Is England coastal path a good use of money?

The government has admitted that its target date for a continuous path around all 2,800 miles (4,500km) of the English coast is likely to slip because, not surprisingly, it is not a spending priority in the current financial climate.

Work is due to start in early 2014.

One of the reasons ministers agreed to the plan in the first place was to encourage more people to use the coastline. But would a continuous path succeed in doing that, as ramblers insist? Or would scarce public funds be better spent developing coastal facilities that already exist?

Reporting for Newsnight, Rajesh Mirchandani begins his journey in Wales where there has actually been a continuous coastal path stretching 870 miles (1,400km) for more than a year.