My obsession with the South West Coast Path has only been steadily growing since we found the beginning and the end of the long distance trail.

I bought a guide book and I’ve been plotting and planning how, when and where we can walk the different sections. Because although, just recently, I managed to get Mr C to finally admit he might have an inkling (albeit with great reluctance) to join me on this adventure, it’s not going to be eight week odyssey for us. This is more of a ’let’s go and see which bit of path we can add to the map today’ type thing.

That being the case, it’s up to me to document each section to make sure at the end we have all the jigsaw pieces that fit together to make up a successful 630 miles of walking. (Must stop repeating that figure, the huge number of miles doesn’t help with keeping Mr C on board.)

So, it seems only right to start the adventure at the very beginning of the South West Coast Path, otherwise known as SWCP (in my head, standing for “so we’re crazy people”). I discussed already how we stumbled over the very start of the path with its big statue and its arrow pointing you on to further destinations.

At that time, the national trails were just a notion to me and an even more remote idea for Mr C, so we just followed the path for a kilometre or so.

We had some great views of the sea, and walked in the shadow of a giant hill until the path disappeared into some woods. It was a nice sunny day, so we weren’t that bothered about the woods. Turning back, how could we have known that the seeds of the obsession had been planted?