JOURNAL

Leg 1

Minehead to Lynmouth

17th-20th September 2026

21 Miles

Minehead to Lynmouth 17th-20th September 2026 21 mins

JOURNAL

Leg 1

Minehead to Porlock (9 miles)

and Porlock to Lynmouth (12.1miles)

← PLAN VS. ACTUAL →

Minehead to Porlock (9 miles)

and Lynmouth to Hunter’s Inn (6 miles)

PLAN:

Minehead to Porlock (9 miles)

and Porlock to Lynmouth (12.1miles)

VS.

ACTUAL:

← PLAN VS. ACTUAL →

Minehead to Porlock (9 miles)

and Lynmouth to Hunter’s Inn (6 miles)

Minehead to Porlock (9 miles)

and Lynmouth to Hunter’s Inn (6 miles)

Minehead to Porlock (9 miles)

and Lynmouth to Hunter’s Inn (6 miles)

Minehead to Porlock (9 miles)

and Porlock to Lynmouth (12.1miles)

← PLAN VS. ACTUAL →

Minehead to Porlock (9 miles)

and Lynmouth to Hunter’s Inn (6 miles)

Leading up to Leg 1 I'd really been consumed by my knee pain and whether it was going to stop me from setting off on this first leg. I'd also been working so much with Lisa on the branding, the website, the T-shirts and cap and the little cards to hand out, I hadn't really thought about much else and hadn't even packed. I started to do so three hours before my train was due to leave and I was concerned I'd brought too much and my bag would be too heavy.

To protect my knee I took a taxi up to Paddington. I was quite early, but sat there proudly wearing my rucksack, feeling different and excited in comparison to those around me, noticing other rucksack wearers and feeling some shared sense that we must all be off on some sort of adventure.

The bus ride from Taunton was hilarious. There were still, I think, around 34 stops to go when I was an hour in. But again, I didn't mind. I was lost in my own thoughts and watching those around me chatting, seemingly this being part of their everyday. I was excited to check into my B&B in Minehead, The Beach House, an apprentice-run social enterprise promoting opportunities for learning and training, with teams comprised of both experienced individuals and apprentices, which seemed a good fit and appropriate with the work of The Path and the purpose of The Path Project.

When I wandered out to dinner that evening, I still wasn't sure where I needed to head to start the next morning, or how to set off. There was no fanfare; it was not like the start of a race against others. I thought perhaps about setting an intention for the walk. ChatGPT suggested looking back at Minehead and deciding what I wanted to leave behind as I set off. I decided to do neither, as part of this project for me was about being more 'emergent'.

I had a hearty breakfast, checked out and was pleased to see little silver shells to follow along the promenade, which I guessed would lead to the starting marker. I tried to record a little video along the way to articulate once again why I am doing this project, both personally and professionally, but I still haven't quite nailed it succinctly.

When I got to the start, I set my tripod up and took a few pictures. I met Jamie from Massachusetts, a seasoned hiker, who had sensibly used a luggage transfer service. We exchanged our 'why' around walking. He spoke of best friends he had made on walks; he was here for two weeks, walking to Padstow. He was a psychotherapist who'd meditated that morning and totally got my exploration around purpose and meaning.

I wasn't sure of the etiquette when you met someone — should you walk with them? — but I let him lead. He said he had a few more pictures to take and we'd no doubt pass one another several times throughout the day, both heading to (well, at that time I thought) Porlock Weir, nine miles away.

So I headed off, excited to find the first acorn that would mark the path that I would follow for the next 630 miles and three years. Just before it, I was pleased to see some stones with motivational messages. There was one that read, "You are NEVER too old to set a goal or to dream a new dream," which resonated with me.

The first part of the path was lovely and flat, the sea crashing against the shore on my right-hand side. Then I entered into a wood, my mum's voice in my head, urging me to keep safe. There I met my first challenging hill of the day. I took my time climbing it, grateful for my poles, a voice in my head saying, "Just do it your own way."

