How progress works

Charlie's Path keeps your own record of the England Coast Path you've walked. Here's how the chart works and what counts towards your progress.

How does it know I've walked a stretch?

When you import a walk, Charlie's Path matches its GPS track against the official route. Wherever your track follows the path, that part is marked as walked.

Your GPS does not have to sit exactly on the route line. Ground within about 100 metres counts. On wide beaches, the matching area extends further towards the sea, up to roughly 450 metres, so a walk across the sand can still match the route.

Is my progress based on the official mileage or my GPS distance?

The official route mileage. If your GPS records 12 miles but you have covered 10 miles of the official path, 10 miles are added to your chart. That way, everyone is measuring the same coast rather than the extra distance caused by GPS drift, pauses or wandering off the route.

Does a beach walk count if the path runs inland?

Only if you are on or near the official route. If the path turns inland and you carry on along a beach well away from it, that part of the walk will not be added to your chart. There is no section of official route there to match it against.

Where the official route itself follows a wide beach, walking on the sand counts.

Why can't I reach 100%, and why is some of the coast dotted?

The whole trail is 2,689 miles, and your percentage is measured against that total. About 2,243 miles currently have official route data that Charlie's Path can draw and match GPS tracks against.

The remaining miles are shown as a dotted line at their published length. Natural England has not yet published route data for those sections, so they cannot be matched automatically, but you can mark them by hand.

This means you can currently walk everything the chart can match and still only reach the nineties. The amount that can be matched will increase as more route data is published.

What does "Still to walk: 0.2 mi + 7.6 mi" mean?

Each figure is a separate gap. If you have walked several parts of a stretch, you may have more than one unwalked section left. Charlie's Path lists those gaps in coast order and, where possible, names them after the nearest place on the chart.

If there are lots of gaps, they are combined into a summary instead, such as "4 mi in 6 gaps". The what's left view shows the same gaps in red on the chart.

What about ferries and estuary crossings?

Where the official route crosses water by ferry, the crossing is treated as a gap in the walking rather than mileage to complete. A ferry journey does not add to your total, and you are not expected to walk those miles.

Three ways to add progress

• Import a whole export of your walking history. Charlie's Path checks the activities in it against the Coast Path. Activities that touched the route are added to your logbook and the coast they covered is credited to your chart. Activities that did not touch the path are not recorded.
• Upload an individual previous walk or run as a GPX file.
• Mark a stretch by hand. You can trace the ground you walked exactly or make a rough estimate using a bit, half, most or all.

Progress known from GPS or careful tracing appears as a solid line. Rough estimates appear faint, so you can tell at a glance which parts are exact and which are remembered approximately.

What if the official route changes?

Natural England is still completing and occasionally adjusting the route. When Charlie's Path updates its map, the progress you have already recorded stays recorded. Newly published sections are added to the chart as they become available.

You won't lose miles simply because the route data has been updated.

Is any of this checked?

No. It's your own record of the coast and it's kept on trust, like ticking off the Wainwrights or the Munros. There's no leaderboard and nobody checking what you enter. Mark what you've genuinely walked, and the chart remains your own record of the coast.