Anticlockwise · one weekend a month · since March 2022

I am walking the whole coast from my front door, one weekend at a time

I'm Ines. I work in an office four days a week, and on one weekend a month I take the train back to wherever I stopped last time and walk on. This is the notebook, typed up.

How far I've got

A walker far ahead on a narrow path along a grassy cliff, the sea bright below.

A woman in a brown coat seen from behind on a grassy clifftop path, the sea grey beyond.

A wooden boardwalk running straight through dune grass under a big sky.

Three stretches I would walk again

Out of forty-one weekends so far. Not the prettiest, necessarily; the ones I still think about on a Tuesday.

Red cliffs curving round a sandy bay, a white chalk cliff close by on the right.

Where the rock turns red

Chalk on one side of the bay and red sandstone on the other, and a whole geology lesson in one afternoon. The café at the far end shuts at four; I got there at ten past.

Weekend 19 · 31 km · two days

Rocky coves and white surf below steep green clifftops.

The coves nobody drives to

Eleven coves in a morning, each one a steep drop and a steeper climb. My legs hated it and I would go back tomorrow.

Weekend 27 · 22 km · the hardest day

A grey sea and a low red headland seen over a wire fence and rough grass.

A grey weekend in March

Rain from start to finish, nobody else on the path for two days, and the most I have written in the notebook about anything.

Weekend 36 · 40 km · soaked

The tally, updated after every weekend

1,712 km of about 2,950

My front door58 per centMy front door, again

A woman walking along a concrete sea wall below tall white cliffs.

A green hillside running down to a wide bay, a few walkers small on the path.

The sea seen from a steep green cliff, the coast bending away into haze.

The last ten weekends

41 · the estuary, finally crossed36 km

40 · two lighthouses, one closed44 km

39 · a diversion round a firing range29 km

38 · the long promenade38 km

37 · the dunes, twice, by mistake41 km

36 · rain, both days40 km

35 · the ferry that wasn't running18 km

34 · salt marsh and a lot of birds45 km

33 · my sister came30 km

32 · the town with the pier34 km

Each weekend has its own page in the notebook section, with the route, the trains, where I slept and where the water taps are. The early ones are shorter; I was learning.

Two tiny figures on a bare hilltop under an enormous white cloud.

What I carry

The notebook

A small hardback, one per year, and a pencil because pens stop in the cold. Everything on this site started in it.

A tide table

Printed, not on the phone. Three of the stretches can only be walked two hours either side of low water, and I learned that the wet way.

Very little else

Seven kilos including water. I sleep in B&Bs and youth hostels, not a tent, and I am not sorry.

A lone walker in long golden grass at the edge of a line of dark trees.

Why, if you're wondering

Because the coast is the one line on the map that goes all the way round, and because I wanted something that would take years and not need anyone's permission.

If you'd like to walk a day of it with me, write. I have walked with eleven strangers so far and every one of them was better company than my own thoughts on a wet Sunday.

Walk a day with me