Walk 27 -- Sandwich Bay to Sandwich

Ages: Colin was 59 years and 106 days. Rosemary was 56 years and 248 days.
Weather: Hot sun, but with a welcome refreshing breeze from the sea. Very clear, but gradually turning hazy.
Location: The Royal St George’s Golf Links to Sandwich Quay via the Stour Valley Walk to Shell Ness and back.
Distance: 6½ miles.
Total distance: 163 miles.
Terrain: A gravel track which deteriorated to sand dunes and finally a boggy marsh! So we retraced our steps to get round a barbed wire fence and tried the top of the beach instead which was soft sand and grass. Returning the same way, we cut across a golf course, then a dusty and very boring farm track and finally a tarmacked path along the river bank.
Tide: In.
Rivers to cross: None—the reason we had to retrace our steps was that there was no way across!
Ferries: None—if there had been it would have saved us miles!
Piers: None.
Kissing gates: Nos.25 & 26 as we entered and left the Nature Reserve at Shell Ness.
Pubs: ‘The George & Dragon’ in Sandwich where we drank two Shepherd Neame beers, ‘Goldings’ and ‘Master Brew’, both of which were bland.
‘English Heritage’ properties: None.
Ferris wheels: None.
Diversions: No.13 near Shell Ness where the path got too boggy to walk. We retraced our steps to get round a barbed wire fence and walked along the beach instead.
How we got there and back: We camped the night before in Sandwich. We walked through the town and across the golf links to the spot on the beach where we had finished the last walk.
At the end, we were in Sandwich, so we looked around some more of this very interesting little town and walked back to the campsite.

