Lands End to John O'Groats - Walking the South West Coast Path

One of the things I most regret about my Land's End to John O'Groats walk in the summer was my decision to walk the Lands End Trail in preference to the South West Coast Path. My plan was to walk from Land's End to St. Ives using the SWCP before heading inland to pick up the LET. My reason for this was that I thought that I would make faster progress taking a fairly direct route through Cornwall and Devon. 

This was a decision I came to regret. The LET proved to be a time consuming, frustratingly overgrown and irritatingly difficult route consisting of mostly local footpaths knitted together to form a 'trail'. There were numerous times when the path simply disappeared or didn't appear at all. On one occasion, I spent some time trying to smash my way through an overgrown path using my two trekking poles but in the end, gave up and retreated back to the previous village and road walked around the obstruction.

Even when climbing the slopes to the summit of Brown Willy on Bodmin Moor, I never located a path despite being on the route I had downloaded onto my GPS. Instead, I found myself ploughing my way through waist deep ferns as I struggled to the summit. Eventually, I gave up trying to follow it and instead followed the myriad of tiny rural lanes that criss-cross the south-west. Much as I dislike road walking, this was preferable to the frustrating struggle to stay on the LET.

In contrast, the sections of the South West Coast Path I walked were simply stunning. The first section from Land's End to St.Ives was pretty tough but traversed some magnificent scenery, including some exquisite, remote white sand beaches, accessible only to those prepared to walk some distance from the nearest road. I spent the night at the end of my first day wild camping alongside the path just after Zennor and this was my favourite campsite of the trip. Just yards from the shore, I was lulled to sleep by the sound of the waves after enjoying dinner outside my tent as I watched the sunset over the sea. Over the next few days, I switched between the SWCP and the LET but most of the good memories are of the SWCP.

I was fortunate that I was walking in one of the most memorable UK summers for many years and as I romped along the coast, I looked forward to cresting each headland as I knew that as I reached the top, I would be greeted with yet another awesome stretch of golden, sandy beach stretching for miles, the rollers breaking on the shore creating a scene more reminiscent of an idyllic Caribbean island.

In weather the UK experienced in the summer, there can't be anywhere in the world more staggeringly beautiful. By the time I reached Padstow, I decided to head inland again and left the SWCP for the last time. With the benefit of hindsight, it is a decision I would not make again.