Feeling small beside a big sea: the UK's wildest coastal walks for storms and seal pups

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If I wanted to feel properly small this winter, I'd go where the land runs out and the Atlantic or the North Sea is doing the talking. My picks are Hartland Quay in north Devon, Godrevy in Cornwall, Durdle Door on the Jurassic Coast, the Marloes peninsula in Pembrokeshire, Braich y Pwll on the Llŷn, Horsey in Norfolk, Ravenscar to Robin Hood's Bay in Yorkshire, Craster to Dunstanburgh in Northumberland, St Abb's Head in the Borders, Yesnaby on Orkney and the cliff path from the Giant's Causeway. Some are storm walks, some are seal walks, and the best of them are both.

Autumn and winter suit this coast in a way summer doesn't. The car parks empty, the light goes low and silver, and from late September grey seals start hauling out to have their pups on beaches you can watch from above. The sea also gets more dangerous, and I've tried to be honest about that beside each place rather than tucking it away at the end.

What makes a coastal walk wild?

For this list it's a cliff path or a beach where the sea is the main event: storm swell breaking over headlands, or grey seals hauling out to have their pups in coves you can watch from above. The eleven run from a flat 1.3 miles at Craster to Orkney's 11.5km route from Yesnaby, and each section says what to watch for and how close the edge or the tide gets.

Why head for the coast in winter?

Because that's when the seals and the storms arrive, and plenty of people go looking. In the UK, "coastal walks near me" is searched about 2,400 times a month and "coastal walks" about 1,600, while "seal pups" gets about 1,900, rising to 2,900 in January 2026 (Google Keyword Planner, October 2026).

Why should you care before you go?

Because the sea that makes these walks worth doing is also what catches people out: the RNLI has found that more than half of the people who die on the UK coast never intended to be in the water. The seals need care too. The guidance at the colonies here keeps repeating (at least 100 metres away, dogs on leads, off the skyline) because disturbed mothers can abandon their pups.

The short answer: for seal pups, Horsey in Norfolk from November into January, St Abb's Head from October to December or the Marloes peninsula in the autumn; for storm seas, Hartland Quay, Godrevy or Yesnaby, watched from well back; and for the gentlest walk with the most atmosphere, Craster to Dunstanburgh Castle. Waterproofs, boots with grip, a head torch and a map from Ordnance SurveyOrdnance SurveyOrdnance Survey's own shop is the place to buy official UK paper maps and walking guidebooks. The range is built around two map series, a set of guidebooks for walkers, and histori2 current offers · View store → are the kit that matters (outdoor shops are on our Camping & Hiking page), and our autumn walks guide has ten longer inland routes for the same season.

I've put all eleven on one map, from Cornwall up to Orkney. Each number shows where a walk starts, and its section is further down.

Hartland Quay, north Devon

The north Devon coast faces straight into the Atlantic, and at Hartland the rock comes out of the water in long, folded ribs that look as if someone has dragged a comb through the cliffs. It's a coast built for watching weather arrive.

The South West Coast Path's walk from Hartland Quay is a loop of roughly 5.8 miles, and the Coast Path Association describes it as steep, with steps and stiles. That's the honest trade for the position: you're constantly climbing out of combes and dropping back down, with the sea on one side the whole time. In a winter swell the reefs below the quay turn white for hundreds of metres.

That clip is from the February 2014 storms, which battered the whole south-west, so it shows the coast at its most extreme rather than on an ordinary winter weekend. The quay itself is at the end of a narrow lane, and I'd treat the car as the only realistic way in out of season.

Godrevy and Mutton Cove, Cornwall

At the eastern end of St Ives Bay, the headland at Godrevy looks across to its white lighthouse on a rock, and just round the corner sits a small, steep-sided cove that grey seals have made their own.

From the National Trust car park at Godrevy, a short clifftop walk leads to a fenced viewpoint above Mutton Cove, where seals haul out on the sand below. Numbers tend to rise in autumn. The guidance is to keep around 100 metres away, stay off the beach and keep off the skyline, because a figure silhouetted above the cove is enough to stampede seals into the water.

What I like about Godrevy is that it works in almost any weather. On a calm day it's a seal walk; in a north-westerly the whole bay heaves and the lighthouse disappears in spray. The path along the top can be extended east towards Navax Point if you want more of the headland.

Durdle Door and Bat's Head, the Jurassic Coast

Dorset's coast does something the granite west can't: its soft, layered rock has been carved into arches, coves and chalk walls that look almost designed. Durdle Door, a limestone arch standing in the sea, is the most famous of them.

