With growing popularity for ‘soft hiking’, some of the UK’s easiest coastal walks have been revealed – and Cornwall makes the top ten four times.
Sun Bingo has created a ‘Coastal Walk Index’, measuring the length of the walk, the elevation, terrain and time it would take to hike the path.
The results have ranked the UK’s top 10 easiest coastal walks, which are said to be perfect for both beginners and those more experienced.
Giving each walk a rating out of 100, Cornwall takes the second spot with Holywell beach, which was beaten only by the Giant’s Causeway blue trail in County Antrim with 81.63 points.
The Holywell beach walk was given a rating of 80.23 and would only take around 30 minutes to complete.
Boscastle Harbour came a close joint third with Dunwich Heath grey trail, both with 80.21 points, and was praised for its easy terrain, short trail and scenic sites appear appealing to many.
The remaining Cornish walks were Porthcurno circular walk and Rocky Valley walk near Tintagel, both with 78.51 points, putting them joint sixth alongside three other walks.
So-called ‘soft hiking’ is a growing trend on TikTok, which in short is simply going outside and exploring outdoors, but without any emphasis on distance, elevation or reaching a summit.
To compile the list sunbingo.co.uk used the National Trust UK-wide site, with 69 coastal paths discovered.
Each coastal path was then analysed on the following factors: length in kilometres, terrain and elevation, and the time to walk the entirety of the trail.
The three factors were given a weighting out of 100 and each coastal path was ranked based on these factors, according to their difficulty level.
This was then converted into a final score, in which the higher the number, the ‘easier’ the path is to complete.
Data was collected in May 2023 and is accurate as of then.
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