Walk 46 -- Horrid Hill to Rochester

Ages: Colin was 60 years and 39 days. Rosemary was 57 years and 181 days.
Weather: Clouds clearing, and it turned very warm.
Location: Horrid Hill to Rochester.
Distance: 9½ miles.
Total distance: 292½ miles.
Terrain: Gravel and paved paths.
Tide: Going out.
Rivers to cross: None.
Ferries: None.
Piers: No.11 at Chatham, a short fishing pier.
Kissing gates: None.
Pubs: None.
‘English Heritage’ properties: None.
Ferris wheels: None.
Diversions: No.18 at Finsborough Ness where the footpath was temporarily closed due to building works.
How we got there and back: We drove – with bikes on the back of the car – from Bognor to Rochester where we parked in a car park by the railway. We donned our walking boots, locked the bike rack inside the car, then cycled to Horrid Hill where we chained the bikes to a proper bike rack in the Riverside Country Park.
At the end, we drove back quickly to the Country Park to collect our bikes before they locked the gates for the night! Then we drove to a campsite near Rochester Airport where we pitched our tent – dreadful location but delightful toilets!

(Due to extenuating circumstances, we decided to miss out St Mary’s Island and do it the next day. So, next morning, we parked near the central bridge leading across to the island and did a circular walk round its perimeter.)

This has not been a good week for us. Four days before this walk, we had our eldest cat, Bolly (Arabella), put down. She was nineteen years old and we have had her since she was a kitten. It’s a long time! We never expected her to live nearly this long, and didn’t think we would be so upset when the inevitable happened – but we were. We thought she had an abscess in her mouth, but the vet said it was a tumour so there was no other course of action except to put her out of her misery.
Two days before this walk, Colin got the result of a biopsy he had for prostate cancer, and it was positive! He is very pragmatic about it, but I had been so sure that it would prove negative that I was really knocked for six! Prostate cancer is extremely slow-growing, and this has been caught very early. The recommended treatment is to have the prostate gland removed – which is a major but fairly common operation – and this is what Colin has decided to have done provided it hasn’t already spread. Further tests will find out if this has happened, but I can’t seem to get my mind round it at the moment. I slept very badly ever since he came home so calmly and told me. We have decided to say nothing about it to anyone until after Paul’s wedding in five weeks time. This morning I woke up feeling sick and shivery although I wasn’t cold. I can’t think straight and nothing makes sense – I believe I am in a state of shock. In the end, we decided to stick to our plans because if we stay at home I will only mope and feel worse. Colin, as always, is keeping very quiet about how he feels, though he did come home from the vet’s (after insisting on holding Bolly while she had her final injection) and burst into tears! I have never known him show his emotion like that before, not even when his parents died. We are both in a very emotional state.
Added to that, today is the eighth anniversary of Dad’s death. His passing was the end of an era – life is very different now from the world he knew. I still can’t get used to the fact that I now belong to the ‘senior generation’, that my four children are well into adulthood and that my eldest grandchild is about to become a teenager! Because of all this, we left home much later than planned, then there were long hold-ups on the motorway adding at least an hour to our journey. By the time we had set up the walk with the car in Rochester and the bikes at the Riverside Country Park, it was quarter past four!

There were a lot of people enjoying the afternoon sun, being as it was a Sunday. The tide was further in than it was when we were there last time, but nowhere near flowing over the little causeway to Horrid Hill. We find it difficult to believe that Horrid Hill is ever cut off, and we noted that the dire notices warning of such an eventuality had disappeared from the notice-board.
We diverted slightly to look at a large pond which had been dug there with boardwalks across it so we could see everything whilst keeping it wild. It was very well done – lots of hiding places for the ducks and we watched a moorhen collect food to take back to her young which we could just see in a nest over the other side.
We followed a pleasant walk along the riverside, it has been set out very well for everyone’s enjoyment. We walked round a grassy outcrop, but ended up back where we started because there was one industrial complex on the waterside which we had to walk behind. Then the path regained the river where there were several concrete barges. We couldn’t think of any reason for anyone to build a barge out of concrete, unless they were something to do with the mulberry harbours during the War. We passed very close to the front windows of some new houses, then it all opened out into a park called ‘The Strand’, after which there was a marina which we weren’t allowed in so we had to retreat to the road. The wall surrounding the marina had a number of wall paintings depicting sea themes, which was rather fun!

We hiked along a dull bit of road which was quite busy – we even walked across a petrol station forecourt – and turned right into a road leading to ‘Gillingham Piers’. They turned out to be solid stone ‘piers’ where there were a few boys fishing, and we had to retrace our steps to the road.
We continued along a newer section of the dual carriageway past Chatham Dockyard which is undergoing a five year ‘redevelopment plan’ and looked a bit like a demolition site with a fancy entrance! We continued to the elevated roundabout above the entrance to the Medway Tunnel. This road tunnel under the River Medway was opened in 1996 by the Princess Royal to relieve traffic congestion in Rochester. No pedestrians allowed, so we were unable to use it as a shortcut!
On our ‘Explorer’ 1:25000 map, St Mary’s Island is marked as mostly blank with no public footpaths. When planning this walk, I had been confident that it was all part of Chatham Dockyard and therefore inaccessible. How out of date that map is, though I only bought it a few months ago! The internet Ordnance Survey map, which I accessed only yesterday, wasn’t much better. The Navy pulled out of Chatham in 1984, and they have been wondering what to do with this ‘brownfield’ site ever since. With the demand from the Government to build millions more houses in the South of England and with people up in arms about ‘greenfield’ sites disappearing under concrete, St Mary’s Island is a prime site for development. It is half-built – pukka three and four storey houses and apartments, many already occupied, and a three mile footpath all round the edge!
It was past 6 o’clock by then, and our car was parked two miles further on not including a stomp round the perimeter of St Mary’s Island. Then we would have to pick up our bikes, then find a campsite, then pitch a tent and cook a meal! Even though it doesn’t get dark until nearly 10 o’clock at this time of year, there was no way we could achieve that with an unexpected three extra miles thrown in! We had to make a decision – and that was to leave out St Mary’s Island until tomorrow. We made straight for the ‘Historic Dockyard’ which was the quickest way back to the car!(The next few paragraphs are about our circumnavigation of St Mary’s Island which we did on the morning of the 17^th June in baking hot sunshine)

