Visitors new to this site may wonder how such an encyclopaedic collection of Westcountry hiking routes came to be researched, walked and written up.

The answer is that they have all appeared under the heading Hesp's Hikes in the region's main daily morning newspaper, the Western Morning News. Martin Hesp is now the paper's senior staff writer, and new walks still appear each Friday, but he began filing Hesp's Hikes back in 1998 as a freelance.

Martin says: "The basic idea was to simply have a lovely time walking - and to get paid for it. What I did not want to do was merely list the basic directions along each route. The Westcountry is a fascinating and historic place, and each and every walk has a story to tell.

"Hesp's Hikes was designed to entertain as well as to inform, so that the articles can be enjoyed by couch potatoes and keen walkers alike.

"Some walks writers are undoubtedly more precise in giving the bare details of their routes, but I have always assumed - and recommended - that most people trying one of the walks would take with them a good map.

"My belief is that anyone with the merest hint of intelligence could follow any of the hikes on this website quite easily from the description given - especially when armed with the right OS map.

"The Ordnance Survey Explorer series is an outstanding boon to walkers and I really do recommend that you take one unless, of course, you are walking somewhere pretty obvious, like a Scillonian island where it would be impossible to get lost.

"However," and here comes the legal bit, "westcountrywalks.com cannot be held responsible for anything that happens to you while you are following one of our walks. Anyone following a route from this website does so entirely at his or her own risk.

"It may have been some years since I visited a particular place and conditions on the ground may have changed. Many of the routes do pass dangerous places - for instance, all or most of the coastal walks will take you close to unguarded cliffs - but, as all experienced walkers will know, hiking in the countryside is really down to using basic commonsense.

"So be sensible, be careful, enjoy the Westcountry's stunning countryside and please feel free to contact us or add comments and opinions to our comments page.”