In the United Kingdom, there are exactly two correct answers to the question, “You alright?” They are—trust me on this—“You alright?” and “Yeah, you?”

There are at least a thousand wrong responses to this phrase. I know because I’ve been working my way through all of them while section-hiking the England Coast Path. As a Coloradan transplant to London, I’ve been on a quest to better understand my new home country, where I often feel a little out of place. What better way to do so than by trekking an unfinished, town-to-town trail that will soon dwarf the Appalachian and Pacific Crest? When it’s done, at 2,795 miles, the England Coast Path will be the longest coastal path in the world. Along the way, one can visit dozens of castles, take boat tours to spy on puffins and seals, and visit hundreds of tearooms.  

The most memorable of my You alright faux pas happened on a rainy afternoon on the southwestern coast of Dorset last spring. I had just started hiking a famous section of the trail known as both the Southwest Coast Path and the Jurassic Coast. A friend and I had spent the day climbing grassy yet near-vertical hills with sheer cliffs plunging into the turquoise ocean below. In the dips, we motivated each other with the promise of sandwiches and Scotch eggs at the top of each hill. When we made it, we splayed ourselves on the soft grass and took luxurious naps in the fleeting sunshine, as if to photosynthesize between rain showers. 

Now, amid a minor ocular catastrophe—a bug flew into my eye and had the audacity to die there—we were sheltering under a tree just outside the town of Lulworth Cove, on a narrow path sandwiched between a busy road and a cow pasture. 

“You alright?” asked an oncoming walker, a man with his dog. In a moment of distress, I mistook the standard greeting for genuine concern about my wellbeing. 

I stared upwards, blinking rapidly. I scooted away from a nearby cow. 

“Yeah?” I said. “I just have a bug in my eye, that’s all. And we’re trying to get it out.” 

“Oh,” he said, and I realized at once that I had said the wrong thing and foisted awkwardness onto his otherwise lovely afternoon walk. I tried to feel embarrassed by the situation so that I could cry enough tears to evict the bug corpse from my retina.

He seemed unsure of how to proceed. To be fair, so was I.

“Well… is there anything I can do to help…?”

Though polite, it was clearly an empty offer. What was he going to do, stick his finger in my eye? There was something that seemed quintessentially British about it all. If this had happened back home in Colorado, I would have expected something more like, “damn, that sucks,” or some unhelpful anecdote about how this happened to someone’s cousin’s friend’s sister’s dad once, and he was blind for a year, can you believe it? 

Instead, I got a polite offer for assistance that I understood was meant to be turned down. At least I was getting somewhere with my cultural fluency. 

​​I first fell in love with the UK during a stint of digital nomad-ing gone wrong. I was visiting London in 2020 when the country plunged into its second lockdown. I stayed a lot longer than expected, and ended up reacquainting myself with a side of nature I had neglected after first moving to Colorado in 2013. Even with more city parks than national ones and far less open space at my disposal, I spent more time walking in London than I ever had hiked stateside. Short walks often turned into zig-zags racking up 10, 15, or even 20 miles in a single day. As soon as I heard about the England Coast Path, much of which is well-connected to bus routes and train lines and therefore easy to access for a city-dwelling hiker without a car, I knew it was the perfect long-term project. 

Regional trails between coastal towns and through the British countryside have existed for as long as people have traded, and access to them was codified by the Countryside and Rights of Way Act passed in 2000. But while the CROW Act formalized public access to “open country,” on the coast, things weren’t quite so simple—much of it was a mess of fences, barbed wire, and dangerous military sites. It required a second act, in 2009, to expand access to the coast specifically and devote millions of pounds to tidying it up. The trail-in-progress was first called the England Coast Path, and in 2023 it was renamed the King Charles III England Coast Path in honor of the new monarch’s coronation. The UK government expects the trail to be fully walkable by the end of 2024.  

What sets aside this long-distance trail from iconic American ones is the relative urbanness of the terrain. While long stretches of the England Coast Path run through land preserved by the National Trust or other conservation organizations, other sections traverse cow pastures, sprawling coastal towns, and golf courses. On the plus side, nearly all of those golf courses are accompanied by castles, which I find endlessly fascinating. 

Wild camping—or backpacking, as we’d call it in the U.S.—is illegal in almost all of England, so I’ve stayed at Airbnbs, inns, and boutique hotels serving a full English every morning. Hiking between pubs and cafés, warm beds and hot showers, I’ve redefined my idea of adventure. Now, instead of reaching for taller summits or more remote wilderness terrain, I’m on a mission to use my backcountry skills to explore the frontcountry more deeply. I read guidebooks not just about the trails but about the history of the towns, and I scan maps of my routes for less-publicized attractions. There are so many thousand-plus-year-old things in Britain that most people here take them for granted by most people here, but I cannot get over the sheer volume of well-preserved history. I take detours to rifle through the heirlooms on display in stately homes, ask inane questions in visitor centers about who’s who in which house, and read informational signs with the earnestness of a middle school history teacher. I just can’t get enough of it. 