We turned right at the next little roundabout beyond the Medway Tunnel and walked behind some of the first new houses to be built in this development, which looked as if their gardens were already fairly mature. Our way was barred by a large renovated building which was ‘to let’, so we walked down the side of it and discovered the ground floor was being used as a car park.
We walked in front of it beside the dock (no swimming!) as far as we could, then back along to the bridge. There we saw some big fish in the water which looked like trout, and a lot of jellyfish at various levels all pumping away. No wonder swimming was not allowed! They are fascinating creatures to watch, they looked as if they are all doing a dance!
On our internet map, ‘Ocelet Submarine’ was marked at this point and on our ‘Explorer’ map, ‘HMS Ocelot’ was marked – but there was only a concrete platform and no sign of any submarine. We can only conclude that the ‘powers that be’ have changed their minds as to where to keep it and didn’t tell the mapmakers, some of whom can’t spell anyway!
We crossed the bridge and read a plaque telling us that this development was opened by John Major in 1995. The trout had followed us! And there were even more jellyfish this side.
We walked along a boardwalk in front of the houses as far as we could, then discovered that there was a footpath leading up alongside them to take us to Finsborough Ness. We walked through a nice new grassy children’s playground and a fenced off dog-walking area – it was all very nicely done. But the end of this footpath was closed – due to the next phase of building works – blocking our way completely. We got lost in the new housing estate trying to get round, and were all hot and bothered. We were really fed up! After several false leads, Colin discovered that if we went up the side of an unoccupied apartment block and leapt over the wall at the back, we would be on the perimeter path again which was nicely paved. This we did (Colin helped me with the leaping bit!) and then we had to walk back to get to Finsborough Ness. We had walked half a mile to get round twenty yards of blocked path!
There was a rather good modern sculpture there of some sailors, and we stopped to admire the view across the river which was quite pleasant. We needed a breather, it was so hot! We then continued the ‘correct’ way round the perimeter path of St Mary’s Island with the river on our right.
The rest of the path was complete, and every so often there was a plaque describing the gruesome history of this place. St Mary’s Island used to be a muddy swamp, and in Napoleonic times several convict ships were moored off there. The conditions on board were inhuman, to say the least. The prisoners were shackled by their hands and feet, and each man was allocated a space measuring just six feet by twenty inches! They lay in their own excrement, and the ships were full of rats and cockroaches. The smell was so bad, the hatches were battened down so it didn’t upset people living in the vicinity, and it was said that ‘a candle refused to burn’ down there! They were given uncooked bread to eat which was rock hard, and their biscuits were green with mould. If they sent back any of the food because it was inedible – and that included fish they were given twice a week – then it was put in store and dished out the following week to save money! They were usually beaten senseless if they complained.
By the middle of the 19^th century, the convicts were housed in a prison building on shore, what is now part of the University of Greenwich! There, conditions were marginally better. The men were used as forced labour to build Chatham Docks for the Navy between 1861 and 1875. In 1897, Chatham Prison closed and the convicts sent to Dartmoor. The Navy pulled out of Chatham in 1984, and whatever was on St Mary’s Island has since been razed to the ground to make way for an enormous housing development which is still being built.As we rounded the end of St Mary’s Island we had a grand view of Upnor Castle on the opposite bank of the river. We then came to the modern lock gates which we crossed over using a little lifting bridge which reminded us of a similar bridge we have seen in Amsterdam, and also on the Llangollen Canal in Shropshire. The mechanism of the lock gates was being tested, and we watched as they were opened and closed several times.
We continued walking as near to the river bank as we were allowed, until we came to the little roundabout where we had short-cutted the walk last night.

(Now we return to the evening of the 16^th June, when we had been directed to a little roundabout at the entrance to the ‘Historic Dockyard’ by a passing cyclist.)
We could only walk about a hundred yards into the ‘Historic Dockyard’ before we found our way blocked by a locked gate. We had passed several buildings housing steam engines etc which had been closed up for the night, and one impressive looking steam engine (probably a replica of ‘The Rocket’ or something) outside a building. Our cyclist friend had told us that it was possible to walk through – you usually have to pay during the day, but it should be free in the evening. So we retreated a few yards, walked through a car park and tried along a different road.
Suddenly we were stopped by a night-watchman with blue glasses and very little brain! He couldn’t get his mind round the fact that we had walked in one end and wanted to walk out the other. However the dockyard is open to the public, and eventually we persuaded him to direct us to the route through. We passed a large number of redundant old buildings which are probably all ‘listed’ so they can only house museums now, past a ship’s figurehead (a bit like Portsmouth Dockyard) and we walked out through a very impressive gateway with a big coat of arms above the arch.
A bit further down the road, we turned down some steps and walked along a concrete quay – earlier we had cycled along there and Colin had heaved the bikes up the steps because we hadn’t seen the NO CYCLING notices! We came to a wooden pier which we walked along, and asked some boys who were fishing if they had had any luck. They told us enthusiastically of all they had caught, but they had either thrown it back or were telling ‘porkies’ because there was no sign of any of it! We can never understand the attraction of fishing – seems to us to be such a boring activity. There was a nice view of the sun setting over Rochester Castle and Cathedral. We walked along the water’s edge as far as we could, but for the last few yards we had to come inland to the
road and walk along by the shops to reach the car park by the railway where our car was waiting for us.

That ended Walk no.46, we shall pick up Walk no.47 next time at the car park behind the railway in Rochester. We had a hurried cup of tea, then we drove back quickly to the Riverside Country Park to collect our bikes. We thought the Park closed at eight, and would have only just have made it – but they had changed the time to eight-thirty so we were OK. The nearest campsite was very near a motorway junction – we didn’t want to drive all the way back to the Isle of Sheppey – but they were renewing the junction and it was a terrible mess! We were really too tired to cope with getting lost and taking the wrong turning through all those roadworks, but eventually we found the site and it was sheltered and pleasant with lovely clean toilets and showers. The traffic noise was muted but not the constant police sirens which have become so much part of our everyday lives in recent years. By the time we had pitched our tent and got sorted, it was dark – and we were within a whisker of the longest day! We heated up the partially defrosted meal I had taken out of the freezer that morning, ate it and went to bed.

