The Walk of a Lifetime

The South West Coast Path is perhaps the UK’s ultimate challenge for the long distance hiker - a 630-mile adventure around the coastline of the southwest peninsula.

In terms of walking days, a fast walker can complete it in around 30 days, but a more leisurely pace with time to stop to see some of the sights just off the path is between 7 & 8 weeks. As few people have enough time to be able to walk it in one go, most split it between several holidays and complete the path over several years - see the short break button for ideas about how to split the path into smaller chunks.

No matter how long it takes you complete the path it is a stunning achievement, and for most the walk of a lifetime.

To enable you to easily plan your own walk, we’ve split the path into 52 sections, each of which covers a typical day’s walk. You'll find these on the Section Guides tab, above this text. These do not aim to replace the guidebooks, but instead give you a flavour of what each section is like, highlights and points of interest along the path, accommodation along with ways of making it shorter or longer to suit your walking speed.

If you are new to the Coast Path, a key tip is don’t plan to walk as far than you would normally. It is a challenging route, with in total over 115,000 feet (35,000 metres) of up and down, and it is far better to be ahead of schedule and have time to explore, than having to rush to reach your planned overnight stop.

Beware that walking the South West Coast Path is addictive. Many people start off by doing day walks, or a short break and then get hooked, and come back time and again until they finish it off. To recognise the achievement of those people who have completed the whole path we've created an online 'Hall of Fame' where people can share their experiences of the walk. Anyone who joins the list, will receive an exclusive cloth badge and a Completion certificate.