DANIEL and Ellie Honey’s idea for celebrating their third wedding anniversary didn’t quite work out as planned.

Instead of a sunny coastal walk followed by a leisurely lunch at a pub they found themselves trapped at the bottom of 600ft cliffs having to be rescued by Minehead RNLI's lifeboat.

The couple, from Plymouth, set out on Friday (October 19) to walk the eight miles from Minehead to Porlock Weir, intending to follow the first section of the 632-mile South West Coast Path.

But a mile into their journey they took a wrong turn off the route and ended up on a boulder-strewn beach.

Ellie said: “We struggled along it because we thought at any time we would come across a path taking us back up – but there wasn’t one.

“After we had been going for about three hours we could see the tide was coming in and we weren’t going to be able to get any further.

“It looked as though there might have been a way up the cliff from where we ended up but we don’t know the area so we decided to stay put on the beach and call the coastguard.

“We figured it would be easier for someone to find us where we were rather than have to come and look for us if we tried to get up the cliff and got into difficulty.”

Minehead’s D class lifeboat was launched just after midday and soon located the couple at Selworthy Sands, just east of Hurlestone Point. They were taken off the beach and landed back at Minehead a few minutes later.

Volunteer lifeboat helm Phil Sanderson said Daniel and Ellie had done exactly the right thing.

“They certainly couldn’t have made it any further along the beach and without local knowledge they could have got into serious trouble if they had decided to climb,” he said.

“Staying in a safe place and calling for help was the sensible decision.

“They don’t need to feel embarrassed: this is one of the nastiest stretches of coast on our patch and we have rescued dozens of people from the same spot.”