Walk 45 -- Upchurch to Horrid Hill

Ages: Colin was 60 years and 2 days. Rosemary was 57 years and 145 days.
Weather: Dull, grey, overcast, but at last that cold wind has dropped.
Location: Upchurch to Horrid Hill.
Distance: 5 miles.
Total distance: 283 miles.
Terrain: Through an orchard, along a lane, another orchard, grassy banks alongside ‘Medway mud’ and made-up tracks.
Tide: In, going out.
Rivers to cross: None.
Ferries: None.
Piers: None.
Kissing gates: No.43 near Bloors Wharf.
Pubs: None – Colin seems to have given up.
‘English Heritage’ properties: None.
Ferris wheels: None – I definitely have given up on this one!
Diversions: None.
How we got there and back: We packed up our camp near Minster. We drove – with bikes on the back of the car – from the campsite to the Riverside Country Park (which includes Horrid Hill) where we parked. We donned our walking boots, locked the bike rack inside the car, then cycled back to Upchurch where we chained the bikes to a tree in the village.
At the end, we came to our car after only four miles of walking. We had a cup of tea, then trudged the final mile out to Horrid Hill and back. After a second ‘cuppa’, we drove to Upchurch to pick up the bikes. Then we took the quickest way out to the motorway and drove home to Bognor.

This morning, Colin was delighted to see a pair of green woodpeckers out on the clifftop right next to our camp! He was even more delighted to get some pictures of them. What did not please us so much was the fact that the only rain which fell all day chose to do so just as we were taking down the tent! It came down so hard, we both decided separately to suggest to the other that we abandon today’s hike – then it stopped so we went back to Plan A. But we have a soaking wet tent to take home, which is a nuisance.

By the time we had set up today’s walk and got to the double stile it was lunchtime, so we sat on the second stile to eat our sarnies – not peaceful by any means because, as always in the countryside these days, someone was working machinery nearby. What a noisy world we live in! Then we continued across the second part of the orchard and along a bit of lane. We had to cross another orchard, and the map told us that the path went diagonally from corner to corner, but in actual fact we had to walk round the edges. We didn’t mind that, it must be a bit of a bind having your field cut in two by a public footpath.
What we did mind was the water – it looked and smelt a bit soapy – which was gushing out of a pipe at the back of a building called Mill Farm. It flowed for about fifty yards turning our path into a stream. Good thing we both had boots on and it was too cold for Colin’s trekking sandals! It was quite slippery, and I am still paranoid about slithering over and breaking a leg. I know from experience how easily this can happen, and I just couldn’t go through all that again! Eventually the water spewed out all over the road – we had noticed it earlier as we cycled along to plant our bikes. It really is too bad!
A smidgen of lane, then we turned off past some houses and factory units. We were unsure whether the public footpath notice was directing us next to the biggest factory building or through an adjacent orchard, so we chose the orchard because it was much more pleasant to walk on grass. It turned out we were wrong, but fortunately so had a lot of other people before us. They had made a hole in the hedge at the other end and worn a path over the bank! Colin led me through and once more we were by the mud.
We saw a few birds today, but not many and nothing to get over-excited about. We were approaching the silver dome of a large sewage works (yippee!) but fortunately our way was barred before we reached it and we had to cut across to the other side of the Motney Hill peninsula missing out the end. On this side there were more hulks of rotting barges – is the Medway mud a graveyard for dead ships?
We walked round Bloors Wharf, a concrete apron where ships would have berthed in times gone past. It must have been important, it is big enough, but how did they cope with it silting up? Obviously they didn’t because it is now redundant. From there it was a pleasant walk along to the Riverside Country Park, and quite a few people were out enjoying it.
We stopped at our car and had a cup of tea, then we tackled Horrid Hill which isn’t horrid at all and can hardly be described as a hill. It is a rock about half a mile out in the mud, joined to the mainland by a causeway. It has a decent path out to it because it has been adapted for wheelchair users, so it was a nice easy walk to end our four days. The ‘blurb’ told us that there used to be a cement works on Horrid Hill, and that the causeway was a railway line where little engines used to tow the cement away. We walked out to the rock, all round it and back across the causeway ignoring dire notices telling us we could be cut off by the tide (it was out!)

That ended Walk no.45, we shall pick up Walk no.46 next time at the shore end of the causeway to Horrid Hill. We returned to our car, had another cup of tea, then drove back to Upchurch to pick up our bikes. From there, we found the quickest way out to the motorway and drove home to Bognor.

Walk 44 -- the Kingsferry Bridge to Upchurch

Ages: Colin was 60 years and 1 day. Rosemary was 57 years and 144 days.
Weather: Dull, grey, overcast, and the cold wind was still with us.
Location: The Kingsferry Bridge to Upchurch – ‘Goodbye’ to the Isle of Sheppey!
Distance: 10 miles.
Total distance: 278 miles.
Terrain: Mostly grassy banks through Chetney Marshes, then two miles along a fairly busy lane, followed by more grassy banks, farm lanes and finally through an orchard.
Tide: In, going out.
Rivers to cross: Back across the Swale, so it must count as no.11 again.
Ferries: None.
Piers: None.
Kissing gates: None.
Pubs: None.
‘English Heritage’ properties: None.
Ferris wheels: None.
Diversions: None.
How we got there and back: We were camping near Minster. We drove – with bikes on the back of the car – from the campsite to Upchurch where we parked in the village. We donned our walking boots, locked the bike rack inside the car, then cycled back to and over the Kingsferry Bridge with not only lorries, but a train thundering towards us! We chained the bikes to a field gate down from the bridge.
At the end, we had two cups of tea from our flasks in the car. Then we drove to the Kingsferry Bridge to pick up the bikes, and thence back to the campsite.

