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South Downs WayPlanning2 min read

South Downs Way in 5, 7 or 9 days: which pace suits you?

The same hundred miles is a different walk at fourteen miles a day and at eleven. Here is what each number means on the ground.

By Tom Spencer ·

The South Downs Way measures 163 kilometres on our line — 101 miles — and every plan on this site is that distance divided by the days you give it. The arithmetic is simple. What it feels like is not, so here is the same walk at three paces.

5 days
20 mi
a day, about 33 km
7 days
14 mi
a day, about 23 km
9 days
11 mi
a day, about 18 km

Nine days: the walk as a holiday

Eleven miles a day is a morning's walk and a long lunch, or a full day taken slowly with time on every hilltop. You will reach each night's stop with daylight to spare, which on the Downs matters, because the villages are below the ridge and the last mile is usually downhill to a pub.

Nine days is also the pace at which the trail's own suggestion of seven to ten days sits comfortably. If you have never walked more than a day, or you are walking with someone who has not, this is the number.

Build your walkSouth Downs Way in 9 days101 mi · about 11 miles a dayOpen the planner →

Seven days: the walk most people do

Fourteen miles a day is a full day, most days: five to six hours of walking, plus stops. The chalk is fast underfoot when it is dry, and the ridge is mostly level once you are on it, so fourteen miles here is easier than fourteen miles in the hills. The catch is the dry valleys — the path drops into them and climbs straight out the far side rather than going round, and by the fourth or fifth the legs know it.

Seven days is the pace this site's guide is written at, one chapter to a day or so, and it is the default the planner opens with.

Build your walkSouth Downs Way in 7 days101 mi · about 14 miles a dayOpen the planner →

Five days: the walk as a challenge

Twenty miles a day, every day, is a long day's walking. It is done, and the trail itself says six days is a fast pace, so five is faster than that. You will be walking from soon after breakfast to late afternoon with short stops, and the sea at the end of the last day will be a relief before it is a view.

Our planner's working pace bands call twenty miles a "fast" day. Those bands are our own assumptions and we say so on every plan; they have not yet been checked against enough real walkers to call them more than that.

Build your walkSouth Downs Way in 5 days101 mi · about 20 miles a dayOpen the planner →

The number the planner cannot fix

Whatever the day count, a plan is only as good as the beds at the end of each day, and on the South Downs Way we have not yet checked them. Every night in every plan says so — "beds not yet checked" — until we have. When the research is done, the same day count will land you in villages rather than on hilltops, with no change to the number of miles you walk.

Now make it yours.

The planner splits the South Downs Way into days that fit the time you have, with the trains at each end. Free, no account.

Build your walk

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