I divided the walk into three sections. There are discrepancies in the distances between various points which depend on how they are calculated and by whom. County council signs with distances do not always tally with National Trust signs with distances.
Section one was Dover to Christchurch. I walked this between August 30th and September 16th.
In this section I walked 274.5 miles.
Section two was Christchurch to St Just [Lands End Youth Hostel]. This I walked between September 17th and October 7th. In this section I walked 400.5 miles.
Section three was from St Just to Mnehead. This I walked between October 8th and October 22nd. In this section I walked 257 miles.
This makes a total of 932 miles walked - and it feels like it!
There were a small number of sections which I did not walk as follows and explanations are included.
1. On Thursday September 2nd I had mistakenly calculated that Eastbourne to Worthing was 25 miles but I must have had a senior moment as it turned out to be over 40 miles and included Beachy Head and the Seven Sisters, both of which are strenuous walks. I walked from Eastbourne to Newhaven and then caught the bus to Brighton [12 miles] and then from Portsea-by-Sea to Worthing [8 miles]. In this section I still walked the distance planned it was just that I had miscalculated the distance by 20-25 miles!
2. In Devon on Tuesday September 28th there was no ferry from Bantham to Bigbury-on-Sea and the River Erme was unsafe to ford due to the weather conditions. So I took a taxi to Mothecombe [14 miles by road] and continued from Mothecombe to Noss Mayo. Again there was no ferry from Noss Mayo so I got a taxi to Wembury and did not walk the mile or so from Warren Point to Wembury. This was a total of 5 miles of coast path not walked.
3. On Friday October 1st I had a long journey and by the time I got to Gorran Haven it was clear I would not have enough daylight to safely go round Dodman Point in the fading daylight so I took the gated lane over the headland - this was about one mile less in distance.
4. At Newquay on Monday October 11th I was staying at Cubert a village to the south of Newquay. There was no ferry over The Gannell so I was collected from Crantock and on the next day I was taken to the Coast Path on the north side of Newquay at Porth. This meant that I did not walk the Newquay peninsular. This is a distance of about 5 miles.
5. On Wednesday October 13th when I got to Tintagel there was not enough time to walk in daylight to Boscastle. Had the ferry from Padstow started at 7.00am rather than 8.00am I would have done it. This was a distance of 3 miles.
6. Monday 18th and Tuesday 19th of October. To get to the accomodation I had to walk to the north side of Braunton, a distance of about 2 miles from the Coast Path and then the next monring I walked four miles to re-join the coast path in a different direction. This meant that I missed six miles of the Coast Path around Braunton Marshes and Saunton Sand Dunes much of which is a restricted military area - the area missed was the same as the additional distance I had to walk so balanced itself out.
There is therefore about 14 miles that I did not walk, 1 & 6 being discounted. However, As I stated that I was going to walk 900 miles and have walked about 930 I don't feel bad about this at all!
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