WalkPlanners.UK

09/12/2025

It's here! The first of our innovative guides to the South West Coast Path – a guide-book posing as a map. Our first WalkPlanner was published a few days ago, and is now available to buy.

This first WalkPlanner covers the eastern half of the path (ie the start and finish) and focuses on planning trips involving overnight stays in lodgings - everything from hostels to swanky spa hotels. The west sheet will follow in a few weeks, and the camping edition another month or two later.

WalkPlanners have the essential information you look for in a guide-book, but place it on a 1:200k map so that you can see at a glance what's involved in walking a particular stretch. Like all existing guides, WalkPlanners split the path into stages, and ours are clearly categorised with effort ratings from Easy to Tough.

But another key difference is that our stages are shorter, to help less ambitious walkers do plan viable walks. Fit, keen walkers can just tackle two or three of these stages at once.

As well as the kind of information you can get (less easily) elsewhere, WalkPlanners incorporate details of the Tricky Bits that editor Chris Gill has been cataloguing for several years, not least with the help of his popular Tricky Bits Facebook group.

Because they're built on road maps, we've also been able to give comprehensive information on bus services. And out-of-town car parks are marked too.

For more information go to www.walkplanners.uk

01/04/2025

This review of Footpath Topo Map app is very interesting - not the only app to offer OS mapping at lower cost than an OS subscription, but with some powerful features (eg map display on an Apple Watch, audio alerts when you stray off-route). I'll be considering it further

Check out what we think of the Footpath Mapping App giving us access to Ordnance Survey Maps and Topo Maps for all over the world for a great price! Find my ...

15/05/2024

Tides and wading across the river Erme

Every now and again, someone pops up on coast path FB groups expressing concern over wading the river Erme with a predicted low tide height of 1m or 2m. So I thought I might try to explain why these depths are of no concern.

The sandy/pebby 'floor' of the Erme estuary, like any beach, slopes down into the sea – so the depth of water is different at different points. And tide tables predict the depth at one particular point, or rather along one particular line called Chart Datum.

In the case of the Erme, this Chart Datum line runs roughly across the very mouth of the estuary, from a point south of Battisborough Island to Fernycombe Beach. It is about a mile downstream of the river crossing point; and crucially, because of the aforementioned slope, about 3m lower.

Tidal ranges (and therefore tidal heights at low water) vary widely, following a lunar cycle. In mid-May 2024, low water is predicted to be about 1.6m. This means that there will be about 1.6m of water covering the imaginary Chart Datum line. But the crossing point will still be about 1.4m above the sea level. Or, to look at it another way, the surf line will about half a mile downstream, just above Muxham Point. The sea will not affect the depth of water at the crossing.

Of course, if you want to cross outside the 2hr low tide 'window', it's a different story.

19/02/2023

Planning coastal walks in Dorset? As part of our work on the first of our path guidebooks, we've assembled a lot of information you might find useful. We've built a little site consisting of interactive maps where you can see lodgings, campsite, pubs, cafes along the path, and even car parks for those doing day trips.

In due course we'll be covering the other sections of the path in the same way - South Devon comes next.

We hope you find the site useful - you can give us feedback through a form on the site.

Go to https://southwestcoastinfo.glide.page

07/02/2023

I've used the OSMaps app on my iPhone for years, with a mix of the 'free' downloads that OS has been bundling with its paper maps for some years and custom maps defined in the OS online system. (For the latter, you need to subscribe to the OSMaps service.)

It had never occurred to me until today that the bundled paper map downloads might not be updated when I download them. Well, they're not. You get the same map, dating from the year of the printed map you bought all those years ago.

I can quite understand the commercial logic of this, but if I'm going to use digital maps I want them to be up to date. So I'll be ditching the 15 paper map downloads I have on my phone - nearly all of them about 8 years old - and replacing them with custom downloads.

Even custom downloads don't update automatically on your phone. It seems you have to ditch each map and download it again. Yes, the system does retain the map areas you have defined. Sadly, the OS Maps app does not display the date of your custom maps.

Incidentally, the bit of OS Explorer 139 I've used to enliven this post contains a conspicuous error, which OS tell me may take a couple of weeks to correct. It's not life-threatening.

07/02/2023

This page is meant to inform walkers on Facebook about plans for a new series of guides to the South West Coast Path, to be launched in early 2024 – MapGuides. We'll be revealing more about these guides in due course. For now, what you'll find on the page is reflections on our experience of the path as we build up our store of knowledge.

If you'd like to be kept posted about these publications, you can subscribe to occasional newsletters on the website of our publishing business, Guide Editors - www.editors.co.uk

As you can see, walking isn't our only interest 😊

We produce and publish the new series of Where to Ski guides, currently covering Austria, France and Italy (with Switzerland delayed by the covid outbreak). Click to see/buy the existing titles.

10/01/2023

This wet winter is doing serious damage to the path in some areas. Here is news of a diversion between Eype and West Bay, in Dorset:

Choose and book a National Trail break or be inspired by our suggested itineraries. Read facts about the Trail and watch the Trail video.

10/01/2023

New year, new page. Since the start of the pandemic we've been cooking up a new series of guidebooks to the South West Coast Path. 2023 is the year when the project comes to fruition, with printing of the first two of five volumes, on Dorset and South Devon, for publication early in 2024. So we've launched this page to start drumming up interest among potential readers.

Although January so far has been unbearably dreary, we grabbed the chance of kicking off the year with a quick walk on the Devon/Dorset border in warm sunshine on Monday, an absolutely glorious bank holiday. The pic shows Weston Mouth.

We'll be posting news about the path here, as well as news about our publishing plans. At present, we don't want to give too much away.