Fastest Known Time
This year, the record for the Fastest Known Time to complete the South West Coast Path has been beaten. In July 2025, Dan Lawson has set a new record for completing the 630 miles of our National Trail in 9 days 13 hours 40 minutes and 23 seconds.
If you are currently working towards your own FKT challenge please get in touch.
The leaderboard
Solo Male FKT - Supported
- Dan Lawson - 9days 13hrs 40 mins - July 2025 *Current Record Holder*
- Dave Phillips - 10days 8hrs 24mins - May 2022
- Kristian Morgan - 10days 12hrs 6mins - Sep 2020
- Damian Hall - 10days 15hrs 18mins - May 2016
- Mark Berry - 11days 8hrs 15mins - May 2015
- Andy Persson - 11days 23hrs 43mins - June 2019
- Patrick Devine Wright - 14days 8hrs 2mins - April 2015
- Malcolm Law - 16days 9hrs 57mins - July 2012
- Jonny Huntington (para athlete) - 26days 7hrs 49mins - August 2022
Solo Male FKT - Self-Supported
- David Myers - 13days 13hrs 43mins - August 2023
Solo Female FKT - Supported
- Justine Flett - 16days 15hrs 43mins - May 2023
- Dani Blackie - 18days 14hrs 42mins - May 2021
Solo Female FKT - Self-Supported
- Sarah Perry - 13days 11hrs 3mins - April 2024
- Emma Mumford - 24days 11hrs 56mins - June 2022
Mixed Gender Team - Supported
- Mark Townsend and Julie Gardener - 14days 14hrs 44mins - May 2013
Dan Lawson's story
_content_full_width.jpg)
Photo by David Miller Photography
Quite often after challenges like this one, my body feels depleted and my mind drained, but this 9 day communion with this delicious path has left me enriched, energized and feeling more complete, not less.
Right from the first day as I made my way across the gigantic Jurassic Coast the path began to talk to me, asking me to forget what I thought I knew about running and to try to dance to its own unique rhythm. At first I resisted believing that it was me as a runner that should set the tempo, especially as I had a goal time I was shooting for.
Half way into the first day my resistance meant at that moment the path and I were both singular; individuals on separate journeys. Things were getting hard. Not to be deterred, and I'm so grateful to her for continuing the conversation, the path spoke to me again encouraging me to run with it. Slowly, as the hours passed on that first day, I began to understand. I let go and let myself beat in unison with the heart of the path, and that's where this incredible pilgrimage began.
As the days went on and I let myself become more path than me, magical things happened. The nature around me fed me, nourished me. The path seemed to replenish and recover me each night and I started to glide and flow with the meandering trail.
Each day the path would reward our deepening connection with crystal clear blue seas down below and golden glitters of sunlight flickering on the surface. Every now and again in front it would show me a collection of headlands jutting out as a bridge between land and sea until the last was a ghostly shadow. You could see the path cutting through each one and it was like a beautiful invitation to carry on and move on with the energy.
I always took it gladly. Never did I not want to carry on. The offerings ahead were always so full of splendour, and intrigue. Once you had floated to the far away headland and then turned to look back, that's when the path really showed its beauty with the sun defining every ridge in the cliffs. The path would reward you, enthuse you, by showing how far you had come and the majestic beauty you had moved through.
Kristian Morgan's story (held the record for over 4 years)
Read more about Kritian's record breaking run: CLICK HERE
Damian's story (held the record for over 4 years)
.jpg)
The first time my friend Mark Townsend suggested running the South West Coast Path National Trail, like any right-minded person, I said no thanks. It is after all 630 miles. That’s quite a long way, I figured (I’m smart like that). And it might hurt a bit. But the idea was there…
And it gestated for a while. Until it didn’t seem quite so preposterous. There were definitely some times when I wished Mark, like a TV gameshow host, had insisted on accepting my first answer. But other times I was very glad he hadn’t.
Mark wanted to run the South West Coast Path partly to help promote his company Contours Trail Running Holidays who organise running holidays on our treasured National Trails. But also because he used to have the Fastest Known Time (FKT) on the Path, and he wanted it back!
People might think it’s a shame to rush the route. But I’m self-employed with two young children, so it’ll be at least a decade before I’d find a spare 5-6 weeks to walk it all of it in one go. Or a decade to chip away at it as a section hiker.
I grew up in Devon (where I also holiday regularly), Dorset and the Cotswolds, so I’m from this corner of the country and I’d long wanted to explore the coast. Plus, since I learned that if you go slowly and keep showing the cake in, you really can run all day without much discomfort, the sense of adventure had growing appeal. But it was still hugely daunting.
Mark Berry had averaged 55 miles a day to set the previous FKT of 11 days, 8 hours and 15 minutes. And he made it sound kind of easy. We started from Poole and though I knew there was around 111,000ft of ascent on the Path, those early hills in Dorset were calf killers. But I loved settling into a life of glorious simplicity; get up, run, eat, run, eat, take a few snaps of the spectacular views, run, eat, sleep. Then get up and repeat.
The Coast Path is wondrous almost all the way along. I remember it being especially pretty either side of Padstow. The finale, across colourful Exmoor, is very special too.
Elsewhere I saw crashing cliffs, endless beautiful beaches, wild sand dunes (not great for running in mind), coy coves and bays, moors, pleasingly cliched little Cornish fishing villages and weirdly named places such as Hope and Westward Ho! I’ll never forget Land’s End, so bleak in mist and later that day, the huge lighthouses of the lizard peninsula, lighting up the sky and their eerie sirens.
Ferry rides were both fun, but could be frustrating when the clock is always ticking and you’ve just missed one. I saw seals, deer, badgers, ponies, a fox chasing a rabbit, and some magnificent toads. The Coast Path really does spoil the walker or runner. That said, I did nearly trip over the hedgehog and tumble off a cliff, at about 3am. They’re deceptively dangerous animals.
Another great thing about running is that you burn so many calories than you can pretty much stuff your face all day long. Fish and chips, ice creams, milk shakes and more ice creams.
It wasn’t all fun. Mark had to give up after 300 miles with a knee problem. To break the record we had to miss out on a lot of sleep and I averaged three hours a night. So I could get a bit grumpy, even tearful on occasions. Sometimes bits of my body whinged about it all, too. But generally I loved the solitude and scenery and the sense of mission.
Overall I was left with an impression of how lucky we are on this island of ours to have such sensational scenery. But we can’t take places and paths like this for granted – it’s free to use but it’s not free to maintain and it needs our help.
One way to support the work of the South West Coast Path Association, the charity that campaigns to promote and protect the Coast Path, is by becoming a member. Which I’ve just done. Because, more than anything, I want others to experience the joy that I got from it. Though hopefully – for both their sake, and for mine (because I’d like to keep the record for a while yet if possible) – you’ll walk or run the South West Coast Path in a little less of a rush than me.
See more of Damian's incredible journey around the South West Coast Path in his YouTube video Salt & Dirt.
Damian Hall is an outdoor journalist and ultramarathon runner who's happiest when travelling long distance in lumpy places. You can find more at www.damianhall.info, and find evidence of his FKT on Twitter (@damo_hall), Facebook, Instagram (ultra_damo) and especially Strava (search for 14-14 May).
Image credits: Summit Fever Media/Contours Trail Running Holidays