Colin celebrated his 60^th birthday yesterday – the age of free prescriptions! Now he is a genuine OAP, though he can’t claim his state pension for another five years. We celebrated by visiting a place called ‘Wildwood’ which is near Herne Bay. It is an initiative to captive-breed British wild animals and reintroduce them into the wild, though there is some controversy about the wisdom of bringing back animals like wild boar and wolves! Colin was most thrilled to see a pine marten there, but I was more excited to see wildcats – we have never seen either of these animals before except on film.
We may seem an eccentric couple to be camping at our time of life in a tent when it is so cold, but we are both enjoying it enormously. The tent is tall enough to stand up in, and we have all the equipment to make outdoor life easy – like a picnic table with its own seats, armchairs that simply unfold, beds that inflate themselves, a cooker on a set of shelves with a hanging larder and a bright and cheerful gas lamp. We are extremely cosy and comfortable at night, and we are so active during each day we are too hot rather than too cold. If we were sitting-about types it would be a different story, but I have put a lot of careful planning into these few days and we haven’t had a moment to spare for cooling down. By the time we have finished our meal at night, we are so tired we go to bed and cuddle up in our nice warm sleeping bags. Our tent is on the cliff top, but it is sheltered from the wind by a tall hedge and a couple of trees. It hardly flaps at all, and is very snug inside. Since the first night we haven’t had any rain, but we could do with a little more sun. And we both love sleeping in a tent – don’t know why, but we do!

We started today’s walk by stomping across the Kingsferry Bridge, for the last time we hope! Traffic thundered past in both directions, and when we cycled across earlier to place the bikes, there was a train to add to cacophony because the bridge carries the railway line too. We clambered down the bank, over a stile, then turned our backs on the construction to continue westward. We have walked nearly forty miles around the Isle of Sheppey to get back to exactly where we started, and it is a bit disheartening to think we have made so little progress around the perimeter of Britain in all that time. If the island hadn’t have been connected by a bridge we would have missed it out, but that wretched structure made it part of mainland Britain – no wonder we hate it! We turned to wave it ‘Goodbye’, but not with tears in our eyes!