Using the same public footpath we had used at the end of our last walk, we strode back across the golf course from Sandwich to get to the coast. We were surprised to find that the public toilet block we had used just four weeks ago was derelict! Both doors were firmly nailed up, and the protective wall in front of the ‘ladies’ entrance had been partially demolished. We supposed that the ‘powers that be’ considered this block to be redundant since there was another more modern block about two hundred yards to the north.
Neither of us were ‘desperate’, so we sat on the shingle beach to eat our lunch. It was a very hot day, and lots of families were piling out of their cars with all the paraphernalia (like folding chairs and windbreaks and cool boxes and rubber boats and picnic hampers and lilos) which the majority of the population thinks is essential for their enjoyment of the seaside. We were more interested in any wildlife we could see, but there wasn’t much. We spied the occasional butterfly, but they were too elusive to photograph, as ever.
Where the road turned away from the shore, there was a large crane lorry parked up with two burnt-out cars on the back. There was a black patch on the shingle where one of them had obviously been set alight. Abandoned cars have become a big problem in our countryside in recent years, they are everywhere! Many of them are stolen vehicles, driven around late at night by so-called ‘joy-riders’, then abandoned in remote places. Others are ‘old-bangers’ which finally conk out, so the owner takes it miles from home, strips it of all identification and sets it on fire to make really sure he (or she) can’t be traced. Often it is weeks or months before the shell is removed, and its our taxes that have to pay for this service!
We were using a public footpath marked on the map which leads up to Shell Ness Point—it is prettily named ‘The Stour Valley Walk’—but the path we were on gradually deteriorated the further north we went, and the people thinned out too. It became quite ‘undulating’ underfoot, and we paused to chat to a couple because one had stopped to remove some gravel from her shoe. Later we began to notice that the only people we were meeting were overweight and middle-aged men–and sure enough, we had strayed on to another nudist beach! They were quite blatant about it, posing there in the altogether. All those rolls of fat—it quite put us off our picnic sarnies!!
Colin was walking along with a long lens on his camera, peering round sand dunes looking for that elusive butterfly! His behaviour could have been misinterpreted…
We had seen surprisingly little wildlife, but then Colin picked up something from the middle of the path which he first thought was a large seed. Then we thought it might be a chrysalis, but it looked absolutely dead. So he started peeling off the outer layer to see what it really was, and to our surprise there was a moth inside which started to move!
We didn’t think its wings had formed properly because they were quite small, but we knew it needed to be somewhere in the shade to dry out if it was to have any chance of life. There was a concrete bin just inside the Nature Reserve, so Colin hung it inside there out of the sun.
We entered the National Trust Nature Reserve, and there we were really on our own—no nature-lovers, no nudists, nothing. Trouble was, there wasn’t any wildlife either! We saw a few birds in the far distance and managed to pick out some egrets and terns, a couple of herons and a kestrel; but where we were—nowt! A large area between us and the beach was fenced off with barbed wire, and our path was getting wetter and boggier by the minute. Colin was wearing trekking sandals, and refused to go on any further because his socks were getting damp! We knew we would have to return by the same route because there is no way across the river north of Sandwich, so we retraced our steps to the Nature Reserve entrance.
I said I wanted to try and get to the river mouth along the beach, and Colin grudgingly agreed. The sand was a little soft, but it wasn’t difficult to walk on. Here we saw a multitude of ringed plovers and back-backed gulls, but nothing extraordinary and it was all a bit of a disappointment. There was so much rubbish washed up along high water mark, it was unbelievable. The majority of the items were made of imperishable plastic, and I expect most of it was thrown off ships. I wish people who sail these vessels would realise that the sea is not a universal dustbin! That beach was disgusting! Near the mouth of the river, we found a wooden pallet, so we sat on it and ate the second half of our picnic. Then we returned, rather disconsolately, to the entrance of the Nature Reserve again where Colin looked up his moth. It was still alive, and its wings seemed to have enlarged a little, so it may have survived.
We were rather puzzled by a big notice there. This area abounds with golf courses, we had passed yet another one as we were walking along the dunes trying not to look at big men’s little willies earlier in the afternoon! This notice was facing the only entrance/exit to the Nature Reserve, and told us that the land we were about to walk over (our only route back to civilisation) belonged to the golf club and that we were forbidden to enter it without permission, but RSBP members could if they showed their pass! Who to? Even the nudists had gone home by then! So we ignored it, and walked along the smoother grass behind the dunes for about a mile, then we passed the same notice facing the other way. No one asked to see our pass (which we haven’t got) and no one accused us of trespassing, simply because there was no one there. We didn’t cause any damage, leave any litter nor even any footprints—so no one even knew of our passing through this ‘forbidden’ strip of grassland, and does anybody really care? There are far too many of these PRIVATE notices around our coastline.
