The South West Coast Path is a magificent route that takes you right around the coastlines of Sommerset, Exmoor, North and South Devon and Cornwall, totalling up a whopping 630 miles of walking trail. 630 miles is a fair distance, so just how long would it take to walk this?

Typical walking on the South West Coast Path

The first thing to note is that this is not just a straightforward walk. Were you to do the maths, then the average person walks at 4mph, therefore it would take 158 hours to walk the whole route. If you were averaging 6 hours walking a day, then it would take a mere 26 days to get round the coast.

However, as I mentioned, this is not quite that straightforward. While the route is not prohibitively tough by any means as there is a lot of variation in the topography. The South West Coast Path sees you mainly sticking to the cliff tops, with frequent walks down into the towns and villages that are situated at the estuary mouths.

There is so much climbing, in fact, that it has been estimated that walking the whole route is equivalent to climbing Mt Everest four times over. While it will never feel like this, it should help to explain why 26 days is not enough to walk the route.

How Long does it take?

Overlooking the Carracks

Here at Macs Adventure, we have split the trip up into sections of varying lengths, so that you can walk one or two sections at a time, breaking up the full walk. We also have variations on most sections so that you can decide how long you want to take to walk the paths.

Overall, the way we have split the route up, the least amount of time we would recommend to walk the whole South West Coast Path is 45 days. This averages out at around 14 miles per day, though it should be noted that some will be longer than this and some will be shorter.

If you want to take a bit more time to walk the route, we can stretch it out to 55 days, which averages out at around 11 miles per day, which is a little easier.

By visiting the South West Coast Path page on our website, you can easily see the individual sections and get more information on each of them. Or you can visit our other blog South West Coastal Path Walks: Which one is for me?

However, you choose to break up your South West Coast Path trip, get in touch with our Specialists, who will be able to tailor-make your trip along this glorious section of English coastline.