Walking the England Coast Path
Birchington → Reculver (5 miles)
In my very long-term attempt to walk the coast of Kent, yesterday I plugged a five mile gap on the north coast. In 2014 I'd got no further east than Reculver and in 2019 no further west than Birchington so in 2026 I've connected them together. I actually walked all the way from Birchington to Herne Bay because the intervening miles are marshy nomansland with no stations, but today I'll just blog about the gap. Thankfully all the fog had cleared by the time my train reached Gravesend so it was a glorious coastal stroll.
[10 photos]
Birchington is the westernmost suburb on the Isle of Thanet, three miles from Margate and the other side of Westgate-on-Sea. It's flats and bungalows, it's retirement-a-go-go, it's small terriers with poppies hanging from their collars, also a pristine bowls club that shuts promptly on 1st October at the end of the season. My walk started at Beresford Gap, a cut in the chalk where housing makes way for cliff-edge greensward. They're hardly the highest of cliffs but sufficient for a panorama encompassing Margate tower blocks, distant ships and (because it was low tide) a vast wave-cut platform scattered with rockpools and seaweed. Several rustic shelters have been provided, each recently painted in that special shade of light blue only coastal local authorities use. Motor caravans must not be parked on Cliff Road between the hours of 6pm and 6am.
Where the chalk stops the streets dip back towards sea level, one astutely called Canute Road. This is Minnis Bay, a gently shelving rocky beach that morphs into an extensive sandy sweep, plus a semi-circular tide-lapped pool by the promenade for paddlers feeling brave. This is also dog-walking central, at least now September's passed and mutts are allowed on the beach again, also the regular recipient of an Environment Agency 'Excellent' award for bathing quality. Two dozen characterless beach huts provide minor shelter and two beachfront bars offer refreshment for the silver-haired and members of the local sailing club. The grassy embankment that leads to the town's beacon is lined by numerous benches, their backs all seemingly carved by the same carpenter, one of which commemorates a death just four months ago and another of which remembers Audrey & Archie Love You Lots Like Jelly Tots.
Here begins the Northern Sea Wall, a three mile concrete sea defence built in the 1950s to protect the farmland behind from unwanted inundation. It wasn't quite finished when the great flood of 1953 hit, hence the tidal surge covered 5000 acres and spread inland beyond the railway line. The sea has every right to be here because this used to be the Wantsum Channel, a (very) broad band of water that once separated the Isle of Thanet from the rest of Kent. The Romans used it as a shipping route and the Normans established what would now be inland ports up navigable creeks. But between the 12th and 15th centuries the channel gradually silted up, partly from slower flow and partly from an ecclesiastical landgrab, so by the reign of Elizabeth I Thanet was an island no more. Instead a broad swathe of almost-uninhabited farmland now stretches from coast to coast, several miles wide, and the remainder of the walk is thus a straight hike across the mouth of the former marine channel.
You can tell it's about to get remote because dogwalkers choose to go no further, there being nowhere to head except straight back. The edge of solitude is a spot called Plum Pudding Island, formerly the site of a sewage treatment works but now thankfully more about horses and caravans. I had the entire wall seemingly to myself after I'd passed the last birdwatcher, his binoculars trained on a flock of white seabirds paddling beyond the next groyne. A shingly lagoon here has managed to attract avocets and ringed plovers since it was de-silted ten years ago, and although all I got to see was two swans they did swoop round for a noisy splashdown just for me.
The sea wall is only slightly raised and also had to be vehicle-width so is quite broad. A parallel footpath runs immediately behind for anyone who prefers to walk three miles without ever seeing the sea (or perhaps to escape the worst of the weather should it be stormy). The farmland here is flat ploughed fields interspersed with drainage channels, plus the occasional interconnecting track for farmers only. After a mile comes a channel a tad wider than the others which it turns out is what remains of the Wantsum, now draining south to meet the River Stour before flowing east towards Sandwich. A public footpath here is the only escape from the seafront for a good three miles, and equally remote as it heads inland across the floodplain so best not follow it in the hope of heading somewhere less lonely.
And so the wall ploughs on, shingle banks to the right and two tiny towers in the distance growing inexorably closer. I did pass three people out walking, also a tiny handful of joggers, but the majority of those passing were on bikes because this flat coastline is absolutely perfect for it. Often they were in pairs so I heard a brief snatch of conversation as they passed, one couple gabbling about nuclear power stations and another about a mystery man ("was that the wedding at Quex? ...the one whose wife was hanging from a lamppost? ...isn't he dead now?"). Otherwise my sole company was a robin on a bush, a cormorant on a groyne and scores of gulls at the water's edge as the tide quietly splashed back in.
Civilisation gradually re-encroaches, this because there's a car park at Reculver so visitors are slightly more willing to walk a short distance along the wall. Eventually the two Norman towers take centre stage, perched loftily on a sandstone outcrop at the most strategic point for miles. You can't climb up direct, you have to deviate via a sloping lawn where once a large square Roman fort overlooked the mouth of the Wantsum. Only a few foundations of that survive, the two enormous towers instead being all that remains of a Anglo-Saxon monastery's 12th century extension. The remainder of St Mary's church was destroyed by gunpowder in 1809, having been deemed unsafe, but Trinity House insisted on keeping the twin towers and hanging beacons from them as an aid to navigation. Feel free to wander down the nave, head out through what used to be the porch and onwards to the outline of a Roman bathhouse, reflecting on an amazing history far more varied than most.
It gets much Kentier on the far side - a pub, a visitor centre and an adventure playground. This is Reculver Country Park, a non-English Heritage zone, reached by driving up a long dead end lane and paying for parking beneath the towers. Perhaps grab a pint from The King Ethelbert Inn, alternatively a coffee from local baristas HatsHats, and if you do partake rest assured there are also public toilets, the sole conveniences for miles. Yesterday the team from Bird Wise had turned up in their van to celebrate all thing seabird, but mainly to educate visitors on how not to disturb them. And best not wait for the bus, it only comes twice a day, so if you've come on foot I'm afraid it's a hike of over an hour to the nearest station.
I continued west atop undulating cliffs and across the woody contours of Bishopstone Glen, inexorably passing rows of wind turbines far out in the estuary. The last half hour along a concrete promenade was less enchanting, before this finally deposited me on the seafront at the resort of Herne Bay, still lightly buzzing at the fag end at the summer season. Here Cabin FM played out on the stumpy pier, a charity singer prepared to entertain diners in the bandstand and ageing bikers sunned themselves by the clocktower while passers-by admired their gaudy steeds. This second half of my walk is part of the Oyster Bay Trail, an eight mile seafront connection linking Whitstable to Reculver, thus previously blogged. Just know that from whichever direction you choose to approach Reculver it's both impressive and impressively remote, and I'm very pleased to have finally plugged the gap.
Now walked...
✔ Whitstable → Herne Bay → Reculver → Margate → Broadstairs → Ramsgate → Pegwell Bay (27 miles)
(gap - 11 miles)
✔ Deal → Walmer → Dover → Folkestone → Sandgate (19 miles)
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