Toughness: 3 out of 10
9.40 train from Charing Cross (9.43 Waterloo East, 9.49 London Bridge) to Deal, arriving 11.51
OR
10.12 Southeastern high speed train from St Pancras (10.19 Stratford International) to Ashford, arriving 10.50, to connect with the above train at 11.02. Note that this train goes to Margate and may be busy: I would advise boarding it as early as possible...
Buy a day return to Deal
Directions are not really necessary for this walk: just keep the sea on your left. Some guidance its useful at the start in Deal, however, and also in St Margaret's Bay and Dover. For this purpose, walk directions are here (start at paragraph 74 on page 8), the GPX is here and a map of the route here.
I normally regard the very start of June as the ideal time to do this walk, since this is when the shingle flowers on Kingsdown Beach are at their glorious best. But everything is a bit late this year due to the cold weather in May and June, so cross fingers....
I love doing this walk in reverse. You get the longer train ride and the otherwise rather anticlimactic flat bit along Deal Beach out of the way first, and the drama of the scenery grows throughout the walk. You get to the most popular section - the Dover cliffs - later in the day, when hopefully the crowds have gone home.
The refreshment options work better in this direction too. The Zetland Arms at Kingsdown, at the bottom of Deal Beach is a possible lunch stop, while you should get to St Margaret's Bay mid afternoon when The Coastguard pub is less busy (one can hope...). There are of course brilliant picnic places throughout, especially on the cliffs after Kingsdown. (Keep away from the crumbly cliff edges, though...)
Otherwise there is a tea kiosk on the beach, and a small tea room next to St Margaret's Bay Museum open till 4pm. The tea room at South Foreland Lighthouse seems to be closed, but there may also be a tea kiosk here open to 5pm, and the White Cliffs Visitor Centre near Dover has a cafe likewise open till 5pm.
Only the last short walk from the seafront to Dover station is a disappointment in this direction: it is a rather dispiriting half mile or so, but there it is.
If you want to try a brief dip in the sea (it will be brief: sea temperatures are creeping up but will only be 13 degrees at best...) Kingsdown Beach by the Zetland Arms is possible. There are strong lateral currents here, but you won't be going far out anyway. St Margaret's Bay may be a better idea, however. The bay here blocks the currents and by the time you get there the sun will have had longer to warm the sea surface. High tide is at 1pm, so there should be a good depth for swimming.
Warning: on the section between Kingsdown and South Foreland your phone will probably switch to a French network: most of us have free roaming, so this is not an issue from a financial point of view, but the time on your phone will be an hour later than UK time: don't get caught out and think it is later than it is - I have made this mistake in the past!
Trains back from Dover are are at 00 past to Charing Cross (1 hour 52 minutes) or 49 past to St Pancras (1hr 05 minutes). If you just miss the high speed train, you can take the Charing Cross one and change at Ashford (a 13 minute wait): this takes you to London in 1hr 21 minutes, but you will be connecting at Ashford with a Margate train, which may be crowded.
**** It would be very useful if you could pre-register for this walk for contact tracking purposes at www.lwug.co.uk: if not, please bring a piece of paper with your email written on it, which will be kept in an envelope and only used if a case of Covid arises on the walk. To let us know if a contract tracing requirement arises as a result of this walk, use covid@lwug.co.uk ****
T=2.30
2 comments:
Now I might do the Walk on Saturday. But I can't Guarantee i will. And as I read on the Website. That your Mobile phone could be connected to France as its not far from France. You shouldn't be ripped off now since they scrapped their Roaming Charges all across the EU 4 years ago.
This walk never disappoints, and today was no exception: a glorious day by the sea in w=warm-sunshine, with none of the usual seaside coolness or breeze. But in these unusual times a train to the seaside on a sunny day is always a risk, especially with Southeastern helpfully warning that services to the coast might be busy after 10.30am, thus pointing travellers to the 10.12 from St Pancras, our specified train….
I was nervous about taking this train (ultimate destination Margate) and so hatched a cunning plan to get the 9.12 and beat the crowds. (One walker actually did this). But getting to St Pancras at 8.25 I decided on a whim to get the 8.37 to Dover. This would give me a whole two hours in Dover before the connecting train, but would be pretty empty, right?
Wrong. It was rammed. Almost every seat occupied, lots standing in every carriage. I did something I have not done in a year and a quarter: I invited a stranger to move his bag and sat down next to him. At Stratford a French couple got on and talked inches from my right ear all the way to Ashford. Oh well, either the vaccine works or it doesn’t, I suppose.
Once underway I discovered the reason for the overcrowding. There had been a power failure and this was the first train Southeastern High Speed had run that day. But though the train emptied quite a bit a Ashford and more at Folkestone, a fair crowd still got off at Dover. At Dover. From the 8.37 from London. This is how trains to the coast are going to be this summer.
I had a pleasant sojourn on Dover beach. Members of the cross-Channel swimming club swam wetsuit-less in the bay for an hour. I did two swims of 65 strokes and 150 strokes in the freezing water. Then I caught the 11.34 to Deal.
There were 25 on the station at the start of the walk. I later discovered that another had walked from Dover to Deal, so n=26 in all. Walking to Walmer and Kingsdown we found the shingle flowers ablaze - absolutely at their best. Gratifyingly for this usually lonely botanist, quite a number of the group took an interest in identifying them.
It was two hours since I had had a swim, however, and the waters in front of the Zetland Arms looked enticing. Two others thought the same and so we three stopped for a dip. Some others talked of a drink, but the Zetland was busy and I don’t know if they stopped. Basically we three swimmers walked together for the rest of the day. So from now on this report is about what we did: others may like to post their own accounts
The sea was cold, but much less cold than I expected, and we managed five or six minutes in the water, which felt very refreshing. We then set off for St Margaret’s Bay, passing two walkers who had stopped to lunch in the golf club at the start of the cliffs: not busy and a good choice apparently. At St M’s we three swimmers came across three other walkers, one of whom had just swam, so we went in again. It was near high tide and the sea a lovely blue and I went a little way out. Very satisfying.
We had tea on the beach (from the kiosk), walked to South Foreland lighthouse, and found it was doing tea (from a kiosk) too. There were picnic tables with a lovely view of the Channel and the coast of the EU beyond. Another cuppa seemed called for and we stayed there chatting until chucked out when the place closed.
We then drifted along the White Cliffs in golden light, passed the spookily quiet port of Dover (how much due to Brexit and how much to Covid?), and got to Dover seafront at 7pm. To fill in time before the next train we had a seafront drink at the Dover Patrol, and then caught the 7.49. This one was not so busy, not terribly so anyway. And then back to St Pancras at 9pm at the end of a perfect day.
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