My turn again this year and as my brother John Morgan has just returned to Newquay, Cornwall where he previously lived on and off for 25 years before settling in Avoca for the past 18 years. It seemed like a good idea to visit him and his family and do a walk somewhere in the UK and be back in time for the birth of our 4th grandchild to Tom and Kerri-Ann.
In deciding which walk to do I bought eight Cicerone books on hiking in the UK - Offa’s Dyke Path in Wales, the Southern upland Way, to name just a few, but it seemed silly to go all the way the Cornwall to visit John, then choof off again somewhere else in the UK to do a hike, when Devon and Cornwall are home to one of the most famous hikes in the UK - the South West Coast Path otherwise name as the SWCP, a 1000k hike around the coast of Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, passing through Land’s End. So decision made.
I’ve chosen to do the first half of the walk from Minehead to Falmouth, about 500k in 24 days, averaging 22k per day, stopping in Newquay for a few days after day 14. It sounded easy, just a walk around teh coast with no high Alps or snow bound passes. But nothing could be further from the truth for although there’e no “mountains” higher than 300 metres on the SWCP, it is an arduous walk up and down steep valleys and inlets, sometimes doing collectively a 3,000 metre day - about 1500 metre’s in total ascent and 1,50 metres in total descent. That’s a tough 22k day.