So far, I’ve hiked about 200 miles along the southwest, southeast, and northeast coasts. I’ve hiked to castles in Northumberland that sent me down rabbit holes of research into specific family lineages and which descendants are now selling off the family jewels. I’ve gone on seal-watching tours in Norfolk, where I allowed ChatGPT to lead me astray on purpose so that I might experience more of the cultural offerings of the coast. In Cornwall, I ran out of words for shades of blue as I stared at an impossibly dynamic ocean for hours. 

Somehow, even after 200 miles of walking along the Atlantic Ocean, the English Channel, and the North Sea, I have yet to tire of the view. I spend my afternoons taking long breaks to write in tearooms or ask stupid questions to volunteers in castles (many thanks to the kind man at Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, whom I asked, “What do you call a lady earl?” Answer: a countess, obviously). I spend my evenings in pubs, hoping to overhear a few new phrases for my Brit List, a note on my iPhone defining words and phrases we don’t use in the U.S. My favorites, so far, include  “to faff” (to flail about in a time-wasting sort of way), “scuppered” (foiled), and “to pop one’s clogs” (to die).

At home, I spend my free time reading up on British history, trying to fill in the gaps from going to school an entire ocean away. But on the trail, I don’t even have to know what I don’t know. I just have to show up, read signs and menus, and observe the order in which people assemble the components of their tea (a surprisingly divisive issue). I can’t pretend to be fluent in the arts of sarcasm, understatement, or humblebragging, which are essential tools in one’s social arsenal in the UK. But thanks to my interactions along the trail, I feel at least slightly more adept in social situations.

I daydream about taking a few months off to knock out 1,000 miles or more in one go. Whenever I’m out on the trail and put my phone in “hiking mode,” turning off all but navigational notifications, I fantasize about walking forever. I have not gotten sick of the salt air, the views from castle windows, or even the rain. And I’m certainly not tired of analyzing historical signs and unfamiliar quips for what they can teach me about my own lingual tendencies.

It might take me a few years, or maybe even a decade, to complete the whole trail. But if the rest of it is anything like what I’ve seen thus far, I’ll consider myself lucky to get to savor it for so long.

Nearly all of the English coast is walkable, and much of it is easy to access by public transportation. I used a Eurail pass to save on train fares and maximize flexibility on travel days. People do illegally stealth camp near the trail, but there is no shortage of inns and hotels, which will serve you a hearty, full English breakfast in the morning—perfect for a long day on the trail. 

Here are two segments more than worth a slow ramble:

(Mileage varies based on your chosen route and optional detours.)

Northumberland may be the United Kingdom’s most underrated section of coastline. Situated in the northeasternmost part of England, right up against the Scottish border, the coastline here is riddled with castles that have seen generations of battle and strife. I spent six days walking between the town of Amble and Bamburgh Castle through self-guided tour operator Inntravel, which offers the most comprehensive, turn-by-turn trip notes I have ever seen. I had thought 35 miles was low for six days of walking, but their itinerary is spot-on: you could easily go slower and take even more time to explore the five castles on the trek, plus other historic homes and gardens along the coast. Just south of Bamburgh, I spent a perfect day taking a boat tour out to the Farne Islands, where I saw puffins, seals, and at least a dozen dolphins leaping out of the water. The Holy Island of Lindisfarne, which is accessible from the mainland at low tide, is an ancient pilgrimage destination and a worthy detour, with a castle of its own and the well-preserved remains of a priory from the Middle Ages (not to mention a historic meadery). Bonus for Harry Potter fans: This trek will take you inland for a day to visit Alnwick Castle, which was Hogwarts in the first two films.

(Mileage varies based on tides and ferries.) 

The southwesternmost corner of England, Cornwall, is sometimes called the “Cornish Riviera.” You’ll see why when you get there: There’s something so Mediterranean about the color of the water lapping the sandy coast that more than one friend asked me if I had oversaturated the photos in editing. In reality, on a sunny day, the water is bluer than every photo you’ll see. The Padstow to St. Ives portion of the Southwest Coast Path (the most famous stretch of the England Coast Path) is protected from development, so that you often hike long, rugged days with little more than beachside ice cream stands between towns. Cell service is delightfully intermittent, and there are ample opportunities to swim in sheltered coves away from crowds. Take every single one of them. 

Book with tour operator 10Adventures, which works with local self-guided walking companies such as Compass Holidays to plan out all the hotels for your trip. This is especially helpful during peak summer travel season, when navigating minimum stay requirements can be frustrating at best. 10Adventures sorted out taxi transfers for hotels too far from the trailhead for a dayhike, so I didn’t have to rent a car nor miss out on any miles of the trail.

From 2023