We cut across the ‘Prince’s Golf Links’ as the quickest way to get back to Sandwich where we could cross the River Stour. The path seemed to twist and turn about, and bore no relationship to the map! Several times we stopped to check our bearings because we got disorientated. I think, in hindsight, that the golf club had moved the path to suit their layout—and, despite it being a public footpath, a golf ball landed very near us at one point. Then it turned into a lane going past a farm where they were trying to switch on an automatic watering system for their lettuces—it only partly worked. This part of the walk was deadly!
Eventually we came to the river bank, and walked along a tarmacked path all the way into Sandwich. Even this didn’t seem to give us many river views—too many reeds. I think we were disillusioned about today’s walk because we ended up exactly where we had started in the morning. We didn’t make any progress along the coast because of the impossibility of crossing the river anywhere near its mouth—also, it was a very hot day and the Nature Reserve had been disappointing.
Sandwich is a very interesting town full of beautiful old buildings which look as if they are about to fall down! About a thousand years ago, when the Isle of Thanet really was an island, it was a flourishing port called Sandwich Haven providing shelter for ships sailing between London and the Continent. It formed an alliance with Dover, Hythe, Romney and Hastings (all of which we have passed through already on this trek), and they became known as the Cinque Ports (pronounced ‘sink’). Rye, Winchelsea, and possibly some others tried to join in at a later date. The Cinque Ports became very powerful, second only to the Crown and the Church. They traded in other ports without paying taxes or tolls, they held their own courts, they dealt with their own affairs—in fact they did what they liked and blow everyone else! But their power declined when, like so many other places we have passed through on our route, the port began to silt up. In fact, our whole walk today was on reclaimed land—all those posh golf courses were under the sea until fairly recently! Henry VIII suggested the citizens of Sandwich sell the treasures of the town’s three churches to pay for the dredging, but he did nothing else to help. Elizabeth I was sympathetic too. She was made ‘very merrye’ by the hospitality offered to her by the town when she came to look at the problem for herself, but she didn’t do anything about it either! (I wonder if she enjoyed a game of golf while she was living it up!) So the silt grew, and now Sandwich is some two miles from the sea. The River Stour meanders across this new land with such contorted bends, it almost touches itself in one place.
We ended our walk by the bridge. Tolls to cross the river have been collected here at Sandwich Quay from the time of King Canute until 1977, when the very last toll was paid by the Mayor. Sandwich now has a bypass, thank goodness, so its ancient and beautiful buildings are protected a little from the constant roar of modern traffic. There was the usual list of tolls under the archway of the barbican—built by Henry VIII as part of his coastal defences—but we were more interested in another plaque which commemorated the fact that Sandwich welcomed 5000 refugees from Nazi persecution who had fled across the Channel in 1939/1940. Sixty years later, Sandwich and the whole of East Kent—in fact the whole of Britain—are fed up to the back teeth with the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who are risking life and limb to get across the Channel because we are a ‘soft touch’. We are far from welcoming, because the majority are economic migrants, not fleeing persecution at all, and many of them are criminals. They all have their ‘sob’ stories, well rehearsed and convincing, and they all know exactly how to use and abuse the system so they don’t get chucked out if they do manage to land on our soil. One of them was at our campsite the following morning, asking if he could live in a holiday caravan while he looked for work. How times change!

That ended Walk no.27, we shall pick up Walk no.28 next time at the bridge across the river in Sandwich. We walked back through the town to our campsite along the old town walls which were built to rebuff the French in the 14^th century. It was a very pleasant route, and we stopped to admire a new and imaginative skateboard ramp where youths were having a wonderful time showing off their skills. A passing lady walking her dog overheard us, and stopped to explain that it had only been open a couple of weeks. Already it had been vandalised, and there were increasing complaints about the play-park’s use late at night by drunken young people and drug taking. There is no local police presence outside of the nine-to-five weekday slot, and if a crime is committed, the perpetrators have long since fled by the time the officers arrive from afar. What sad times we live in!

