Martyn and Alison King encountered more than they expected when they set off to walk around the coast of Britain...

Martyn and Alison King

Three years ago Martyn King was a geology teacher and trundling along happily enough, but then he met Alison on an Open University Field Course and lurrve, as they say, struck. Within three weeks they were committed to spending the rest of their days together and what’s more, fuelled by each other’s enthusiasm, they decided to celebrate by going on an adventure. They were at a time in their lives where neither had any encumbrances, personal or financial so they sold up, held car boot sales and after a year had raised enough money to fund their chosen mission – to walk round the coast of Britain, raising money for the Royal Life Boat Institute and visiting all the lifeboat stations along the way.

It was a year and a half which changed both of them for good, not least because during this time Alison became very ill. But the illness, which is still with her, wasn’t going to stop her from completing the walk and by Christmas last year, they’d done it. They celebrated by getting married.

Alison recalls that she was totally unprepared when they set off. Her picture of their adventure was a "rather romantic image of a knapsack over my shoulder just wandering along - it didn't work out like that". The reality was that they lugged huge backpacks weighing between 40 and 50 pounds. Alison thinks she might perhaps not have set off at all if she'd known how much it would hurt. Their estimate of the time it would take was 18 months - 2 years. They walked an average of 12-14 miles per day, but some days they managed 30 miles and some days none. As far as the weather was concerned, they encountered a hurricane at Humberside, and they were stopped by snow at another point.

People along the way were very encouraging, and they were, on occasion, taken into people's homes. Alison and Martyn claimed they didn't have rows along the way, though they admit to a few 'little disagreements' about route finding when coastal footpaths were closed and they were diverted inland. They became very aware of the tides, especially as they enjoyed walking on beaches and obviously didn't want the lifeboats to be called out for them!

Things were going reasonably well until they got to Weymouth and got stuck there because of Foot and Mouth. They'd been to visit the most southerly lifeboat station in the Channel Islands and returned to the mainland to find that all the footpaths were closed. This was particularly sad for Martyn and Alison because it was the south-west coastal path that had been their initial inspiration for doing the walk in the first place. "To find that we couldn't do it because it was all shut was devastating. We were stopped in our tracks.

This was the point at which Alison became ill. She had developed severe headaches, and a visit to a neurology clinic revealed that she had a brain tumour. She had to have it operated on, and then received radiotherapy. They had to break the walk for four or five months. When Alison's treatment was complete they still had about 1200 miles to go, but there was no way she wasn't going to finish it, and she did. "There was no question in my mind that I wasn't going to get up and finish the job. And I had Martyn beside me to help me do it".

Though it was still early days in their relationship really, they had been close from the start, and their walk cemented things between them. "I don't think we could have contemplated taking on such a project if we hadn't recognised in each other just how much of a team we were. The walk was our romance really, our courtship". They got married eleven days after they finished the walk.

You can find out more about Martyn and Alison's walk around Britain by checking out their website.