Westward Ho! to Closely, 11.5 miles, Monday, June 1, 2026
We had a long day ahead of us, and we were all admittedly a bit nervous. We’re walking the hardest sections of the coast path this trip, and the first day is no picnic.
It was cloudy and occasionally misting, but no rain…yet. The early couple of miles are flat, as the path follows an old railroad trackbed. It leaves the trackbed and climbs onto Abbotsham Cliff. This is the first of three cliffs, and is comparatively easy. This is the view onto the three cliffs.
Then comes a middling cliff, and then a monster, Greencliff.
The descent from Greencliff is long and occasionally difficult. The path takes you right down to the beach before climbing, steeply, up onto the cliffs again. We met a gentleman with his dog, Bramble.
The path then rises over another two moderate cliffs before descending once again to sea level. Patti and I were a bit behind. This is me on the phone: Sue is wondering where the hell we were.
The path of course then rises again, but then rolls gently through gorse until it reaches Peppercombe, a gorgeous, verdant valley. The ruins of an old stagecoach stop are now part of the National Trust, who mercifully provide a picnic bench for our lunch.
The ascent onto the cliffs from here is long and draining; at the summit, we reached the highest point on this stage. We were walking now through ancient forest; the path rose and fell as it crested and then slabbed along high ridges.
Did I mention that there were occasional obstacles?
The path rolled along, and along…until we reached the tiny hamlet of Bucks Mills.
We had walked just over eight miles and it had been the toughest first day of any of our walks. Patti and I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and decided to bail, while Sue and David went ahead to catch up with the others.
We walked up through the seemingly deserted village and stuck out our thumbs. An incredibly nice lady stopped, but her car was bursting with her four kids. A few minutes later, she came down the hill…she had dumped three of the kids at the top of the hill and come back for us!
The top of the hill was Bucks Cross, a bump on a major road. We tried every conceivable cab company, but nothing doing. It was raining much harder now, but we stuck out our thumbs again, and within ten minutes a lovely young man picked us up in his BMW and drove us right to the door of our lodgings, the Red Lion Inn in Closely.