But the bridge had one last surprise for us – we were about five hundred yards down when we saw a barge full of gravel coming towards us. As it approached the bridge, we noticed the traffic had stopped either side and the centre section rose up. We both thought of the same thing – supposing it gets stuck up there! That is the only road and the only railway across to the island, there are no ferries in operation, and you can’t swim across because the mud is too soft. The thought of getting stuck on the Isle of Sheppey with no means of getting off filled us with horror! Then the barge was through, the centre section descended and life resumed its normal hectic pace.We were once more walking the ‘Saxon Shore Way’ so the route was well marked. We followed the river for nearly two miles, looking at birds on the way – we have got quite blasé about herons and oyster catchers. Then Colin saw a green woodpecker, and we got very excited. It was perched on a fence post on the landward side of the raised river bank, and kept flying on to a nether post every time we approached it. Colin found this very frustrating because he was trying to photograph it! He didn’t succeed, and eventually it flew away – but it had been a real thrill to see it.
The ‘Saxon Shore Way’ turns sharply left avoiding Chetney Marshes ahead which is private land. (We were really quite glad of that because it cut out a long boring walk!) However, on our maps it showed the next couple of hundred yards or so of river bank to be a public footpath – we couldn’t think why because it doesn’t go anywhere. A five-barred gate blocked our way, and the string holding it was tied in a tangle of knots. Since the gate had a strand of barbed wire across the top, we decided not to bother. We sat in the lee of the bank out of the wind and ate our lunch, watched by a flock of sheep.
A little further on, a metalled road (marked on our maps as a Byway Open to All Traffic) crossed our path, and to keep strictly to rule no.1 – walk the nearest safe path to the coast – we had to follow it for about three-quarters of a mile until we reached a pond. As it rounded a bend, we passed a derelict wind-pump which looked as if it had a stork’s nest on its platform near the top. Colin climbed up the iron ladder to have a look (not bad for a 60 year old!) but said if it had been such a nest it had long since been abandoned.
We had met no one, simply no one, since we had crossed the bridge, nor did we expect to in such a bleak place on a grey day like today. Imagine our surprise when, on hearing a car behind us, we turned round to find it was the Police! What had we done? A single police officer was in the car, but he had several dogs in the back. He asked us if we were enjoying our walk, and we replied that we were despite the dull weather. He then asked, “Haven’t you strayed a little off the path?” I replied, “No, this is a Byway Open to All Traffic until the pond, then it is private and we will turn back!” I showed him on the map exactly where we were, and he conceded that he didn’t really know where all the public rights of way were, but told us the local gamekeeper gets very annoyed when people stray on to the marshes – which are private – and then they get called out which is a nuisance. Surely he hadn’t been summoned because someone had seen us turn on to that road a mere ten minutes earlier!
But no! It turned out that he had an agreement with the gamekeeper to exercise police dogs on the marshes so long as he kept them well away from the sheep. That was what he was doing, and he just happened along at the same time as us. We explained about our ‘Round-Britain-Walk’, and he relaxed and switched off his engine. We chatted for about twenty minutes. He said he would like to retire as we have done, he’d really had enough and his wife wanted him to as well. It was he who told us about Deadmans Island and Radio Caroline. He said the wind-pump we had just passed was working only last year, and we discussed the birds we had seen and were likely to see. Then off he went to exercise the dogs.
We came to the pond, but it wasn’t much, and there was a yellow notice telling us it was the end of the public path. A similar notice was on the road the policeman had driven down. To save ourselves nearly a mile of walking we needed to take a short cut through a farmyard, but the twenty yards or so across there was private land. We looked about – no one was in sight and the policeman had disappeared into the murk at the nether end of Chetney Marshes. The gate was padlocked, so we climbed over and scuttled across to the further gate. Horror of horrors! This gate was padlocked too, but it also had barbed wire across the top making it impossible to climb! Our public path was just the other side – we could reach through the gate and actually touch it! We looked for a way out, then Colin saw it. Right by the river’s edge the barbed wire stopped, so by climbing carefully over some wobbly rocks amongst a patch of stinging nettles we were able to straddle the fence where the wire was smooth. Phew!
We were once more on the ‘Saxon Shore Way’ which followed the Medway mud very closely for the next mile or so. We could hardly call it a river, let alone the sea, and it is aptly named ‘Bedlams Bottom’! We passed what looked like a ships’ graveyard, a dozen or so ghostly hulks rotting in the ooze. What a mess Man leaves in his wake! Two geese were sitting on the bank further ahead, and we wouldn’t have done them any harm. However, they weren’t to know that as they stood up to fly away. One of them failed to make height and crash-landed on the rocks lining the edge of the mud! It was a sickening thud, and we thought it must have injured itself. We both felt very guilty. We held back as it began to flap violently in its panic, then it settled down to get its breath back. After a few minutes it managed to get up unaided and loped across the wet mud to a patch of marsh grass leaving footprints in the gunge. We hoped it was all right, there was nothing we could do to help it.
The path led through some bushes, then across a couple of fields, up a hill prettily named ‘Raspberry Hill’ and on to a lane. There was nothing pretty about Raspberry Hill Lane. We had to follow it for two and a half miles to the village of Lower Halstow. It was fairly narrow and passes a brickworks. Every so often we had to leap into the bushes as traffic sped by. It led along next to the endless Medway mud, and on one of the muddy laybyes was a heap of household rubbish which had been tipped out of a skip – a basin, a fence panel, an oven, a bath etc! The next day we had to drive down the lane, and overnight someone had tipped what looked like two more such loads in a different layby. Surely there is a Council tip somewhere in the area? It’s no wonder there are five million more rats than humans in this country with all this fly-tipping! We put our heads down and marched as quickly as we could to Lower Halstow, grateful that the peninsula of Barksore Marshes is completely inaccessible so we could miss it out.
At Lower Halstow we were in for a treat – several treats as it turned out! The little medieval church of St Margaret of Antioch was open, so we walked in to have a look. A woman inside was a bit startled, “Oh! I wasn’t expecting anybody!” she exclaimed. When she calmed down and realised we were bona-fide visitors, she told us a little about the history of this delightful little church. It was first built in Anglo Saxon times incorporating tiles from a Roman building which was on this site. Built on a slight mound, it has never been flooded though it is adjacent to the marshes. The church was extended in the medieval period, and there are several wall paintings which, though very faint, have survived since the 13^th century. My favourite was of the devil suspended above two women, and he is laughing because they have the wickedness to be talking in church!
“Would you like to see the font?” asked our lady guide as she unlocked a padlock and pulled the lid up on chains. The wooden lid is Tudor, but the decorated leaden font is one of the oldest, and certainly the best preserved, of its kind in Britain. This is because it was coated in plaster of Paris during the Civil War to hide it from Cromwell’s soldiers when they were scouring the country vandalising churches. The congregation were so frightened, they told no one what was under the plain white plaster and the secret died with them. It was not until 1921, nearly three centuries later, that bits of plaster began flaking off and the beautiful decorated lead font was revealed!
Above the altar is a First World War memorial window. The church was in a very dilapidated state a hundred years ago, but the Rev Olive (Vicar from 1902 to 1924) initiated restoration in 1907. His wife had three nephews who were all killed in France in 1917 whilst only young men in their twenties – two of them were awarded the Victoria Cross. The emotive window depicts the vision of one of them as, rifle in hand, he crouches in those terrible trenches.
In May 1982, during morning daylight hours, an 18^th century brass spider chandelier was stolen from the church. It was so heavy and cumbersome, it would have required at least three people to detach it from the ceiling and carry it out – yet no one apparently saw anything suspicious and its whereabouts have never been traced. The church has been locked ever since, such is the price of vandalism! We were so lucky to have been passing by when this lady was in attendance.
All this history we learned in just twenty minutes – it was fascinating! The church is an absolute gem! I noticed an enormous iron key – it must have been a foot and a half long – lying on the table. Sure enough, it is still used as the key to the church, though they have a back-up with a more modern lock. I asked the lady if I could lock up with the big key as we left, and it was with great satisfaction that I did so. Childish I know, but fun!
A few steps away from the church and we came to the wharf where there was an old Thames barge undergoing restoration. It looked good, so we sat on a woodpile opposite to admire it and ate a snack we had left over from lunch.
The path continued for some distance right next to the mud. Colin was ahead of me when I heard a little squawk from the long grass between me and the gunge. I stopped, but there was nothing.
Just as I was about to move off, I heard it again. I tried to part the grass, but I couldn’t see anything. I called Colin back, and he stepped further into the tall stalks. All of a sudden a squealing hen pheasant flew up and away from under our feet – it made us both jerk back in surprise! Colin reckoned she had been sitting on a nest, but it was very difficult to find. It was so well hidden, deep in the grass, but we found at least sixteen eggs she had been sitting on. We didn’t touch them, and put the grass back over them before walking on. Colin was confident the mother would return once we were away, I certainly hope so! Once again I felt guilty about unintentionally disturbing wildlife.
We were getting rather tired, and when the path turned abruptly inland with PRIVATE KEEP OUT notices barring our way to the end of the next little peninsula, we were not sorry. There followed a bit of lane walking which was very dull, and we had to keep reminding ourselves we were doing a coastal walk because there was neither sight nor sound of the sea. We almost missed our turning off because the stile was hidden in a hedge. We walked through a grassy orchard which was quite pleasant. Halfway across, we came to a double stile in a line of trees, and climbed over the first of these before turning off.

That ended Walk no.44, we shall pick up Walk no.45 next time at the double stile in the orchard behind Upchurch village. We took the footpath between the line of trees as it led into the village a quarter of a mile away where our car was parked. After consuming tea and biscuits by the roadside – and talking kindly to an old dear who obviously thought we were buying the cottage we were parked outside (it was for sale) while she told us how she had lived there as a child and she was thoroughly spoiled in the days when everybody knew everyone and how happy those days were and she would live them all through again, before she shuffled off with her stick – we went back to the Kingsferry Bridge to pick up our bikes. We returned for a last night at the campsite with the lovely sea views but the terrible toilets!

