Walking round Wales: The Plan

Over 1500 km round a whole country is maybe not the mildest start for this blog but I’ll be doing it at a mild pace. I want to walk round Wales, following the Wales Coast Path and the Offa’s Dyke Path over the next few years. Learning and writing about the country, the language, the nature and the people, the history and the culture. There is more than sheep and sea to it, surely?

I had a big birthday this year and I’ve been dreaming of walking one of those long-distance trails for some time. And the funding for the planned New Zealand trip was not quite in place, so how about walking round Wales, I thought. Let’s go big: The Wales Coast Path is the longest waymarked trail in the UK – 1,400 km (870 miles) and the first uninterrupted trail around the entire coast of a country. Combined with the Offa’s Dyke Path, roughly following the English-Welsh border, you can walk around the whole country using maintained and waymarked paths. The Offa’s Dyke Path – Chepstow to Prestatyn – is 285 km (177 miles), making the round trip a total of 1685 km (1047 miles). That’s a good goal for my new decade. And it’s a bit like New Zealand, isn’t it, Wales – with the rugged coasts and the sheep?

HOW AND WHY?

My plan is to walk the route in sections of roughly 15 to 25 km/day over however long it’ll take, probably a few years. (Sorry, after 15 years in the UK, I still refuse to do miles but it’s roughly 9.5 to 16 miles for you who refuse to do kilometres.) I am doing this for pleasure – for the love of walking in beautiful countryside and taking a few photos along the way. And at the end of the walk, I like to eat well and have a good pint or a glass of wine or two. This is not about testing my limits or pushing myself although I will naturally welcome the health benefits. And wouldn’t mind having a trimmer backside and thighs at the end of it either.

But it means that I will be doing this at my own comfortable pace and not to a schedule. For example, I got a cold after I had done the first section from Chester in September and rather than force myself out for a miserable long walk on the next day just because that was the plan, I decided to spend a couple of relaxed days exploring Chester. And then when I was better I continued the walk according to the plan from Llandudno where I had booked my next base. So, I have already missed a couple of sections after just getting started, but will return to them at a later stage. However, the plan is still to do the route mainly in an orderly manner.

I don’t have a car and only want to carry a daypack with me so I intend to always have an overnight base from where I will be travelling to the start of each section using public transport and then back to the base. I will be overnighting in B&Bs and similar places, so no camping in the wild for me. I’m not averse to the idea of occasional camping in the summer in a campsite though. Maybe. The camping gear bought for a music festival in 2008 could use some airing.

So, if I’d average 20 km a day, with the total of 1685 km, the walk would take me 85 days. If I’d average 4 days a month, it would take me about 21 months. It will probably take longer. It is likely that I won’t continue this walk until next spring but there will be other walks and trips to write about meanwhile!

WHAT

You will not find detailed descriptions of the route from this blog. There are already maps and books and websites that do this way better than I ever could (see below). Instead, on my journey I want to learn more about Wales, the country, the people, the language as well as its culture, history and nature, food and drink, and share it with you. I will write about things that I see on my walks that intrigue me and that I want to know more about – whether it’s people, buildings or nature. But I will also write about practical things that may be of use to other people who wish to do the walks: things that I wished I’d known before, what I liked, what I didn’t like and recommendations for comfort stops, pubs, cafes and so on.

PRACTICALITIES AND INFORMATION

I have used these sources to help me plan my walks so far:

Walking the Wales Coast Path by Paddy Dillon (Cicerone travel guides)

The official website for the Wales Coast Path: http://www.walescoastpath.gov.uk

The official website for the Offa’s Dyke Path: http://www.nationaltrail.co.uk/offas-dyke-path

I will be using distances from the official WCP website in km (and miles in brackets when I can be bothered).

Any responsible writer would recommend you to always have a good map with you. So far, I’ve only had a proper walking map for a couple of the sections I’ve done and was (mostly) fine following the route markers and the directions and small maps from the guidebook. And the map still did not really help me in the bit where the route marker post was missing. But that may be because I’m still not very experienced in map-reading. You might think that following a coastal path, you can’t get lost, just keep the sea on the right side. Trust me, you can.