Walk 26 -- Deal Pier to Sandwich Bay

Ages: Colin was 59 years and 79 days. Rosemary was 56 years and 221 days.
Weather: Too b***** hot again!
Location: Deal Pier to the Royal St George’s Golf Links at Sandwich.
Distance: 4 miles.
Total distance: 156½ miles.
Terrain: Concrete and tarmacked esplanade, then a shingle track which was very firmly packed, finally a smart tarmacked road.
Tide: In.
Rivers to cross: None.
Ferries: None.
Piers: None.
Kissing gates: No.24 at the Sandwich Estate.
Pubs: ‘The Alma’ in Deal where we enjoyed Whistling Will, and Marie Celeste which was delicious!
‘English Heritage’ properties: None.
Ferris wheels: None.
Diversions: None.
How we got there and back: We packed up our camp in Walmer and drove to Sandwich where we found a shady parking spot near the station. We caught a train to Deal, visited the ‘real ale’ pub, then walked to the pier.
At the end, we walked across the golf links into Sandwich, had two very welcome cups of tea from our flasks in the car, then drove back home to Bognor.

Colin had done his research a little better today, and when we got off the train in Deal he led us directly to the pub he was trying to find yesterday. The beer was much better there, especially the one called ‘Marie Celeste’ which we awarded top marks! So we started today’s walk in a better mood altogether despite the intense heat. It is the hottest day yet with temperatures up to 30°C!
We sat in a seafront shelter in the shade to eat our lunch which we had bought in the town, then we continued northwards from the pier. After about a mile, the houses ran out and so did the prom. This was the site of the third of Henry VIII’s castles, Sandown Castle.
Unfortunately, this one was allowed to fall into ruin long before the days when anyone thought it important to preserve such things, so there is hardly anything left of it. Apparently, it was the same size and shape as Walmer Castle, but in the 1920s the few remains were encased in concrete as part of the sea defences there. All you can see is a sort of circular shape with a few steps leading up to it at the end of the esplanade.
Continuing north we had a choice, either to walk on the top of the shingle bank with a slight breeze from the sea or walk down behind the bank on nice smooth grass with no breeze and the baking sun pouring down. On such a hot day there was no contest—the breeze, such as it was, won! It turned out that the shingle was packed down hard on the top, so it wasn’t too bad and it improved as we walked on. We saw loads of butterflies again, and plovers and gulls on the beach. Colin even got his camera out at one point, but that was the signal for them all to fly away! We walked along next to a golf course, and there were lots of people playing despite the heat—well, I suppose we were out walking despite the heat! (You know what they say about mad dogs and Englishmen…!)
We reached a group of houses called ‘The Sandwich Bay Estate’ although there is no bay there, just a continuing straight coastline. They were sumptuous buildings indeed! They looked far too big and orderly to be private residences, and we opined that they may be part of a nursing home or a very exclusive club. With their manicured lawns and regulated curtains, it all looked too institutionalised to me. Further on there was a huge beamed cottage which was for sale, so perhaps they are private but with all sorts of restrictions which would drive me mad! Anyway, we were pleased to walk on their nice smooth road past them.
We stayed on the road to partially pass another golf course, this is obviously a very exclusive area. Lots of people had driven down there and were enjoying the beach. We made use of the public toilets, and then struck off across the golf course to Sandwich.

That ended Walk no.26, we shall pick up Walk no.27 next time at the southerly set of public toilets on the shore side of Royal St George’s Golf Links. We walked back across the golf course (there is a public footpath clearly marked, but look out for stray golf balls!) to our car which was parked in the shade (thankfully) in Sandwich. There we treated ourselves to a couple of hot cups of tea—still the most refreshing drink even in those temperatures. Then we drove home to Bognor, a deadly journey along motorways.

Walk 25 -- Walmer Castle to Deal Pier

Ages: Colin was 59 years and 78 days. Rosemary was 56 years and 220 days.
Weather: A fraction cooler than yesterday with a whisper of cloud cover.
Location: Walmer Castle to Deal Pier.
Distance: 2 miles.
Total distance: 152½ miles.
Terrain: Concrete and tarmacked esplanade.
Tide: In.
Rivers to cross: None.
Ferries: None.
Piers: No.9 at Deal, another concrete one!
Kissing gates: None.
Pubs: ‘The Ship’ in Deal where Kentish Pride was nothing to be proud of and Noble Ox tasted burnt!
‘English Heritage’ properties: No.6 at Walmer castle and no.7 at Deal Castle.
Ferris wheels: None.
Diversions: None.
How we got there and back: We camped the night before in Walmer. In the morning we walked to Walmer Castle.
At the end, we walked back to the campsite from Deal.There was a cloud cover today which made walking altogether a more pleasant experience. We bought our lunch in the village of Walmer before walking the mile back to the seashore to start our walk. A few yards along the road I realised that a corn was beginning to be troublesome on my toe, so we turned back to the village to buy some of those cushioned rings at the chemist. Further on we found a bench to sit on, so I removed my boot and attached one of them – bliss! No more trouble from that quarter all day.