Walk 43 -- Minster, via Sheerness & Queenborough, to the Kingsferry bridge, Isle of Sheppey

Ages: Colin was 59 years and 364 days. Rosemary was 57 years and 142 days.
Weather: Starting dull then turning sunny, and the cold wind was still with us.
Location: Minster to the Kingsferry Bridge (again!), Isle of Sheppey.
Distance: 10 miles.
Total distance: 268 miles.
Terrain: Concrete prom as far as Sheerness, a concrete path between two high fences to Queenborough, a gravel track out and back across Rushenden Marshes, then over rough grassy fields where we again had to play ‘guess where the path is’ in true Isle of Sheppey style!
Tide: Going out.
Rivers to cross: None.
Ferries: None.
Piers: None.
Kissing gates: No.42 at the entrance to a sewage works!
Pubs: ‘The Ship on Shore’ at Sheerness where Colin drank a local cider called ‘sheep dip’ – it was too sour for me.
‘English Heritage’ properties: None.
Ferris wheels: None.
Diversions: No.17 at Queenborough where the public footpath had been closed by the Council ‘until further notice in the interests of health and safety’ – but in reality because it went through someone’s industrial site and he didn’t like it.
How we got there and back: We were camping near Minster. We drove – with bikes on the back of the car – from the campsite to the Kingsferry Bridge where we managed to park just off the main road. We donned our walking boots, locked the bike rack inside the car, then cycled to Minster – the first part was horrid along the main road with huge lorries bombing past in both directions! We chained the bikes to a post by the public conveniences.
At the end, we had two cups of tea from our flasks in the car while we waited for a breakdown truck to hitch up a car which had conked out in ‘our’ layby! Then we drove to Minster to pick up the bikes, and thence back to the campsite.

