What the guide books don't tell you

We read a few books about the South West Coast Path before we came over to walk it. We bought a guide book with directions and descriptions of the the path as well as other useful bits of information. BUT....

What the books don't tell you is how hard it is to organize the logistics of getting yourself to each day of walking and to your bed each night. Here is a brief list of unexpected problems:

Public holidays
School holidays
Shanty festivals, art festivals, crab festivals
Lack of buses
No buses
Getting up in the dark to catch an early bus
Ferries across river estuaries that only run in summer
Expensive taxis
Expensive accommodation
No accommodation near our walk
Scarcity of twin rooms and one-night-only rooms
Cost of luggage transfer
Shorter days in autumn
Weather
Trying to get boots, jackets, packs etc dry overnight
Road blocks - literal and figurative
Wasting hours in the evening on the internet trying to plan our way around all of the above.

After encountering numerous stress inducing roadblocks we have decided to give up the goal of walking all 1014 kms of the Path. Not for any physical reasons. We feel great and know we could easily walk 1000 kms. But we were beginning to not enjoy it. We have decided to walk around the roadblocks instead of banging our heads on them and only complete sections that sound interesting, in good weather; sometimes as circular walks or out-and-back walks. We want to enjoy the walking.

We have already walked the entire path from Minehead to Plymouth, which is all of the north Somerest and north Devon coasts and the entire coastline of Cornwall. Now we will do some selected sections of the remaining south Devon and Dorset coasts.

We have now walked a total of 694.6 kms of the South West Coast Path. Plus an untold number of kms getting to and from accommodation, extra kms on some circular walks as well as around the grounds of some lovely National Trust properties and just exploring towns and villages.

It is the wandering and wondering, the exploring and discovering, that are really enjoyable and worthwhile.