It has occurred to me that I have not mentioned my arthritic toe which featured very prominently in our first few walks. Well, I have not had a ‘miracle cure’ or anything, but I no longer have any bother with it because of two things. One is a painkilling gel called ‘Powergel’ which my doctor gave me on prescription. I apply it always just before putting my boots on and then carry the tube with me, though very seldom have I had to reapply it before the end of a walk. It is very effective. The other thing is that last January I bought some new walking boots! They cost an arm and a leg, but By Golly! weren’t they worth it? They are unbelievably comfortable, and rock the foot forward as I walk so that much less effort has to go into the step and I don’t actually have to bend the offending toe joint. Now I can walk for mile upon mile without so much as a twinge, in fact for walks of less than five miles I usually don’t even bother with the ‘Powergel’. They have transformed my walking–isn’t modern technology wonderful?
While we were walking along the footpath next to Walmer Castle to get back to the beach, we had a wonderful experience. The footpath is rather dark with overhanging trees, and Colin suddenly grabbed my arm which I always know means he has seen or heard something. There was a scuffling in the leaves by our feet and out popped a shrew! It was tiny, a very dark grey with a pointed nose. It sniffled around in and out of the leaves for ages, then a second one appeared! They didn’t seem to be aware of our presence at all, and we both managed to take several photos of them. It was magical!

Then a woman came along with her child and a dog, so that was the end of that.

Now for the walk –
We continued along the combined footpath/cycle track from the point where we left it yesterday, but within a few yards we came to the car park for Walmer Castle which is opposite the entrance, so we turned in. We took the tape-tour which always brings it so much more to life.
Walmer Castle is one of three fortifications built along this bit of coast by Henry VIII in the early 16^th Century. He had upset the Pope and the Spaniards by breaking with Rome in order to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. He closed the numerous monasteries which littered the country at the time, confiscated their wealth and allowed his mobs to ransack and vandalise the buildings. In fact, he used the stone from several local monasteries to build these three castles. Walmer was much altered in later years to form the residence of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. The Duke of Wellington was one, in fact he died here. The present Lord Warden is the Queen Mother who, although she is almost a hundred and one years old, stayed here last week as part of her duties of the office!
It was an interesting tour, not so much of a fort as of a 19^th Century residence. The gardens are beautiful. We went out to look at the lily pond which is very pretty, and saw numerous dragonflies and damselflies buzzing around—my favourite insects. We then walked up through the woods a little, and decided to sit on a bench by the croquet lawn to eat our lunch. As we approached the benches, we read the inscriptions on them—they were presented to the Queen Mother on her 100^th birthday last August to mark the Millennium. Oh well, I’m sure she won’t mind if we sit down, I don’t think she uses them very often! Thank you, Queen Mum!
We then went back to the coast and continued towards Deal. Colin began to get very tetchy and tried to hurry me on, and it was all because he wanted to get to his chosen ‘real ale’ pub before it closed. I wanted to dawdle and look at things, after all today was supposed to be a relaxing time between two hard-walking days. We knew there was a carnival in Deal starting with a firework display this evening, to mark the start of the school summer holidays, and a fair was setting up on the green behind the beach where we approached the town. There was a small helicopter parked on the shingle, and on enquiry I discovered that rides were to be £20 per head for a ten minute flight! No thank you!
The caravans of the fair masked two features which I wanted to look at, but Colin wouldn’t let me so I had to give up the idea of a bus back at the end of the day so I could return and study them. One feature was a plaque to mark the approximate spot where the Romans first landed in 55BC. Caesar then discovered that he had bitten off more than he could chew—Britain was not a tiny island of primitive communities which could be routed and enslaved within a couple of days, but a huge landmass supporting disparate peoples of quite advanced cultures capable of defending themselves and their way of life. So he retreated, and events kept the Romans at home for nigh on another ninety years. Even in those far off days, Britain stood independently against the world!
The second feature was a memorial bandstand on the green. In 1989, the IRA let off a bomb at Deal barracks where the Royal Military Music School is situated. It destroyed a rehearsal room, and eleven young men—several of them mere teenagers who were doing something positive with their lives—were killed.Call that war? Most people call it sheer bloody murder! Twelve years on, and the wound is still obviously raw, we could tell that by the recent floral tributes around the bandstand.
We reached Deal Castle, but Colin strode on, determined to find his pub. We walked all over Deal looking for it with several false leads, and I was hot, tired and furious! We must have walked a mile or more up and down roads, so I sat on a seat and told him in no uncertain terms to go and look for it himself! He came back to report that he had found the ‘other one’, not the pub he was particularly looking for, and that it was open all day anyway! We sat in their tiny paved garden, but the beer wasn’t very nice at all—one of the pints tasted burnt! I calmed down a bit then, and Colin felt a bit sheepish, so we walked a good half mile back to the castle and continued our tour.
Deal Castle is the second of the three castles built by Henry VIII out of monastic stone, some of the bricks still have decorative features on them! It was designed to withstand the heavier cannonfire of the day so the whole place is shaped a bit like the club symbol in a pack of cards. It is also low-lying and unobtrusive—in fact, on our way back later that afternoon, we were only fifty yards away from it when a foreign tourist approached me and asked if I knew where the castle was! We took the tape tour again which made it much more interesting, and walked round the gloomy passages at the bottom where the soldiers used to shoot their cannons and choke with the smoke, get deafened by the noise and run over by the recoil! Such is the folly of Man!
A couple of hundred yards along the coast is the Timeball Tower. About five miles out to sea from Deal lie the Goodwin Sands, a shallow area which is often dry land at low tide. In fact, when the spring tides are exceptionally low, fishermen run trips out there so people can have sand-yacht races, play cricket and generally go mad for a couple of hours! It is a big hazard for ships—a map of shipwrecks in the area, which is displayed at the end of the pier, hardly leaves room for any more to come a cropper there! But the area between Deal and the Goodwin Sands, called ‘The Downs’, also provides a safe haven for ships to rest up a while, and they have been doing that since time immemorial.
The Timeball Tower marks the site of the old Naval yard in Deal. On the roof of the four storey building is a spike with a big iron ball on it. It used to be used by ships to correct their chronometers, absolutely essential if they were to measure longitude accurately. It was worked by an electrical signal from Greenwich. At 12.55 each day the iron ball was lifted halfway up the spike, and at 12.57 it rose to the top. This was a warning to ships in The Downs to keep watching because, at one o’clock precisely, the ball dropped to the bottom again. It is now a museum, and the timeball only works during the summer months. The following day we thought we had missed it because it was getting on for two o’clock when we started our walk from the pier. We sort of half noted that the ball was at the top, then next time we looked it was down again. We hadn’t taken British Summertime into account, and we had missed it’s descent!
Deal Pier is only forty-five years old. The original Victorian pier was badly damaged by a Dutch ship in 1940, then the remains were demolished for security reasons. After the War, the people of Deal wanted their pier back, so a new one was built and opened by the Duke of Edinburgh in 1957. Unfortunately, it was made from concrete and is functional rather than beautiful! However, it is longer than Bognor Pier is now (only about a third of the length as shown in the photographs of Walk no.1 since the end fell off a couple of years ago!) and we enjoyed our walk along it. There is a lower fishing section, then we sat up the top to eat our last remaining food, an orange each. It was only 5.30pm, but a man came along and asked us to leave because the pier was closing in order to set up the fireworks for the display tonight. We finished our oranges, which we had just peeled, and as a result we were the last people off the pier—well, I wasn’t going to hurry, they had given themselves five hours! There was a mini-stage set up at the shore end with loud p.a. system being tried out. We decided that tonight was going to be VERY NOISY and were glad we were camping in Walmer!

