CANCER survivors Bob and Sue Storey this week completed a charity back to front walk of the South West Coast Path.

The couple, both aged 75, live in Alcombe, Minehead, but decided to start the 630-mile trek from the usual finishing point in Poole, Dorset, and walk back to West Somerset.

Bob, who had prostate cancer a few years ago, and Sue, who last year survived breast cancer, have so far raised nearly £3,000 for Cancer Research UK.

They set out on April 1 and completed the final stretch from Bossington to Minehead on Wednesday (July 16).

The couple actually started walking sections of the coast path about 20 years ago, but, said Sue, ‘one morning I woke up and said to Bob we need to walk the entire coast path including the bits we have done before’.

Former primary school teacher Sue and Bob, who is a ‘semi-retired’ painter and decorator, averaged nearly 9.5 miles a day.

Sue said: “We did it from the end to the beginning so we were ‘walking home’ because as cancer survivors we wanted to raise money for the charity.

“We have met so many wonderful people on the way who were also walking it but the other way.

“Most people do seem to walk from Minehead to Poole, and doing it the other way we seemed to meet more people.

“It was lovely to meet people and chat, and some of them have donated for us, which is lovely because they are strangers.”

Sue said much of the attraction of the coast path was its ‘beauty and peace and solitude’.

Bob, who was born in the old Minehead Hospital and attended Dunster Primary School and Minehead Grammar School, now the middle school, said: “This challenge has been on the back-burner for a number of years.

“The South West Coast Path has always occupied a special place in our hearts.”

He said despite what people might see in the recently released film ‘The Salt Path’, parts of the walk could be ‘severe and brutal’.

Bob said: “The path is very rarely smooth and there are lots of loose rocks and stones under foot.

“If you have to cross four or five valleys you are going up and down again and again and it can be quite challenging.”

The couple’s walk also took place as two heatwaves affected the Westcountry with temperatures rising into the 30s, which meant taking extra water with them and ‘taking it easy’ at times.

Bob said: “Fortunately, some of the walk can be relatively shady and being on the coast there was a bit of a breeze.”

It was the longest trek attempted by the couple, who had previously walked the 288-mile Macmillan Way from Lincolnshire to Dorset, the 51-mile local Coleridge Way, and the nine miles of Porlock Pilgrims Trail.

The couple are well-known in West Somerset for their volunteering with local organisations, including the National Trust at Dunster Castle, Townsend House and Parkrun, in Minehead, and previously with the West Somerset Railway.