When it's finally finished, England's coastal path will be 2,700 miles long.
The idea of a continuous coastal path around England was first proposed by the Ramblers charity in the early 2000s. In 2008, it was adopted by Gordon Brown’s Labour government and was enshrined in law the following year. Within 10 years, it was said, you would be able to walk a lap of Great Britain without interruption.
Wales was planning its own coastal path, too (completed in 2012), and Scottish law allows the freedom to roam.
Britain has lived through 16 years and seven prime ministers since the coast path was first proposed. It has even changed name since then, with “King Charles III” added in May 2023. Now, Natural England says that there’s a tail-wind of momentum and the whole thing will be completed by the spring of 2026.
Creating the longest waymarked coastal trail on the planet has not been plain-sailing: military zones, schools, private gardens, and so on. In these cases, the path would make a temporary inland detour, ideally still with sea views. In mapping 2,700 miles of coast path, Natural England had to approach more than 5,600 landowners over access. “One of the reasons this has taken many years is that we spent a long time working with every one of those owners and occupiers,” says Neil Constable, a programme manager at Natural England.
Now the negotiations are over, and all but 16 miles of the coast path has been submitted for approval.
The Telegraph reports that all parties sound optimistic about hitting the completion date of spring 2026. By March this year, as much as 70 percent of the coast path will be completed. The fact that half of it will have the wrong signage - “England Coast Path” rather than the new “King Charles III England Coast Path” - is a technicality that nobody seems to be losing sleep about. They’ll be updated in time, apparently.