That ended Walk no.25, we shall pick up Walk no.26 next time at the shore end of Deal pier. We had originally planned to catch a bus back to Walmer, but I wanted to go and have a proper look at the bandstand and the Roman plaque, so we walked back. Later that evening we drove back into Deal to look at the fair, which wasn’t bad for a travelling one, but expensive. We didn’t have any rides! Then we sat on a bench for over an hour people-watching and waiting for these much heralded fireworks. They were NAFF!! Pure back garden stuff – what a waste of time!

When I was sticking the original photograph of Deal bandstand into my original photo-journal, I was moved to write the following words:—

What’s new, indeed!

In 1989, Britain was at peace with the whole world; but certain elements in Ireland continued to ‘fight’ their battles of yesteryear. The self-styled Irish Republican Army let off a bomb at the military barracks in Deal which is famed for its School of Music. It destroyed a rehearsal room, and eleven young men – some only in their teens – were killed whilst playing their trumpets! This bandstand was erected as a memorial to those brave young lives, and according to the floral tributes the wound is still raw after twelve years. What did this cowardly act gain the IRA and their ‘cause’? – merely the SCORN of the world!
Even as I write this a few weeks later at the beginning of the autumn term, I am listening to the radio news. In Northern Ireland, girls attending a Catholic primary school have to walk through a ‘Protestant’ estate to get there. They are being jeered and pelted with bricks and stones! The British Army have turned out in force to protect them, they have erected steel barriers either side of the road and there is even a police helicopter flying overhead! We are talking about children aged between four and eleven, for heaven’s sake! Just how low can you get?

Walk 24 -- Dover, via St Margaret's-at-Cliffe, to Walmer

Ages: Colin was 59 years and 77 days. Rosemary was 56 years and 219 days.

Weather: Too b***** hot!
Location: Dover Marina to Walmer Castle.
Distance: 8½ miles.
Total distance: 150½ miles.
Terrain: Concrete esplanade at first, mostly grassy paths over chalk downs, a little road-walking and tarmacked paths at the end.
Tide: In.
Rivers to cross: None.
Ferries: None.
Piers: None.
Kissing gates: Nos. 19 & 20 just outside Dover, nos. 21 & 22 near St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe, and no. 23 near Kingsdown.
Pubs: ‘The Mogul’ in Dover where we enjoyed Iceberg, Blue Jay and Rheidol Reserve.
‘English Heritage’ properties: None.
Ferris wheels: None.
Diversions: No. 12 near St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe where our way was barred by an impossible fence and a rusty notice informed us that the path in front of the houses was ‘permanently closed’. We had to turn inland and a bit back on ourselves to find the road running behind a row of sumptuous houses.
How we got there and back: We camped the night before in Walmer. In the morning we walked to Walmer station and caught a train to Dover. We visited ‘The Mogul’ pub to get the ‘real ale’ bit in (first things first!) then walked down to the marina where we had finished our walk last time.
At the end, we walked back to the campsite from Walmer Castle.