We chained our bikes to a post just outside the public conveniences in Minster, which was very ‘convenient’ – if you’ll pardon the pun! Then we climbed the steps with blue railings and started walking towards Sheerness. Nobody about much today, being the day after a Bank Holiday and the weather a bit grey. The sea wall slopes up very high at that point with the ‘official’ footpath-cum-cycle track running along behind it. This was adjacent to the road and meant no view of the sea, so we climbed up and walked along the hard-packed shingle on the top. It soon gave way to a proper concrete prom, but the sea wall continued all the way to Sheerness with houses, shops and other enterprises in its shadow. The residents would have to sit on the roofs of their houses to see the sea – it was almost as if they wanted to blot it out of their lives! I couldn’t bear to live in a house with a twenty-foot high wall just over the road from my front windows.
Very soon we came to the only pub where we bought a drink in the whole of these four days walking! Called the ‘Ship on Shore’, we had to descend some very steep steps to get to it because it is one of the many businesses skulking behind the sea wall. In the ‘Good Beer Guide’ (Colin’s ‘bible’!) it describes ‘an interesting grotto’ in the car park. We thought it was a bit tatty – wonder if it was designed by a professional grotto-maker as was a similar 17^th century construction we found in the grounds of a castle we were exploring down in the West Country last summer. What a career! Certainly beats teaching – I’m sure I missed my vocation somewhere along the line!
According to my ‘Beer Guru’ (Colin!), Sheppey is not very good for real ales but is famous for its local ciders. When he asked in the Ship on Shore, the landlord said he had one barrel on and disappeared out the back with a glass in his hand. He returned with a 7.8% concoction called ‘Sheep Dip’ which quite accurately described the taste as far as I was concerned! It was far too sour for me, and when I said my favourite cider was ‘Scrumpy Jack’ he was most rude about it – I think the words ‘piss water’ came into his description somewhere! He said, “This is the only pub you’ll get local cider on Sheppey” – and he was right as we were to find out.
We climbed the steps (too steep for our ancient knees!) and continued along the sea wall. Sheerness beach is mostly shingle and had a lost neglected look about it. There was the occasional derelict shelter but none of the usual paraphernalia of a seaside resort, with the exception of a school party on the beach! (Glad I wasn’t in charge of them – if you were to plot a graph of the revoltingness of school-children against time, it is currently going up in a logarithmic curve! I know, because I still have to do occasional supply teaching.) We had already eaten our lunch whilst sitting on a handy bench before we encountered the little darlings.
Further on we passed the roof of a Sports’ Centre from which emanated the sound of happy swimmers, and then a big open space which I had read was once a grand funfair (Did it have a Ferris wheel? I’ll never know!) which became more and more run-down and seedy over time. Now it is a brand new – -- -- -- Tesco store! Wow! Such is life in the 21^st century! We speculated as to whether it is the nearest Tesco to the beach in this country – we shall find out! Further on, to our left, was the remains of a canal system with yucky green water of an unhealthy hue, and a high fence with lots of razor wire cutting us off from the secrets of Sheerness Docks. Peeping over the green bank behind the fence are some redundant Second World War fortifications looking very like Daleks in silhouette!
We walked along the top of the beach until we were met by a wall of rocks topped by swirls of razor wire – this was obviously as far as we were allowed to go. We posed for a silly photograph with the map making out our right of way had been cut off, but quite honestly we were surprised that we had been allowed to walk so far. Frustratingly, just one mile further on as the crow flies – across the mouth of the Medway – lies the village of Grain with its huge power station, approximately forty-eight walking miles away!
As we turned, a large container ship appeared round the end of the razor wire, steaming out of Sheerness Docks. It headed away towards the North Sea at a terrific rate of knots! We walked the half mile back to Tesco (tip-toeing past the Daleks!) and turned inland alongside one of the bits of disused canal, which was a more natural colour just there. Our attention was caught by the wildfowl, in particular by a baby coot that seemed to be abandoned and we speculated how long it could expect to survive. Then both its parents bobbed up from the deep with pieces of plant food in their mouths, and they started feeding them to their chick! They moved down the water to the road bridge. There we stood and watched this fascinating behaviour for ages, traffic pounding past a few inches behind us.
We also watched a swan who was sitting on her eggs – when she moved we could see quite a number of them. Unfortunately, being the edge of Tesco car park, she had made her nest out of modern rubbish! She was rearranging bits of plastic, cartons, wrappers, etc. We felt really sorry for her.
We crossed the entrance to the docks, passing a derelict church with a weather vane at a crazy angle, and entered Bluetown. We found we were walking alongside a high wall which was reminiscent of the Navy dockyard wall at Portsmouth, which we know so well. Sure enough, it turned out that Sheerness was built as a Naval dockyard in the 18^th century, and Bluetown was named after the original wooden cabins built there as accommodation for the workers – they were painted blue with Navy paint! All this we gleaned from a plaque in the wall next to an old anchor which had been left on the pavement as a sculpture.
It was not the kind of area I would have felt comfortable walking in by myself at night. There were some very odd shops of a dubious nature, one advertised itself quite blatantly as a licensed sex shop! Every alternate building was a pub in yesteryear, though few of them still are today. Colin went in one and asked about local ciders – no, we don’t do them, we’ve got some Scrumpy Jack! Across the way we could see a building which looked like an enormous aluminium warehouse. Apparently it is a new indoor shopping mall which has only recently opened. We didn’t go in there, shopping malls are not our scene.
So we continued on in a southward direction, leaving Sheerness past an empty space on the map called ‘The Lappel’ which is reclaimed marshland. The dockyard wall gave way to a fence with a very unfriendly top, behind which were parked hundreds of brand new cars, rows and rows of them! Our path, which had started off as a disused railway leading from the dock, veered away from the road, went over a bridge and turned into a concrete channel with a high concrete wall to the left and the new car compound to the right. This continued for over a mile, we couldn’t believe the number of cars! No wonder there is so much traffic over the Kingsferry Bridge, it is all car transporters. We wondered how long the average ‘new’ car sits on the concrete there gathering the dust and turning rusty before it is taken away. It was only when we came out of our ‘channel’ (not exactly a coastal walk!) that we realised that they have reclaimed a lot more of the marshland since the OS map was printed, and filled it with new cars!
We were already at Queenborough, we came out opposite a lump of mud called ‘Deadmans Island’. We didn’t give it much thought, except comment on the strange name, but we learned its history later. In Napoleonic times there was a hospital on the site – hope it was a bit drier in those days! They buried all the unfortunates who didn’t survive their crude surgery on the island, and at high stormy tides you can come across coffins and bones which have risen up out of the mud!! Even the surgeon was buried there, and they put iron railings round his tomb because he was important. These railings can still be seen at low tide. You could write a fantastic horror story about such a place!
We noticed several ships moored nearby, and commented on a bright orange one called Caroline – ah! Caroline’s ship! we exclaimed thinking of our prospective daughter-in-law. It was only a couple of days later that we learned it was Radio Caroline, the pirate radio ship which used to blast out pop music from beyond the three mile limit in the sixties! We used to listen to it on our tinny ‘trannies’ in student days. It certainly made the stuffy BBC think again about what people really wanted to listen to, and most of those disc jockeys now work on Radio 2!
As we walked through Queenborough to get round the inlet, we passed another of Colin’s ‘real ale’ pubs. We went in to try another local cider – no! we don’t do them anymore! – so the landlord of the Ship on Shore had been right! However, the landlord at Queenborough and one of his customers were so keen to be helpful about our trek (completely missing the point that we wanted to walk the nearest safe path to the coast) and directing us to remote pubs miles away where we just might get a local cider, that we had difficulty getting away without appearing rude! Eventually we got outside the door, thanking them profusely but wishing they would just shut up and not repeat what they had just said for the fifth time.
We walked round the end of the muddy inlet and stopped dead. We were supposed to turn sharp right on to a footpath along the south side of the inlet, but there was a Council notice up to say that the footpath was closed ‘for reasons of health and safety’. The truth was – this bit of public right of way led right past an industrial outlet and the owner/leaseholder didn’t like Joe Public walking past his factory. Wonder what position on the local Council the owner/leaseholder of the factory occupies – no! no! stop it! slap on the wrist for cynicism!
A few yards further on, a road led into the industrial complex, and past the parked juggernauts we could see the sea wall – so we walked straight down to it, sat on it and ate the gooey cakes we had just bought at a local baker’s. So there! There was a very permanent fence across the public footpath we should have come down, the wooden steps were mostly missing and there had been no diversionary notices directing us the way we had come. However, some children came bounding along and were playing near us, so it appears the locals don’t take any notice either.
These children, two girls and a boy, were betting each other they could jump down eight feet or so into the mud and not sink – the boy in particular looked as if he was actually going to try it. The elder girl asked us, very politely, “Excuse me, do you think we would sink if we jumped on to the mud?” We assured them that they would, that it would be very dangerous to even try it, and that people have died attempting just such a trick. I told them, “Then you’ll never see your Mums and Dads again!” That made even the boy stop in his tracks, thank goodness. Colin found a large stone and threw it into the mud with great force to illustrate how wet it was, and we walked away relieved that they seemed to have got the message. Kids!
In all our conversation in the pub, we didn’t manage to glean the information we wanted – whether we could get on to the river bank from the end of the spit at Rushenden and hence along to the Kingsferry Bridge. We followed a track next to a railway line for almost a mile to the piers where there was a lot of industrial noise going on. The track seemed to peter out, and there was quite substantial earth moving going on to our left over towards the river bank where we wanted to be. We tried to find our way over there, but the earth was loose and banked up with deep ditches to cross. We speculated that the top of the river bank would be very rough walking and we were extremely tired, so we turned back to the housing estate at Rushenden.
We were so fed up by then we took the quickest route, which went through the middle of the estate, quite forgetting we were supposed to be finding the nearest route to the coast on our right. So what! It would only have meant going the other side of a few houses. We found our way to the entrance to the sewage farm – through the only kissing gate on this walk! – where we had been assured in the pub we could get through to the river bank. Then I noticed that the big gates in front of the sewage farm were shut and very firmly locked – so much for listening to people in pubs!

So we retraced our weary steps a few yards and tried to follow the public footpath which, on all our maps, leads across the fields in almost a straight line to the Kingsferry Bridge. We could see the bridge on the horizon, but in true ‘Isle of Sheppey’ fashion, there was no vestige of the footpath on the field. We had to use our navigational abilities to the full (I allowed Colin to do this because I was just too tired) to get across the last mile and a half through the long grass without treading in a cow-pat, falling down a hole or having to swim across a deep drainage ditch!We were only a hundred yards away when we climbed over a stile and then found a very stout barbed wire fence barring our way! There was a dirt track going left and right, but the bridge, and our car, were straight in front of us! We chose right, only because the sea is always supposed to be on our right, but that track ended in a heap of earth and rubbish. We each found a different way round it, noticed an earth bank which allowed us to cross yet another deep drainage ditch with dry feet, and clambered up on to the river bank with about fifty yards to go. At last!
We had noticed, when we were about a mile back, that another car was parked on our tiny dirt ‘lay-by’, and that the owners had their bonnet up. By the time we arrived, they had been joined by a third car, and then a breakdown truck.