I heard rustling in the distance behind me, which was Jamie catching me up. When I stopped for a breather, he said, "Don't let me affect your pace," which I thought was a message to hold onto. Then, surprisingly (or perhaps not), I didn't see Jamie again.

I loved the woods, full of moss and ferns, two of my favourite things in nature. After a while I realised my leg was soaked and my CamelBak had dripped down it. I laughed at myself for being such a novice hiker after I'd spent ages that morning googling where to put it in my rucksack.

The thin coastal path soon turned into Exmoor moorland, with soft, squidgy grass underfoot and heather adorning the path on either side. I was pleased to see some cows in the distance, who were heading the same way, so I followed them for a bit. Prior to this I hadn't seen many animals... just a dead snake.

The cows peeled off and I reached the top of a hill, which had the most amazing view but also, clearly, a narrow winding path in the distance that meant I had a long walk down and then a steeper walk back up the other side of the valley. I felt like I was walking so slowly. I hadn't seen anyone for hours by this point and glimpsed a couple of people in the distance, expecting to pass them, but they took a different route.

By this point, I was having a bit of a sense of humour failure. My knee was hurting, I was starting to get tired and hungry, so I put on my audiobook, Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a story about working at Facebook, to distract me

After what felt like a long time, I was comforted to reach a part of the path that felt familiar. I'd walked there a couple of years ago, dragging my school friends to Minehead to walk a bit of the Coast Path, because even back then it was something I was keen to do. I walked on a bit more purposefully, trying to find the bench where we had sat before and had our soup and sandwiches.

I rested here for a short while and ate some fruit, nuts and jelly babies. Then I walked another familiar path down to Bossington Beach. It was a very hard descent, the wind was blowing and I'm sure if it hadn't been for my knee I would have confidently strode down. Instead, I picked my way down slowly, thinking I might have a small cry at this point.

Throughout this whole last bit was the thought of the tea rooms at Bossington: a cup of coffee and a tuna sandwich. Alas, when I arrived it was closed and I just had to make do with a wee.

I trekked on towards Porlock Weir, pausing at a bench just where the path forked to Porlock, and had this intuitive pull to double-check where my B&B was for the night. I'm glad I did, as it was in Porlock, not Porlock Weir, and to say I would have had a sense of humour failure if I'd walked to Porlock Weir, an extra mile along the beach, and found this out would have been an understatement.

When I arrived at my B&B, Bay View B&B, Ruth, the owner and host, could not have been more welcoming. She was gutted that my room wasn't ready and the sheets weren't dry. However, I couldn't have cared less, just grateful to arrive there.

I honestly felt like I'd arrived in heaven when, seeing me limping, she offered to phone her friend Monica, who was a massage therapist. Coming from London, where you have to book a massage weeks in advance, I felt so blessed when Monica said she could come around in 15 minutes.

It was honestly one of the best massages I'd ever had. She used to work at a chiropractor's, worked quite intuitively, did a lot of work on the vagus nerve and spoke highly of craniosacral therapy... all things I also rate very highly, so I knew I was in good hands.

After dinner at a local pub, The Top Ship, which consisted of a huge burger and a glass of red, I tumbled into bed and was asleep just after Gardeners' World finished :)

The next morning Toby, my husband, was leaving London around 5am to drive down to join me for the day. Getting stuck behind an accident gave me time to rethink and replan our day. Although it caused me some stress that this early on I was going to have to change the route, miss a bit of the Path and need to come back to it, I listened to advice from others who said that the terrain was much the same as yesterday and would be too much for my knee. I’d also realised that one mile on the South West Coast Path, because of the terrain was not a normal one mile.

By this point the rain was lashing down. I realised my waterproof jacket and shoes were not waterproof and would need to be upgraded for the rest of this journey. The rain meant that it felt like walking through a rainforest when the path turned more inland, with small flowing waterfalls.

