Practicalities
A Coastal Day Needs More Slack Than an Inland One
Tides, boats, single roads and weather all impose fixed points that cannot be rescheduled, so coastal itineraries fail from being tightly packed rather than overambitious.
Coastal plans go wrong less often through distance than through timing. Several constraints on a coast are fixed by things that cannot be negotiated with, and they stack up.
Some deadlines cannot move at all
A tide arrives when it arrives, a causeway closes when it closes, and the last boat leaves on time regardless of who is not yet aboard.
These are unlike inland deadlines, where a later train, a later opening or a different route usually exists as an alternative.
Because the penalty for missing one can be a night in the wrong place, they should be treated as the fixed points a day is built around.
Coastal roads are slower than they measure
Routes follow the shape of the land, so a short distance on a map can involve inlets, single-track sections and a great deal of climbing.
Passing places, farm traffic and visitors stopping for the view all reduce average speed further, and the effect is largest in the season when everyone is there.
Estimating coastal driving at well below the usual rate, and adding time for parking at the far end, brings the plan closer to reality.
Weather removes options rather than delaying them
An inland plan can often continue in poor weather with minor adjustments, while a coastal one may lose the boat trip, the swim and the cliff walk simultaneously.
The alternatives are frequently at a distance, since coastal towns have limited indoor capacity and it fills quickly on the first wet day.
Holding a wet-weather option in reserve for each day, rather than for the trip, is what prevents everyone converging on the same aquarium.
Services are shorter than the day
Cafes, shops and small attractions on a coast often close in the afternoon and may not open at all outside the season, which shortens the usable day considerably.
Fuel is the version of this that matters most, because coastal stations are sparse and some close early or do not open on Sundays.
Assuming that anything needed can be bought at the far end is the assumption that fails most often on a coastal trip.
Building slack rather than cutting the plan
One fixed commitment a day, with everything else flexible around it, produces more successful coastal days than a sequence of timed items.
The slack should sit before the fixed point rather than after it, since arriving early for a boat costs nothing and arriving late costs the day.
Where two fixed points must be linked, the connection between them is the part to check first, because it is where the whole plan will break if it breaks.
Questions readers ask
Is it worth driving inland on a wet coastal day?
Sometimes the opposite is true: hills inland often receive more rain than the shore because air is forced upward over them. Moving along the coast to a sheltered aspect is frequently more effective than moving away from it.
How much slack should a coastal itinerary have?
Enough that one lost day does not cascade into everything else, which usually means at least one unallocated day per week and weather-dependent bookings placed early rather than late.