We had originally planned to do these next three walks last week, but suddenly (and I do mean suddenly – like overnight) the weather had a relapse into the wind, rain and storms such as we suffered for weeks on end last Autumn. One day we were walking in the New Forest and it was too hot unless we were in the shade, the next day I got soaked–even through my wet weather gear–just walking into town and almost blown over as I walked up the shopping street in Bognor! So we postponed it all to this week, especially as we were camping, and now it is really too hot again to walk comfortably. However, we came, and here is the walk–
After refreshing ourselves at ‘The Mogul’ in Dover, we walked down to the marina and started the walk ‘proper’ by the Dunkirk memorial. There were a couple of stone jetties leading into the water, and a group of teenagers were gathered at the second one.
As we approached, there were shouts and splashes–the girls were sitting in an admiring group along the harbour wall while the boys were leaping from great heights into the water with much shouting and swearing, the way teenagers do these days! Then one lad got even more daring and climbed along a higher wall to leap off. Of course, the others had to follow, but we noticed that no one did the higher jump more than once! We managed to take several pictures of them mid-air.
The path seemed to continue on underneath the road where it does a whirligig to gain height, but it came to an end round the bend and we had to come back.
We knew we couldn’t get into Eastern Docks–the world’s busiest port–so we crossed the road and followed the footpath signs. There we got a bit confused. The footpath seemed to lead into the docks themselves, though on the map it went along just outside them. So we turned round and took a higher path which was signposted. This led up steps and under the road as it rushed northwards through a gap in the cliffs.
Up a few more steps and we were on a level with the cars whizzing past our ears, or so it seemed. It was a very hot climb to the top of all the steps, and we wondered at the wisdom of walking on such a sizzling day. Thankfully there was a pleasant breeze coming in from the sea, and that was our saving grace. We were now walking on grass between bushes and through a few trees. Buried deep in the undergrowth were the remains of all sorts of buildings, this has always been such a vulnerable bit of coast that has had to be defended throughout history. We were photographing beetles and butterflies and getting very hot indeed. There was no way we could sit in the sun to eat our lunch, so eventually we sat under a bush on the path where we couldn’t see the sea.
Just looking, we could have thought ourselves deep in the countryside seeing only grass and buzzing insects, but the sounds gave everything away. We could still hear the road, and there was the constant noise of ship’s engines coming from the harbour below us. Every so often a loud woman’s voice would make a long announcement over the p.a. system which was so distorted by its own echo off the cliffs, it sounded as if she was talking from the bottom of a well!We moved on, and came out in the National Trust car park where loads of scantily clad obese people were frying in the sun and generally shortening their lives by (a) eating too much, (b) smoking too much, (c) exposing acres of skin to the hot baking sun, and (d) only exercising by yacking into their mobile phones. Apart from that, the majority of them looked absolutely repulsive in the clothes that were hanging off them revealing all their rolls of fat, bra straps, beer-bellies and enormous behinds! (After a few hot days like today, we begin to rank ourselves amongst ‘the beautiful people’!!) Here we discovered a lower path, and looking over the edge we found that there was an even lower one which we couldn’t get down to. Was that the path we were supposed to be on all the time, the one we thought led into the docks? Too late now, we were not going back!
The next couple of miles of cliff path were quite crowded with walkers, and we were pleased to note that a large number of them were teenagers. It is good to see young people out in the countryside instead of cooped up indoors huddled over computers. They were quite funny, one lad asked me if I was American! (I thought my embarrassing ‘flowerpot man’ hat would have labelled me as quintessentially English!) Further on there was a dip where we were at last able to get on to the lower path which had come up to meet us, and to get away from the crowds who continued along the top. It was also noticeably quieter because we were shielded from the noise of the docks by the hill behind us and from the aggravating whine of a radar scanner on top of the hill we had just scrambled down. According to the map, this lower path was an old railway line. There were some ponies grazing there, and one suddenly decided to have a dust bath in a dried up puddle. It looked so funny, squirming around on its back.
As we approached the windmill above St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe, all the other hikers seemed to just melt away. Even the lone woman hiker we had passed and repassed and spoken to several times all the way from Dover was making her way back with the words, “I didn’t quite make the windmill!” The windmill and all the buildings associated with it are private, so the path diverts a little inland around them.
We then began our descent towards St Margaret’s where it was much quieter with only the natural sounds of the birds and the sea–a different world from the frenetic activity of Dover Harbour, though if we looked backwards we could still see the ferries plying in and out from behind the cliffs. At the end of a piece of National Trust land we were confronted with a rusty notice informing us that the path in front of the houses was PERMANENTLY CLOSED! The fence was impenetrable with weeds growing twenty foot high behind it, so that seemed pretty final. We can only assume that the cliffs had eroded taking the coast path and half their gardens with it, and that they didn’t want people walking past their front windows. As we remarked way back at Fairlight, we can’t understand people buying property at the top of a cliff, but they do.
We turned inland and a little back on ourselves, then followed the track which turned into a road down to the beach at St Margaret’s. Halfway down the road Colin noticed an old-fashioned ‘milestone’ set in the verge claiming PUBLIC FOOTPATH, and there was a narrow gap in the fence. He set off through it to explore, but couldn’t get very far because of the brambles. We concluded it was the other end of our ‘permanently closed’ footpath. I was so hot and bothered by then that I made a bee-line for the pub where I was prepared to pay extortionate pub prices for a glass of lemonade with ice and lemon, but Colin refused to have anything because the beer was ‘keg’! I squeezed my lemon juice into my water bottle and enjoyed lemon-flavoured water for the rest of the walk–got to get my money’s worth!
We left the pub and walked back along the short bit of the prom to the bottom of the cliffs we had just walked over (we could just make out where the true path had been) to look at a cave. This turned out to be man-made and blocked off, probably more old defence works of which this area abounds.
We watched a group of Cubs paddling in the edge of the sea with loud shrieks because they had to walk over shingle–yes, those were great days with the Scouts and Cubs but we don’t think we have the energy for it anymore! We were under two false impressions at this stage of the walk, (1) that we were two-thirds of the way to Walmer, and (2) that the rest of the day’s walk was flat along the bottom of the remaining cliffs. WRONG! We didn’t find out we were only halfway to Walmer (and that didn’t count the mile between the coast and our campsite) until we got back and looked at the map properly, so that was a blessing.
We continued north along the prom past the car park, but then it all came to an end and there was no way forward. With our hearts in our boots, we walked south along the back of the car park–where there was a wooden building in the shape of an upturned boat but no explanation as to its function–until we located a set of steps with a modern public footpath sign pointing upwards! It felt like climbing Everest, we were that hot and bothered. However, we made it, walked through some trees in blessed shade, then out on the downs again where the going was still upwards albeit more gently. We delighted in the plethora of wild flowers up there, one mass of deep pink seemed to be a type of pea. On and on until we reached the top where suddenly we were treated with glorious views to the north of Deal, with the pier very prominent, and the Isle of Thanet in the background. At last! we felt we were getting somewhere and our spirits soared–it was also getting towards evening and was fractionally cooler. We also found the reason for so many youngsters, especially boys, in the area–on the adjacent hillside was an enormous Scout camp comprising of at least half a dozen separate groups. It made us feel good–if Scouting can still appeal to youngsters in present-day society, then there is hope for the future. I come across so much apathy, cynicism and loutishness in my job as a supply teacher, with the really nice kids cowed and not daring to excel or be different for fear of ridicule, that I do despair on occasions.
We descended the downs ending in a steep flight of steps to Kingsdown. There was another group of lads fooling on the beach, one of them calling his leader a ‘beached whale’ amid hoots of laughter–well he was right because the chap was far too portly for such skimpy swimwear! We were now confident that the rest of our walk today was FLAT! but we were not in the mood for shingle-walking. So it was the road just back from the beach for a quarter of a mile before we turned down to the combined footpath/cycle track which starts there and runs for nearly four miles to the other side of Deal. Once again we asked each other why they can’t do this in Bognor where the esplanade is about twice as wide? It was so nice to see whole families out riding their bikes safely, from grannies down to the toddlers with stabilisers. We even met a commuter cycling home from the station in his city suit, instead of polluting the atmosphere with his car fumes and getting fat into the bargain.
At Walmer Castle we turned inland along a public footpath and walked directly back to our campsite.

