Author: South West Coast Path Association

For more information about the South West Coast Path Association visit www.southwestcoastpath.org.uk

Chapman’s Pool – April walk of the month

Chapman’s Pool on the Dorset coast is our walk of the month as seen in the 2016 calendar for April. This is a 7-mile breathtaking walk around a limestone coastline carved into dramatic caves and platforms by millions of years of erosion by the sea, and hundreds of years of human quarrying. The view, as pictured above on a sunny spring day, reveals the coves and inlets used by smugglers.

From prehistoric times humans have lived here and exploited the cliffs and coves for a wide variety of purposes, ranging from prehistoric tools to medieval farming to smuggling in the 18th and 19th century.

Chapman’s Pool itself is a wonderfully wild beach where the stream joins the sea from a plunging ravine carved through high cliffs. The natural and quarried caves make it a great playground for swashbuckling kids and would-be smugglers.

Picture caption: This fine view of Chapman’s Pool was taken by photographer Brian Howe, who won the annual South West Coast Path Association photography competition in 2014. Find out about the competition and see all the images that feature in the 2016 Calendar on the Association’s website here.

January Walk of the Month

Happy New Year!

Now is the time to set yourself some new fitness goals and step out onto the blustery South West Coast Path to blow away the cobwebs – just make sure you take your waterproofs! The health benefits of walking by the sea are well founded and it’s one of the simplest, most pleasurable ways to keep fit while enjoying a great day out.

January’s long but mostly level 7.4 mile (11.8 km) walk starts from the First Downs car park outside Porthleven. It includes a lakeside walk around The Loe, where Sir Bedivere is said to have cast Excalibur into the water as King Arthur lay dying. Here, the waves crash deafeningly on the shingle barrier beach, the site of an 1807 shipwreck costing 120 lives, commemorated in a memorial in the dunes. Cornwall’s largest natural freshwater lake is a major overwintering area for many wildfowl and waterbirds, and cormorants roost in the trees fringing the swamp behind it. There is an optional shortcut across Loe Marsh, reducing the distance to about 8km (5 miles).

For more details about this walk from Porthleven, go to its page on the South West Coast Path website.

Porthleven on the south Cornwall coast is a great base for a winter walk on a less blustery day than the one pictured above. This image of waves crashing into the clock tower features in the 2016 South West Coast Path calendar for January. All 12 pictures are on display at Lynmouth Pavilion, until 31st January.

You can purchase a copy of the 2016 calendar from the South West Coast Path Association’s online Shop but stock is limited and once they’re gone they’re gone. So, be quick!