That ended Walk no.43, we shall pick up Walk no.44 next time at the Kingsferry Bridge – once again! The broken down car had snapped its cam-belt (expensive!) and by the time we had gulped down tea and biscuits, they had nicely held up the rush hour traffic, hitched up the car to the tow truck and were gone. We drove to Minster to pick up our bikes and returned to our campsite with the terrible toilets – I have found the one in the ‘ladies’ that doesn’t have wee all over the seat, flushes properly and it doesn’t matter that it won’t lock because no one else is crazy enough to be camping when it is so cold!

Walk 42 -- Warden Point to Minster, Isle of Sheppey

Ages: Colin was 59 years and 363 days. Rosemary was 57 years and 141 days.
Weather: Clearing skies to very sunny, but with a cold north-easterly wind.
Location: Warden Point to Minster, Isle of Sheppey.
Distance: 5 miles.
Total distance: 258 miles.
Terrain: First the descent of a soft earth cliff(!), then beach walking which was squidgy in places but not too bad (we alternated between sand and shingle, whichever was the firmest), and the final mile was along a concrete prom.
Tide: Out.
Rivers to cross: None.
Ferries: None.
Piers: None.
Kissing gates: None.
Pubs: None.
‘English Heritage’ properties: None.
Ferris wheels: None.
Diversions: None.
How we got there and back: We drove – with bikes on the back of the car – from home to Minster where we parked on the seafront. We donned our walking boots, locked the bike rack inside the car, then cycled to Warden Point (don’t let anyone ever tell you that the Isle of Sheppey is flat!) We sat on the edge of the cliff and ate our lunch while Colin investigated the best ‘path’ we could descend to the beach. We chained the bikes to a fence near the monastery, and started the walk.
At the end, we had a cup of tea from our flask in the car. Then we drove to Warden Point to pick up the bikes. From the map, we chose a campsite between the two points and pitched our tent there – first time camping this year!

Since our last walk, I not only have had my glasses mended but I had my eyes tested again (they were due) and I have bought a brand new pair of spectacles. They cost an arm and a leg, but for the first time in more than thirty years the opticians were able to make up my prescription with light-reactive vari-focals in plastic! (Each bi-annual test, my eyes would get a little bit worse and they could only make my spectacles in heavy glass, but at last technology has overtaken me!) This means that not only can I see things a lot better both far and near, but my glasses don’t slip down my nose with the weight whenever I get hot. The new frames are so comfortable I don’t know I’ve got them on most of the time – it’s almost like having normal eyesight, except that I haven’t got binocular vision (but since I never have had it, I don’t know what I’m missing!)
At Warden Point we sat on the edge of the soft cliff, legs dangling over, to eat our lunch. I had been quite concerned, when planning today’s walk, that there is no public footpath along the north coast of Sheppey. There are loads of caravan sites with high fences right to the cliff edge, and it would have meant walking a zigzag route back along the roads we had just cycled (which weren’t very interesting) between view-stopping hedges and doubling the length of the walk. We were both relieved, therefore, to discover that the tide was out – had we come last week as originally planned (until the weather said otherwise) it would have been in. As I have said before, I’m sure God is on our side!
Colin said, “Do you think you could get down this cliff?” I had already been planning it! The cliff is soft earth and there have been many falls over the years, so it is far from vertical. Little paths networked away from us down to the beach, so Colin – sandwich in hand – went for an exploratory walk to find the easiest route. When he came back, we took our bikes to the ‘monastery’ to chain them to a telegraph pole, then we started our Walk.
We descended the cliff carefully, it wasn’t difficult at all. There were a number of slabs of cement, bricks rounded by waves and even bits of concrete building at crazy angles on the slope. We speculated that they were the remains of a Second World War look-out post, or maybe even a gun platform since Warden Point is in quite a strategic position overlooking the Thames Estuary. A lot of the cliff falls had already grown over with plants, and the more recent ones looked like a war-zone – it reminded us of the countryside the week after the 1987 hurricane. When we glanced back at what we had climbed down, it looked quite impressive!
Along the beach we had a choice of sand or shingle, both were quite firm. Occasionally the sand would get a bit squidgy so we moved on to the shingle – then the shingle would get a bit loose so we moved back to the sand. When we took a step on the sand and suddenly sank a bit, we were asking, “Where is the notice saying DANGER QUICKSAND that was always there in the comics we used to read as children?” Funnily enough, there was no one else about doing what we were doing! We were nearly at Minster before we met anybody.
Looking up at the cliffs as we passed, we were reminded of mountain ranges and one section was definitely Monument Valley! Trees, and sometimes hedges, had managed to hold the earth together with their roots whereas all was chaos around them leaving them isolated on pinnacles – it was quite a lesson on erosion. We were also fascinated by large boulders of packed mud on the beach which had cracked, crazy-paving style. Many of them were below high-water mark, so they couldn’t have dried out like that. We couldn’t work out how they had formed.
We rounded ‘Royal Oak Point’, and thought at first we were looking at the remains of a mulberry harbour (described on Walk 17). As we walked closer, we discovered that it was a line of sunken ships stretching out at right angles from the beach! They were very broken up, and could well have been there since the Second World War. We speculated that it was a practice area for the building of the artificial harbours once they had towed them to France.
We know, from a museum we have visited in Arromanches in Normandie, that several old ships were deliberately sunk in a line to form the foundations of the artificial harbour on that side of the Channel. Also that the mulberry harbours were made in the Thames Estuary then sunk in the mud until they were needed, to hide them from the Enemy. Ships don’t sink in a line naturally, so it all adds up.
By then the shingle was getting looser, the sand was getting squidgier and we were getting tireder! So we were glad to step on to a concrete wall which led on to a prom for the last mile or so. We could see Essex clearly across the water, we think it was Southend we were looking at. We walked just past our parked car to a set of steps with blue rails near a road junction.

That ended Walk no.42, we shall pick up Walk no.43 next time by the set of steps with blue rails near the road junction at Minster. We gulped down tea and chocolate biscuits before driving back to Warden Point to pick up our bikes. We picked a campsite at random from the map – it was situated on top of the cliffs above ‘Royal Oak Point’. Fantastic location, but terrible toilets!