The path from Lulworth Cove over to Durdle Door and on west towards Bat's Head is short but relentless, a rollercoaster of chalk hills along the cliff edge. In summer it's one of the busiest stretches of coast in the country. In a winter storm it becomes something else entirely, with waves funnelling straight through the arch.

That footage was taken during the storms of November 2023. The same softness that makes this coast beautiful makes it unstable: landslips have closed and diverted sections of the Coast Path here before, and chalk cliffs can fall without warning. I'd keep well back from the edge and from the foot of the cliffs, and follow any diversion signs to the letter.

The Marloes peninsula, Pembrokeshire

The far south-west tip of Wales frays into the sea in a scatter of islands, Skomer and Skokholm among them, and the Marloes peninsula is the last piece of mainland before them. It feels like the end of something.

The National Trust's Marloes peninsula coastal walk is a circular of about four miles, roughly two hours, starting from the Marloes Sands car park and passing Martin's Haven, where the island boats leave in summer. In autumn the coves below the path become grey seal nurseries, and the Trust puts the number of pups born around the peninsula at about 50 a year. That makes it a quieter, more intimate seal walk than the big east-coast colonies: a handful of white pups tucked into individual coves, watched from high above.

Winter here is wild and exposed, with nothing between you and the Atlantic but Skomer. The summer Puffin Shuttle bus has finished for 2026, so a car is the practical way to reach the start until it returns.

Braich y Pwll, the Llŷn peninsula

The Llŷn reaches out from north Wales like a finger pointing at Ireland, and Braich y Pwll is its fingertip: a heathery headland facing Bardsey Island across a fierce stretch of tidal water.

The National Trust has a circular walk over Mynydd Mawr and Braich y Pwll of about two miles, around an hour and a half. It's short, but the position is enormous: Bardsey sits just offshore, the sound between churns when the tide runs, and choughs, the red-billed crows of the western cliffs, work the turf around you.

This is the walk I'd choose for a short winter day when the light is going early. It gives a great deal of drama for very little distance.

Horsey, Norfolk

Norfolk has no cliffs to speak of, just dunes, a long beach and an enormous sky, and yet every winter it hosts one of the most remarkable wildlife spectacles anywhere on the British coast.

Grey seals come ashore on the beach at Horsey to pup, and the numbers are staggering. The Friends of Horsey Seals, whose volunteer wardens look after the colony, count from November to January, and their final count for the 2025–26 season was 3,704 newborn pups. Visitors watch from designated viewing areas behind the dunes, and the rule is to stay at least 100 metres from the seals.

A pup on its own on the sand looks abandoned, as in the clip above, but the mother is usually close by in the water. This isn't a storm walk so much as a winter one: a flat stroll along the dunes from Horsey Gap, with the North Sea grey and roaring beyond the seals. I'd follow the wardens' signs and any closures; they exist because disturbed mothers can abandon pups.

Ravenscar to Robin Hood's Bay, North Yorkshire

On the North York Moors the heather runs right to the edge of the sea, and between Ravenscar and Robin Hood's Bay the Cleveland Way follows a high, curving line of cliffs above a broad, rocky bay.

The village of Robin Hood's Bay tumbles down to the shore in a crush of red roofs, and Ravenscar sits high on the headland opposite. Walkers usually link the two along the Cleveland Way; local guides give a circular of around seven miles using the old railway line for the return. In November the National Park's nature calendar notes grey seals coming ashore to give birth on this coast, visible from the clifftops. The Park asks people to stay at least 100 metres away and keep dogs on leads, and the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust makes a point I find useful: if a seal is looking at you, you've already disturbed it.

That clip is the warning for this whole article. Robin Hood's Bay's slipway is a lovely place to watch the sea, until it isn't. The tide reaches the foot of the cliffs along this bay, so I'd check tide times before setting foot on the beach.

Craster to Dunstanburgh Castle, Northumberland

Northumberland's coast is long, low and empty, and its great set piece is the ruin of Dunstanburgh Castle, a broken medieval outline on a whinstone headland with the sea breaking below.

Visit Northumberland describes the walk from Craster as a flat 1.3 miles from the large car park by the tourist information centre, past the Jolly Fisherman pub and the harbour, with the castle in view the entire way. It can be stretched on to the wide sands of Embleton Bay. It's the gentlest walk in this guide, and in winter, with spray flying off the rocks below the castle, it's one of the most atmospheric.

Out to sea to the north lie the Farne Islands, home to one of England's biggest grey seal colonies. The National Trust says around 3,000 pups are born there each autumn. You won't see them from Craster, but it's the same sea and the same season, and seals are common along this shore.

St Abb's Head, Scottish Borders

Just north of the English border, the land rises into a cluster of dark volcanic cliffs at St Abb's Head, with a lighthouse perched above the drop and the North Sea working at the stacks below.

