South West Coast Path: Personal journey marks 50th anniversary

For artist Emma Scattergood the South West Coast Path has become her “happy place”. So much so that she has taken on a unique challenge to walk and sketch the route to mark its 50th anniversary.

The 630-mile (1,014 km) coastal route, linking Dorset’s Studland Bay all the way to Minehead in Somerset, takes in some of the UK’s most spectacular scenery.

To mark 50 years since the start of efforts to create the complete coast path, she is walking its route and sketching 50 scenes as she goes.

From 1973, the South West Coast Path Association campaigned and gradually opened the path in sections before it was designated as a National Trail five years later.

Taking in sights like Exmoor National Park, Land’s End and the Jurassic Coast, it has gone on to become one of the most popular tourist draws in the south west.

For Emma, the path has weaved its way into her and her family’s lives over the years.

The journey will mean heading past her childhood home near Exeter, along stretches of the path where she walked as a child.

“I got engaged to my husband at Old Harry on Studland, we married near Poole Harbour and we now live just minutes from the Dorset cliffs,” she said.

“My father grew up in Penzance with a view of St Michaels Mount. It was from there that he left to fight in World War Two.

“After the war, when he met my mother, he persuaded her to come with him back to the south west. And so I grew up in Devon, playing on the beaches along the path.

“I will also be on a section that I walked with my mother on the day she left her home of 60 years to come and live with us, a few months after her dementia diagnosis.”

That walk near Sidmouth turned out to be the last proper walk Emma did on the coast path with her mother, Nancy, then aged 82.

The memory became another reason for her walk to “to celebrate and hopefully echo her creativity and zest for life” and raise money for Dementia UK, as well as the South West Coast Path Association.

The plan for 50 sketches for each of the association’s 50 years came about after she left her university lecturing job of more than 20 years and rediscovered her passion for art during the Covid lockdowns.

“I love creating pen and ink sketches on coastal walks; working quickly to express how the landscape feels in the moment, and letting the weather get involved too,” she said.

Like millions of others who enjoy the coast path each year, Emma feels an emotional connection as she follows the famous acorn waymarker posts.

She said: “I love how one can travel for miles without need of a map.

“I love how that allows me to simply walk, breathe sea air, forget the demands of normal life and get back to basics. I love how it allows me to connect with nature and reconnect with myself.

“When I’m in need of head space, I head to the path.”

She admitted the logistics of covering the path through four counties has been “mind-blowing”.

“Drawing along the way obviously adds time to each day of walking, but that time is almost doubled when one doesn’t know the route and is constantly considering which is the perfect place to stop and capture the scenery in ink.

“This is compounded by the fact that the scenery on the path is just so beautiful – I will think that I have found ‘the spot’ for the day, and bring out the sketchbook and pens but then, a few miles down the path, I’m confronted with a view that is even more compelling.

“I still haven’t quite found the solution to this conundrum.”

Emma is posting her progress on social media and once completed, she hopes to display the artworks at an exhibition.