder how long it will be before we reach 50? 

More coastal walkers

I have news on three more coastal (or part-coastal) walkers:

On 26th January 2013, Craig Adams set off from Saltburn on a 6,500-7,000 miles clockwise walk around the coast. Already he's had to deal with deep snow on the Cleveland cliffs and ankle problems. He is trying to do the trip on very little money; he is taking a ukulele for busking, and would appreciate any offers of accommodation from folk living on the coast. He is raising money for Macmillan Cancer Support.

You can follow his progress on his Wordpress site or on Facebook.

Whilst not technically within the remit of this blog, it would be churlish of me not to mention Jannina Tredwell, who is starting a 3,500 mile walk around the coast of Ireland in February 2013, raising money for the Tusk charity. She completed the British coastal walk in 2006. You can follow her progress at her Wordpress site.

Finally, Nick Noakes is going to be walking the Norfolk and Suffolk coasts starting from Sutton Bridge on the 31st March. He is walking in memory of his son, who he lost last year.

Good luck to all three of them on their endeavours. I am rather jealous.

Katherine Talbot-Ponsonby

I have just read with sadness that Katherine (Spud) Talbot-Ponsonby died in January last year. In 1994 Spud walked the coastline of Britain with her dog, Tess, sleeping in a beat-up motorhome. Her book about the experience, 'Two feet, four paws' is by far the best book about the walk, and was the direct inspiration for my own walk eight years later.

Her follow-up book, 'Small steps with heavy hooves' is an excellent and poignant description of her attempt to walk back to health after a cancer diagnosis. It has recently been reissued as 'Small Steps with Paws and Hooves'.

I never met Spud, but I had the honour to talk to her by phone on a couple of occasions. She was at all times charming, and  answered my questions with sparkling good humour. I thoroughly recommend both of her books.

Charity fraud?

Back in November I wrote a blog post about Matthew Brown, an ex-military helicopter pilot who was walking around the coast of Britain for charity. The claim was that he had already raised £500,000 for Help for Heroes, and was aiming for a 9,500 mile walk.

It sounded like an incredible objective and the sum raised seemed rather large, especially so early on in his trip. However I know of at least one other coastal walker who has raised similar sums, and the charity is particularly popular at the moment, so it was certainly within the bounds of possibility. Tonight I found this article on the BBC website, which makes it look as though the whole thing was one gigantic fraud. Even his claim of having served as a pilot in Afghanistan and Iraq appears to have been a particularly unsophisticated lie.

Later in November he was sentenced to 32 weeks in jail for pretending to be a doctor in Scarborough in order to gain free hotel accommodation. It was not the first time that he had been jailed for such a deception. Perversely, it was he publicity for his coastal walk that proved his downfall - a member of the hotel staff saw his picture in the paper and alerted the police.

There is much to be said about this: firstly, if it is a fraud, then using the Help for Heroes name makes it doubly sickening. Secondly, it makes it all the harder for others who are attempting to do a similar thing to raise money for charity; I had some doubt cast on my own walk whilst I was doing it, and I am glad that I documented it so comprehensively (on average I took three photos a mile, which would be hard to fake). Thirdly, it casts all charity fundraising in a bad light.

But more importantly, are his actions a sign of madness or nastiness? Should I feel hatred for someone who is so out of kilter with the norms of society, or sorry for him? What has happened to make him perform such desperate acts?

I have always taken the entries on my website in good faith, despite a few doubts about another recent entrant into the list of coastal walkers. Perhaps I should try to be slightly more sceptical and try to verify first in future. Then again, that is not really the purpose of the list.

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.

Sometimes I lose my faith in human nature.

Fort instance, see this article on the BBC News website. Vandals on the Isle of Wight have punctured an inflatable RIB lifeboat seventeen times.

Why? What sort of mindless idiots vandalise a lifeboat, for Christ's sake?

I hope that the miscreant(s) get a suitable punishment, ideally something with a heavy social aspect.

Paddles around Britain

Ian and Julia have given themselves an interesting little project - to paddle in the sea at every seaside town and village in Britain. Their blog at http://www.paddlesaroundbritain.me.uk/ details their efforts.

They have only just started, so a few places in North Devon, North Wales and Dorset have so far been completed. It must be a great way to see the coast of Britain.