The National Trust for Scotland looks after the headland as a nature reserve, and grey seals now breed here from October to December. It's a recent colony: the Trust reported a record 1,806 pups in 2020 at a site with no colony at all in 2007. Visitors are asked to watch from a distance, and parts of the shore are fenced off during the season. The Ramblers have run seal-watch walks of around seven kilometres from the Northfield car park and visitor centre.

St Abb's is also where the wild-weather theme turns sobering. When Storm Arwen struck at the peak of pupping in November 2021, local reporting said 224 dead pups were found in one small bay, Pettico Wick, with many more washed ashore, and that the reserve feared it had lost the majority of that season's pups. The sea that makes these places thrilling is the same sea the seals are living with.

Yesnaby, Orkney

On the west coast of Orkney's Mainland the farmland simply stops, and there's nothing beyond Yesnaby's cliffs but the Atlantic and, eventually, Canada. It's the most exposed walk on this list and, for my money, the most elemental.

Orkney.com's route from Yesnaby to Stromness runs 11.5 kilometres, about four and a half hours, with around 300 metres of climbing, ending at the pierhead in Stromness. Along the way is Yesnaby Castle, a sea stack with a hole through it that, in Orkney.com's words, "spouts spectacularly during heavy sea swells", and North Gaulton Castle, a taller, slimmer stack, with Hoy's hills ahead.

The safety notes on the official route are blunt. The cliff edges are brittle, sloping and often extremely slippery, the walk is very exposed, the ground is boggy in winter, and part of the mapped route is closed (the page says to turn left at the single-track road). There's no direct bus to Yesnaby either. I'd only do this one in good visibility and with someone collecting you at the end.

Giant's Causeway to Dunseverick, Causeway Coast

The north Antrim coast is all basalt: the famous columns of the Giant's Causeway, then a run of black headlands and amphitheatre bays stretching east, with the Atlantic swell rolling in from the north-west.

Most visitors see the columns and leave, but the clifftop path east to Dunseverick Castle carries on for about 4.6 miles one way on grassy paths along the cliff edge. It's a linear walk, so the usual plan is to take a bus one way. The National Trust runs a Clifftop Experience guided walk that uses the bus to Dunseverick and calls sturdy shoes and weatherproof clothing essential. I'd check current bus times before relying on them in winter, when services thin out. In a winter sea the views back west, of white water flaring off the headlands, are some of the finest in Ireland.

Staying safe on a wild coast

Every one of these walks is at its best when the sea is at its worst, and that tension is the whole point of going. It's also why the RNLI's numbers are worth knowing. In 2016 the charity reported that more than half of the people who die on the UK coast never intended to be in the water: walkers and runners, not swimmers.

The patterns repeat. Waves on a stormy day come in sets, and the biggest can run far further up a beach, slipway or rock shelf than the ones before. Cliff edges in winter are wet, undercut and sometimes overhanging, and the best views are rarely from the very edge. Rising tides can cut off beaches below cliffs. If someone is in trouble at the coast, the number is 999, asking for the Coastguard.

For kit, I'd want proper waterproofs, boots with grip, a head torch for the short afternoons, and a map. A paper map or the OS Maps app is worth having on any of these walks, especially where the path turns inland or a diversion sends you off the line you planned.

Questions people ask

When is the best time to see seal pups on a UK coastal walk?

It depends on the coast. In Pembrokeshire and Cornwall, the coves fill with pups and hauled-out seals through the autumn. On the east coast the season runs later: the Farne Islands through the autumn, St Abb's Head from October to December, Ravenscar in November, and Horsey from November into January.

How close can I get to seals?

The guidance from Horsey, the North York Moors and the Cornish seal sites is the same: at least 100 metres, dogs on leads, and off the beach. If a seal is looking at you, you're already too close.

Is it safe to go storm watching on the coast?

It can be, from a safe height and distance. The danger comes from getting close: slipways, harbour walls, rock shelves and beaches where a bigger wave can reach without warning. The RNLI's own figures show most coastal deaths involve people who never meant to go in.

Which of these walks is easiest?

Craster to Dunstanburgh is the gentlest, a flat 1.3 miles each way. Braich y Pwll is short at about two miles. Horsey is flat but mostly about the seals. Yesnaby and Hartland are the toughest, with steep, exposed ground.

Can I do these walks without a car?

Some can be linked to buses, notably the Causeway Coast, but winter timetables are thin and several starts, including Yesnaby and Hartland Quay, have no direct bus. It's worth checking the operator's current timetable before setting out. For inland walks in the same season, our autumn walks guide has ten long routes, from Glen Affric to Exmoor.

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