Chris Goddard – Gritstone Publishing Cooperative

Posted on 6th July 20267th July 2026 by GritstoneCoop

The Coast is Clear

Panoramic shaped image of English coastline with white chalky cliffs and sea

Gritstone News: Yorkshire author publishes first complete guide to the King Charles III England Coast Path

Gritstone Member Christopher Goddard, a Yorkshire guidebook author and cartographer, has become the first to publish a complete guide to the newly opened King Charles III England Coast Path – the world’s longest managed coastal walking route.

Published by Gritstone Publishing as a four-volume series, the England Coast Path guides have been written and illustrated by established walking author Christopher Goddard following his own 2,700-mile journey around England’s coastline.

Each volume covers a different section of the route. Book 1: The South Coast follows the path from the River Thames to the Exe. Book 2: The South West covers the Exe to the Severn. Book 3: The North Coasts takes in the north-west and north-east coasts through Merseyside, Lancashire, Cumbria, Northumberland, County Durham and Yorkshire. Book 4: The East Coast covers the Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex coastline from the Humber to the Thames.

The books are designed both for walkers tackling the entire England Coast Path and for those looking to explore individual sections as day walks or shorter trips.

Each guide includes detailed route descriptions and maps, along with practical information on transport, parking, accommodation, camping and refreshments, together with features on local history, wildlife, geology and places of interest. They also include alternative routes where sections of the official path have yet to be established.

One distinctive feature is a specially curated soundtrack. Each day’s walk is paired with a song inspired by that stretch of coastline, encouraging walkers to experience the route with a musical accompaniment. Selections include Dire Straits’ Tunnel of Love, celebrating the Spanish City in Whitley Bay; Billy Bragg’s A13 (Trunk Road to the Sea), inspired by the road to the Essex coast; and George Formby’s classic With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock.

Chris began walking the entire coastline in 2013, documenting every stage to create what has become the first complete guide to the route.

“The English coast offers an extraordinary variety of landscapes,” he says. “There are dramatic cliffs, wooded estuaries, wildlife-rich marshes, sweeping beaches and dunes, as well as historic ports and seaside towns.”

“Because of how the route has opened in piecemeal sections over the past decade, I don’t think people quite realise yet what a big thing the England Coast Path. I think it’s going to grow in profile and popularity over the coming years. We’ve got something pretty special here!”

Posted on 18th March 202418th March 2024 by GritstoneCoop

England Coast Path – South West: Book Launch at Clevedon

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Music while you walk: the coast path guide with a song for every step of the way

The England Coast Path is a new long-distance path around the whole coast of England. At over 2,700 miles, it will be the longest completed coastal path in the world and will provide an important opportunity for exploring the peripheral landscape of our maritime country.

And a new guidebook covering the south-west, with a song for every step of the way, will have its official launch next month (April) at Clevedon in Somerset. The event will be held at Books on the Hill in Clevedon on Thursday April 11 at 6pm. This lies on a newly-opened section of the route that extends the existing South West Coast Path all the way up the Severn estuary.

THE ENGLAND COAST PATH: Book 2 – The South West Coast is the second in a series of four guidebooks, providing the most thorough information for walking the entire route. It covers over 650 miles around the south west of England from the River Exe at Exmouth to the River Severn at the Severn Bridge. Tracing the coastlines of Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Avon, this spectacular route takes in some of the finest cliff scenery in the world, as well as verdant river estuaries, expansive beaches and a beautiful collection of resorts and harbours.

Its 336 pages feature hand drawn maps, colour photos, detailed route descriptions (including accessible alternatives in the few places where the route is not yet officially open) and a wealth of additional information on public transport, parking, accommodation, campsites, refreshments, and local history. This is not a guide to the whole of the South West Coast Path, but rather the England Coast Path’s south west section, which also includes the new route along the Somerset and Avon coast from Minehead to the Severn Bridge.

And a delightful addition to the usual kind of maps and guides, this book has music at its heart. Every section of the route also has an accompanying Song for the Day, whether by a local artist or a song inspired by this part of the route, with a soundtrack playlist available on YouTube (www.youtube.com/@englandcoastpath).

The books are the creation of author, cartographer and musician Chris Goddard. It’s his seventh book, following on from guidebooks about the Yorkshire landscape and the Wales Coast Path, as well as the first book in this series on The South Coast.

Says Chris: “I walked the first section of the route between Lulworth and Weymouth in 2013, so it has taken over 10 years to complete the first couple of books, though this is because new sections of the route have been slow to open and a pandemic didn’t help. I have now walked more than ¾ of the whole route and the final two books of the series, on the North Coasts and East Coast, will follow in 2024/2025.”

He travelled around the country mostly in his van, using public transport to return each day, and greatly enjoying spending time in a very different part of the country. “Particularly in the last few years, I have felt very lucky to be able to do this and enjoyed the walking more, whether or not there would be a book at the end of it.

“As well as a great ramble, walking the coast of England is a great way to connect with its maritime past and consider its particular outlook as an island nation. I particularly enjoyed the south west coast as it a truly spectacular and wild coastline. As well as the towering cliffs for which it is famed, there is a great variety of scenery with lush estuaries, vast beaches and dunes, expansive levels and rich woodland, so there is rarely a dull moment on this part of the England Coast Path.”

THE ENGLAND COAST PATH: Book 2 – The South West Coast by Chris Goddard is published by Gritstone Publishing, £15.99. Everyone is welcome to attend the launch party at Books on the Hill On Thurs April 11 at 6pm. https://www.booksonthehill.co.uk/

Editors:

For further information, please contact Chris Goddard https://christophergoddard.net/ Email: cmgoddard@gmail.com

Photos:

The South West Coast book

A double page spread from the book

Chris Goddard profile pic

Posted on 17th October 202317th October 2023 by GritstoneCoop

England Coast Path – South West

‘There, far beneath and before them, lay the everlasting stretch of ocean; there, upon detached rocks, were the white screaming gulls, seeming ever intending to settle, and yet always passing on. Right and left ranked the toothed and zigzag line of storm-torn heights, forming the series which culminated in the one beneath their feet.’
Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes

The south west of England is its wildest peninsula, stretching furthest west and south and reaching further into its Celtic past. Here a Celtic language survived far longer than in the rest of the country, only dying out in the west of Cornwall in the late 19th century, and its words remain preserved in local place-names and its culture in the many prehistoric sites scattered across the region. With travel by sea easier than by land, the south west was for a long time more closely linked with south Wales, Ireland and Brittany than it was with the rest of England, and that probably suited it very nicely.

Posted on 1st February 20211st February 2021 by GritstoneCoop

Open Water Swimming: Muddying the Waters?

Chris Goddard

The views expressed in this post are those of the contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of all members of the Gritstone co-operative.

In the summer of 2020 I began swimming (I decline to add the unnecessary prefix ‘wild’ because, as my Aussie friend always points out, it is after all just swimming) in a whole series of new places. Until then I’d assumed there were only two good open water swimming spots in the valley, both of which had become overrun long before Covid-19. I went in Gaddings Dam occasionally early or late in the day or the season, but never on a hot day in summer, and I had long since abandoned the dark hole of Lumb Falls to the local kids bombing from the top of the waterfall. Soon after the first lockdown ended I heard whispers of other disused dams where you could swim, and, in the heat of late spring, was eager to end as many runs as possible at these sites. They were wonderful oases, where you could change quietly alone and slip into the undisturbed water.