I have to admit my mind was a bit preoccupied on the walk. I was worried about how we would get back to Lynmouth, as I'd tried a couple of taxis before we'd left and not got through — another opportunity to be comfortable in uncertainty, but I wasn't quite there.

As this walk had been designed to be a pilot, particularly for how, when I walked with others, I would interview them to explore how they felt about what AI would do to the world of work, I used Toby to test the conversation. Being deaf in one ear, walking along a single-file track and wearing Apple AirPods didn't really work, as I couldn't hear a word he said, especially with the wind. But I popped my phone, recording, in my pocket and took my earphone out, and it seems to have picked up most of the conversation, especially as we sat on a bench for some of it, eating our tuna sandwiches and some more jelly babies.

The conversation skirted naturally around all the topics I was interested in: purpose, meaning, success, identity, how to navigate certainty in an uncertain world, what AI might do to work and what that might mean to our sense of purpose. I just have to watch that I don't sway the conversation too much. The Path is my research field, the research is an exploration, but I need to keep the rigour.

We did debate whether, when we got to the bridge signposted Combe Martin, we could make it the next seven miles, but it was already 3pm as we'd set off late and on this leg is the highest point, Great Hangman, 318 metres above sea level. We'd bumped into two guys who had walked from Combe Martin that morning and they suggested that it would be about another three hours from where we were. We both thought that would mean it would be dark before we might make it.

I reconciled that this was a perfect test of getting comfortable with change. Instead, I planned for us to drive to Lynmouth, where we were staying that night, and for us to do a bit of the next leg, Lynmouth to Combe Martin, with the goal of walking to Hunter's Inn, around five miles in.

Yesterday I noticed that my mind was very active. I was thinking a lot at the start, then as the path got harder I stopped thinking as I was just concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. I was curious to see how today would play out walking with someone else. I had also noticed yesterday that, if I wasn't careful, I spent a lot of time looking down and would not take in all that was around me. I wondered if walking with someone else and being able to share what we saw would change that.

The path started in a very similar way as it had the day before, a winding ascent through a wood, opening out, though, onto a dramatic cliff walk. We were headed towards the Valley of Rocks, quite famous and somewhere I later found out I'd been before as a kid. It was absolutely awe-inspiring, dramatic rocky cliffs as far as the eye could see, opening out into this expanse of a valley.

Toby climbed to the top of one of the highest rocks whilst I rested on a bench below. We met an interesting Irish New Zealander who had just spent two years renovating a boat and was just about to set sail back to New Zealand, via a circumnavigation of Ireland, Iceland, Greenland and then, I think, onwards to New Zealand... he gave the impression it wouldn't take too long to get there!

The next bit was a bit of a blur, whilst Toby and I used the rare opportunity of having time together to chat through lots of stuff. In the beginning of our relationship we always used to do a lot of walking and talking, and I think it's an important foundation for a relationship, but since having kids it's a much harder practice to retain.

Instead, we called it for the day, went to Hunter's Inn for a well-deserved half pint and packet of salt and vinegar crisps and managed to get a taxi, even though we had to wait for an hour.

We were interested to learn from the driver, when he arrived, that in the last two years he'd gone from having six cars and employing four drivers to it just being himself working evenings and weekends alongside a full-time job, with one driver covering the days. The demand for taxis had declined that much in the space of two years. He put it down to the cost of holidaying in the UK, with rooms costing over £100, and people finding cheaper package holidays abroad.

After a nice warm shower, having been soaked through most of the day, and a warming pub dinner, I crashed out.

Now back in London, doing a normal Monday morning, I didn't feel as 'purposeless' as I usually do on a Monday. I was excited to sit back and reflect on the weekend, and as I left a voice note for my friend Zoe, who has already done the walk and been so generous with her advice and support, I realised it's a bit addictive and I am trying to fathom how I get back down there a bit sooner than I'd planned in November.

Despite how hard it was with my knee, it was definitely a tonic that has brought me back to start the week a bit happier than usual.

15 miles in, 615 miles to go...

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