Walking Wales: Exploring the experiences of people who walk the Wales Coast Path

At the heart of the thesis is the issue of mobility and how the Wales Coast Path has enabled mobility along the entirety of the Welsh coastline. The creation of the Wales Coast Path has afforded an opportunity unlike any other; to explore what it means for walkers to be able to walk the coastline of an entire nation. This thesis focuses on the physical act of walking the Wales Coast Path. Investigating ways in which experiences of the Wales Coast Path are understood, felt and sensed through the bodily actions and performances of walking. The thesis draws upon the data collected whilst walking with, interviewing and experiencing 41 walks along the Wales Coast Path. It shows that using a ‘walking and talking’ method has accessed data which would otherwise have been left untapped, and that this choice of methodology enables the researcher to access the knowledge of people-in-places where meaning is accessed and produced. The thesis acknowledges that knowledge is born through immediate experience and people gain understanding from their lived everyday involvement in the world, through activities such as walking. It shows that sometimes, it is necessary to see, hear, smell, experience or feel a place in order to communicate it to others and to make sense of it. The thesis considers what it means for walkers to be able to walk the entire coast of Wales and what this accomplishment means to their identities, as walkers, and how it influenced their Welsh identities. The research explores how being able to walk the coast of Wales facilitates a sense of cultural attachment and belonging to Wales; to others who walk the Wales Coast Path; and to Welsh identity. The thesis discusses the more-than-human aspects of walking the Wales Coast Path, focusing on an overriding theme which has affected the experiences of the walkers on the Wales Coast Path arguably more than any other. That is, the influence held over the walkers by the Wales Coast Path sign and the range of emotions and sensations generated through its encounter or lack of encounter. The sign is discussed as relational. It is shown how it has been imperative to people’s experiences and how it doesn’t have a fixed influence but changes in accordance with a particular moment in time on the Wales Coast Path.