That ended Walk No.24, we shall pick up Walk No.25 next time on the seashore by Walmer Castle at the spot where we left it today.

Walk 23 -- An historical day in Dover

Ages: Colin was 59 years and 45 days. Rosemary was 56 years and 187 days.
Weather: Hot and sunny, but with a little breeze in exposed places.
Location: Dover.
Distance: Nil.
Total distance: 142 miles.
Terrain: Climbing up, in and around ruins.
Tide: In.
Rivers to cross: None.
Ferries: None.
Piers: None.
Kissing gates: Nos. 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 at ‘Western Heights’.
Pubs: None.
‘English Heritage’ properties: No.4 at ‘Western Heights’ and no.5 at Dover Castle.
Ferris wheels: None.
Diversions: None.
How we got there and back: We packed up our camp at Folkestone Warren and drove to ‘Western Heights’ in Dover. After looking round there, we drove to Dover Castle.
At the end, we drove home to Bognor.

Western Heights is a huge fort and barracks built more than two hundred years ago. Although in the care of ‘English Heritage’ it is open to all comers and seems fairly neglected. It was first built during the American Wars in the late 18^th Century because most of Europe sided with the Americans against the British and therefore Dover was at risk. When Napoléon set his sights on crossing the Channel at the beginning of the 19^th Century, the complex was enlarged and fortified. The trouble was, by the time it was completed, the Americans had been comfortable with their independence for nigh on fifty years, Napoléon had been defeated at Waterloo and so the whole place was obsolete!The fort is built underground in the chalk hill. There had been a large and ornate entrance gate just down the road from where we parked (with lovely views overlooking Dover) but it was completely blocked up. You can walk all over the grassy slopes on the top, but I don’t think anyone has been inside for years.
We crossed the road and went up a steep path to look for the redoubt we had seen marked on the map. There was a circular walk way-marked, so we set off straight ahead through the trees. It was quite dark in there, and we soon realised that this was because there was a high wall (at least 20 foot high) either side behind the undergrowth—in fact we were walking along a deep man-made brick-lined ditch! We came out in a grassy ‘moat’ that completely surrounded the redoubt which itself had been sunk into the hill so it was unobtrusive.
We walked all round, but there was no way in although someone had tried to prise off one of the doors. Again, I don’t think anyone has been inside for years. The grass had been mown, but it was all a bit spooky because the high walls on either side of us cut out most sounds and there was no one else about at all.
On the south side there is a steep gully overlooking the harbour. The path led us down this a bit, then up to the top of the wall surrounding the redoubt. From up there we could appreciate how big the whole structure is; they didn’t build things by halves in those days!
We walked back along the top to the car park, then drove a few yards down the road looking for the ‘Grand Shaft’. This, too, seems all hidden away. A road leads down to it, but we had to park by a barrier and walk. The barracks built there were reduced to their foundations as recently as the 1950s with a few steps left in to get to different levels, and amongst the weeds we found a lovely group of orchids! At last we came to the top of the ‘Grand Shaft’, but this was all fenced off and is only open on certain afternoons in July and August–we shall just have to come back!
The ‘Grand Shaft’ is a unique triple spiral staircase built inside the cliff. The idea was to get as many soldiers as possible down to the harbour from the barracks in the shortest possible time in the event of invasion, hence three staircases built into one hole.
But the soft chalk kept caving in on itself during construction, and in the end they had to line it expensively and time-consumingly with bricks. By the time it was properly finished (like everything else here) it was obsolete because the threat of invasion was past. So they used it as a convenient route to travel from the barracks into town, and, mindful of their social class, each staircase was decreed to be for a different set of people. One was for officers and their ladies, one for sergeants and their wives and the third was for soldiers and their women!
And so we drove across to Dover Castle on the eastern side of town. This is one of ‘English Heritage’s’ premier sites so all their energies (and money!) are concentrated here. It is very popular, but not too many people on a weekday during school-time. The school parties were mostly on the point of leaving by the time we arrived, so they didn’t bother us unduly. We ate our sandwiches while sitting on a platform overlooking the harbour. We could just make out France in the haze on the horizon, but when we left several hours later, the Continent was much more visible.
We visited the Roman lighthouse, one of the oldest in the country but not still in use! We explored the medieval passages which was quite fun. We were the only people down there, the floor was uneven and poorly lit, and every so often we would come across a high spy-hole letting in a stream of daylight – definitely spooky!
We had to go down spiral staircases, round corners and up little flights of stairs, and eventually we were in a set of underground rooms with locked doors to the ditch outside. We thought the final room would be the way out because it seemed better lit than the others, but when we got there we realised the light was coming through some wire netting which served as a high ceiling, and we could go no further. It was like being at the bottom of a well! We had no choice but to retrace our steps, up and down stairs and all.
We visited the castle proper which was originally Norman but had been altered and added on to in subsequent centuries. They had an audio-visual exhibition of a visit made by Henry VIII when he was worried about a Spanish invasion in the early 16^th Century, shortly after he had broken with Rome and set himself up as Head of the Church in England. The Spanish were upset because he had done this in order to divorce his Spanish wife. It was an excellent exhibition and we found it very interesting–not at all like the boring museums of the ‘old days’!
We did not visit the tunnels because we have been on the guided tours twice before and we knew we would not have time today. They were dug out of the chalk cliff, one level being used as an emergency hospital during the Second World War and the other as a communications centre. Conditions of work in both were primitive, to put it mildly, but both were an essential part of the war effort. In particular, the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940 was masterminded from here. There is a third level of tunnels which was dug in the 1960s and fitted out with enough supplies to last twenty years. This bunker was designed to house the Mayor and all the local bigwigs in the event of nuclear war, which Colin and I remember very clearly being a real threat in 1962.
The trouble was, they lined the tunnels liberally with asbestos in the days before anyone knew anything about asbestos poisoning. They are now considered so dangerous that no one is allowed to enter them without breathing apparatus, and although ‘English Heritage’ want to open them up to the public, they have no idea when they will be able to do this. It seems ironic that all the people who thought that they were important enough to be ‘saved’ would have died a long lingering death in the dark from asbestosis and illnesses caused by contaminated water, while the rest of us unimportant plebs would have been blasted to oblivion in a nanosecond!

It had been a very interesting day–why was History at school always so dull? We had a couple of cups of tea from our flasks in the car before leaving for home. We shall pick up Walk No.24 next time at the Dunkirk memorial on Dover Marina where we finished Walk No. 22.

- :: - :: - :: - :: - :: - :: - :: - :: - :: -

We returned to the Western heights two months later because we knew the ‘Grand Shaft’ would be open.
We entered from the top, I went down the ‘Officers and their Ladies’ staircase while Colin went down the ‘Sergeants and their Wives’ one. The only difference was that mine was the only one of the three staircases which came out directly into the access tunnel–the other two came out in the well in the middle involving three extra steps to walk across it!
It was not as deep as we had envisaged because we had to descend a straight staircase before we reached the entrance to the triple stairwell. We did wonder if the top had collapsed during the building of it because it is in quite a hollow. We descended 200 steps altogether.
We had a long chat with the custodian at the bottom. I asked him why such a unique place was open so infrequently, and he replied that we were only his third customer all afternoon! I said it should be advertised more widely. He then told us about the drop-redoubt which we had visited in June. He had been inside it, and he said it is almost perfectly preserved as it used to be in the 19^th century!
It would make a fantastic museum, but ‘English Heritage’ don’t seem interested in investing any more money into it. It wouldn’t take much because almost everything is still there, but it would probably take custom away from Dover Castle which is one of their premier sites. Meanwhile, plants are making cracks in the brickwork, ornate facings are falling off and vandals are breaking inside to wreak havoc. He especially mentioned the beautiful sunken entrance to ‘Western Heights’ where all these things are happening, it is a crying shame.
We then returned up this unique stairwell–this time I chose ‘Soldiers and their Women’ while Colin ascended ‘Officers and their Ladies’. It was great fun!