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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Sunday, 2 January 2022

Sunday Walk - Swale Estuary to Faversham from Teynham with Shortcut II

Length: from 13.6 km mi to 19.5 km, posted walk is 17.2 km 
Ascent/Descent: negligible
Net Walking Time: ca. 4 hours (main walk)
Toughness: 1 out of 10
 
Take the 10.10 Canterbury East train from London Victoria (Denmark Hill 10.20, Bromley South 10.35), arrives Teynham 11.38.  
From St Pancras, take the 10.25 Ramsgate train (Stratford I’nal 10.32) and change at Rochester (11.02/11.10) onto above train. 
Returns from Faversham are on xx.00 to St. Pancras (66 mins, High Speed surcharge needed) and xx.37 to Victoria (71 mins). Buy a Faversham return. 
 
For the longer versions of the walk, start an hour earlier.
 
The posted shorter walk cuts out most of the orchards. Here’s the blurb for the full walk: 
“This is a flat walk leading initially through ‘The Larder of London’, or the ‘Fruit Bowl of England’, the area around Teynham, not only the home of English cherries, but also with plentiful orchards of apples, pears, plums, strawberries and raspberries, as well as foraging opportunities for cherry plums, elderberries and blackberries. The area also used to be a large exporter of timber, grain and oysters. The local brick earth and chalk make the area fertile for fruit, but also were the foundation for the many brickfields in Teynham, Conyer and Faversham, remnants of which are passed en route. The bricks were an important source in London’s Victorian building boom, and were transported to London by the famous sailing barges, ruined remnants of which can be seen on the walk’s Conyer Creek option. 
From Conyer you follow the Saxon Shore Way along The River Swale, a tidal channel between mainland Kent and the Isle of Sheppey, and then along some creeks, with mudflats, salt marshes and fishing boats on the one side and the stark but beautiful landscape of drainage ditches and dykes, fertile meadows and windswept grazing marshes on the other, an unspoilt and tranquil haven for walkers, livestock and wildlife alike. Oare Marshes NR, passed late in the afternoon, is an internationally important birdlife sanctuary. 
You finish in Faversham’s bustling streets past the stunning Market Place and its many cafés and eateries. 
Plentiful options enable walk lengths from as short as 13.6 km/8.4 mi to as long as 29.2 km/18.1 mi. See the route map here.”
 
Lunch: The Three Mariners at Oare in Oare (11-12 km into the walk, food all day), The Castle Inn in Oare (11-12 km into the walk). 
Tea: Numerous options close to and in Faversham, see pdf page 2. 
 
For walk directions, map, height profile, photos and gpx/kml files click here. T=swc.299.a

1 comment:

Thomas G said...

n=9 walkers in initially lightly overcast, mainly sunny weather. The 'leader' chose to add the two in-walk extensions to the route, so everyone (not sure about the picknicker though) walked the 19.5 km version. With high tide at the start, we could not quite spot the sunken Thames barge remnants in Conyer Creek, before embarking on the long stretch along The Swale, with the outgoing tide then revealing a bit more of the mudbanks, sandbanks and gravel beds. The birdlife was numerous, as were the twitchers. The wind was fresh but came from the right behind, so a bit of a non-event. The rain kept off apart from a few minutes of squall off one dark cloud.
I had booked a table for 4 at the perenially fully-booked Three Mariners, which was sub-optimal insofar as 8 out of the 9 wanted a place. The fastest 4 got a seat, the other 4 were allocated some space in the bar area upon arrival, and were indeed 'allowed' to order from the starter menu later on. English Tapas, so to speak.
With a 14.00 hours booking, my hope had been that the pressure on the kitchen would have subsided by then and that food delivery would be quick. That wasn't the case, unfortunately, as we spent almost 100 minutes inside (and that's w/o starters or desserts). Food: very good. Staff: very friendly. No regrets.
Two things came from that long lunch break, one good one bad: A - we were certain to walk at least 20-30 minutes in the dark which not everyone seemed all that comfortable with; B - we missed the hard rain that came down while inside the pub - and all of it, and the rest of the walk was dry indeed.
The seawall-top path for the remainder of the route into Faversham was then surprisingly muddy and slithery compared to the previous bits, and we got to the town centre only at 17.30. Some headed for the 17.37 to Victoria, others explored the town or the taproom near the station to pass time before the 18.00 to St. Pancras. w=overcast-with-some-blue-sky-and-dry