Ice creams are optional.

The Dowland Landslips

A Jurassic wilderness

Sencan and I did a walk from Charmouth to Seaton on Saturday, following the South West Coast Path westwards across the border from Dorset into Devon, along part of the Jurassic Coast.

It was a superb walk, and one that is well worth doing. The traditional images of coastal walks are of endless, white sands, or of soaring cliffs. Yet less salubrious images also spring to my mind: endless Essex mudflats and burnt-out cars next to boarded-up houses.

One image that does not spring to mind, especially in respect to coasts, is woodland. Trees block views and can, after a while, feel endless and oppressive. The second part of Saturday's walk between Lyme Regis and Seaton passed through an area called the Dowland Landslips, an amazing and possibly unique stretch of the British coastline.

Sencan and yet another climb

It is hard to find anywhere on the south coast that is unspoilt, yet the Dowlands Landslips offer six miles of walking that most matches that description. You cannot go down to the sea, or up the cliffs inland, meaning that your only way out lies ahead, or back the way you came.

The area was formed by a series of landslips down to the sea. On Christmas Day, 1839 an estimated 800 million tons of rock fell in one such slip.

The resultant landscape is stunning; large chunks of rock stick jaggedly out of the ground, and in places waves of undulating rock lead down towards the sea. There are also obvious signs of more recent, smaller slips. This geological instability has stopped any development of the area, and wildlife has taken over. The path can be hard to walk, and is constantly climbing and falling, if only be a few feet at a time. The clay was slippery on Saturday, a fact made worse by the carpet of brown and orange leaves underfoot.

Aview out to sea from the landslips

Despite this, it was a superb stretch of path. The sea bursts into view unexpectedly, offering tantalising glimpses of deep blue water. At other times the only indication of the sea is the distant sound of crashing waves. This wonderful area sometimes seems like something out of Jurassic Park - you would not be surprised to come face-to-face with a dinosaur. It is a surprisingly hard but ultimately rewarding walk.

Another coastal walker

Military helicopter pilot Matthew Brown is currently walking 10,500 miles around the coastline of Britain and Ireland to raise money for Help For Heroes. Details can be found on the bmycharity website, and he has an active twitter feed. Apparently he has already raised over £500,000.

He is planning to finish late next year, and walking up to 35 miles a day. He set off from Hull on the 28th June and is currently in Cornwall. An article about him can be found on the Colchester Daily Gazette website.

It will be an amazing feat. If he is walking every day without taking days off, then it is possible that he could break John Westley's record for the longest continuous walk in Britain - 9,500 miles.

This has been a bumper year for coastal walkers, with at least five people having done all or parts of England, Scotland and Wales, and another three people having started sectional walks. I thought it was a busy year in 2003, when three of us were doing it!

A coastal footpath for England - part 2

My previous post about a coastal footpath that had been in my 'draft' folder for a few months. I decided to finally publish it when the proposals for the first section of new English coastal path - from the Isle of Portland to Lulworth Cove- were published on the NaturalEnglland website.

Since I was negative about the legislation, I thought I would take a detailed look at the proposals. The first thing to note is that they have sensibly split this stretch of coast under consideration into different sections.

My first comment is about the odd start-point of the area - Rufus Castle, which is halfway down the eastern coast of the Isle of Portland. Many of the documents state that follow-on work such as realigning the South West Coast Path national trail would only occur when the rest of the island was completed, but surely it would have made sense to do the whole of the island, instead of just the part immediately nearest the Olympic sailing locations? This decision seems exceptionally odd, and makes this look all like an attempt at creating an Olympic legacy.

Perhaps the best improvements will be made on the northerneastern side of the Isle of Portland. New footpaths will allow access to the low ground on the northern side of the island, an ex-military area. It is undoubtedly a good addition, and includes the Merchants Incline (an old railway line). This change enables a circumnavigation of the island without having to retrace your steps down to Chesil Cove and Chiswell. There are some downsides; some fine views over Chesil Beach shall be lost from the high points at Verne Yeates.

