At the start of this month, a new 35-mile coastal path opened along Chichester Harbour. Running from South Hayling in Hampshire to East Head in West Sussex, it passes through saltmarshes, mudflats and villages including Emsworth, Bosham and West Itchenor. It’s the latest stretch in a route around the whole coast of England, covering a distance of about 2,700 miles, which will, when it’s completed, be the longest National Trail for walkers and, it’s said, the longest managed coastal trail in the world. Martyn Howe, a long-distance walker and writer, has tramped along most of it.

  Howe, who says he rediscovered a passion for hiking after 40 years as a multinational technology executive, had finished walking all of Britain’s 19 existing National Trails in 2016, covering 3,000 miles over 153 days (a journey recounted in his 2021 book Tales from the Big Trails). Then he learned of plans for the full coastal trail, and decided he would have to add that one. 

  He had already clocked up quite a few miles by May 1, 2023 when what was then the England Coast Path was renamed, in readiness for the coronation of the new monarch, the King Charles III England Coast Path. He walked much of what had opened between 2021 and 2024, using  public ferries where necessary and returning later to take in estuaries and islands as the formal paths opened. In all, he walked 2,300 miles in 110 days. In The Coast is Our Compass (Journey Books/Bradt, £10.99, March 19), he aims to show what it feels like “to walk the boundary of a nation”. His book isn’t, he says, “a conventional walking memoir; it’s a coastal pilgrimage in ‘blue space’. It’s less about where you go than how it feels, what it means and why it matters. I explore public art, community, health and natural wealth, reflecting on England’s relationship with the sea and its role in our sense of identity.”