Other changes are generally positive: converting the old railway trackbed that runs alongside the A354 and Chesil Beach will provide a slightly quieter route than the existing route along the road. However, the trackbed is currently walkable for much of the route, and could lose a great deal of its character if surfaced over - after all, there is a road and pavement just a few yards away. Fortunately it looks as though this will not happen (see 6.1.1.13) in the documents.

However, it does seem that most of the route further east just comprise detail changes to the existing South West Coast Path. Indeed, some of their changes actually mark my GPS logs recorded from walking on the ground, showing that these alterations are already in common usage. The formalisation of the footpath may be necessary, but is expensive new legislation required for it?

Another point I like is that in places they are not going to show a defined path on the ground in some places (e.g. WBY-SO71 above Furzy Cliff), but just waymarkers pointing you in the direction. I was fearful that they were going to turn this stretch into something akin to a motorway, but that does not appear to be the case.

So, all in all it is not as bad as I feared. However, neither do the proposed changes really set my world alight. The changes off the Isle of Portland are basically very minor, and nothing that could not be achieved by other means. The only great advantage of the legislation seems to be the 'spreading room', and this is an area of coast where it could really be useful due to the high rate of erosion. Again, though, is it worth the cost? It should be noted that the Scottish and Welsh governments have not gone for this gold-plated approach.

The latest edition of 'Trail' magazine has an article stating that much of the open access land is not being walked as much as expected. If so, then this is a real shame, especially given the cost. Many beautiful areas of the country have been made accessible by the open access legislation, and that is a good thing. Unfortunately this initial stretch of coastline does not give the public access to any new scenic areas.

It is well worth having a look at the documents on the NaturalEngland website. The real test of the usefulness of this legislation will be in the next stretches of the coast to be looked at:

• Whitehaven to Allonby in Cumbria;
• Durham, including Sunderland and Hartlepool;
• Sheringham to Happisborough Common in Norfolk;
• Dover to Ramsgate in Kent;
• Minehead to Stert Point in Somerset

I shall wait and see, with hope.

A coastal footpath for England

The previous Labour Government pushed a bill through Parliament enabling the creation of a coastal path in England. When implemented, this will allow access to large parts of the coastline that are currently inaccessible. The scheme is estimated to cost £50 million, with the first stretch opening in 2012. Unfortunately it looks as though this scheme will be amongst the current Government's cuts. Yet I am not too bothered.

Why? Firstly, the £50 million would not be spent all at one time; perhaps the project can be put on the back-burner for a couple of years, with minimal spending. Negotiations with landowners could be going on in the meantime.

Secondly, the Labour Government hardly acted speedily in implementing the act. In comparison, the Welsh and Scottish governments have made rapid progress with their less ambitious scheme.

Thirdly, I believe that the focus of the act is all wrong. There are many sections of coast that deserve better access - one of my favourites would be from Watchet to East Quantoxhead in Somerset, which would connect the South West Coast Path with the paths leading east to Highbridge. Another would be the spectacular stretch of coast south from Berwick towards Bamburgh. There is no coastal access in these areas.

Instead, the first section is planned to be the 'Olympic Way' in Weymouth, which is scheduled to open in time for the Olympics in 2012 (see the Natural England website). The stretch will run from Portland to Lulworth, which already has a very good coastal path. So instead of picking a useful section that would allow brand new access to the coast, they decide to upgrade an existing path. It was truly a terrible decision.

Fourthly, I am concerned about the costings. Remember Right-to-roam? It was scheduled to cost only £28 million, but the eventual costs came out at £69 million. The National Audit Office (NAO) criticised the organisations responsible. It looks as though there will not be a pilot coastal scheme, which was one of the NAO's main complaints about Right to Roam. Whilst there is an obvious conflict between pilot schemes and speedy work, I do not trust the current £50 million costing.

Compare this with the Welsh Government's speedy (and relatively cheap) work on their path.

The English bill allows a movable corridor to be created around the coast meaning that as erosion occurs, the path automatically moves. This is in contrast to Wales and Scotland who have gone for a much more ordinary scheme. In this, erosion will be dealt with when and if it occurs. It strikes me that negotiating a simple path with landowners is far simpler than trying to negotiate a movable margin.

As someone who has walked the coast, I am guardedly in favour of the new legislation. Right-to-roam has been a success from walkers' points of view. However, I am concerned about both the cost and implementation of the coastal scheme.