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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.

Saturday 2 January 2016

Saturday Second Walk - an easy walk along the sea

SWC walk 28 - Birchington to Herne Bay
Length: 14km (8.7 miles)
Toughness: 1 out of 10

9.37 train from Victoria (9.53 Bromley South), arriving Birchington-on-Sea at 11.14

Buy a day return to Birchington-on-Sea.

This is a very simple walk along the sea. If the weather cooperates it makes a rather glorious winter outing, with views of marsh and estuary in the morning, the ruins of Reculver as an aiming point, a cheap and cheerful lunch pub, and then a very gentle walk over low cliffs to Herne Bay in the afternoon. See photos of this walk for what it can be like.

It is fair to say that if the weather is wet and windy, however, it has absolutely no shelter whatsoever. And you are going west, so strong winds from the west will be straight in your face.

When you first see the four lines of walk directions (at the bottom of the home page for this walk) you will think they are a joke, but this really is all you need to do this walk. The morning is all on tarmac paths - so no mud - but in fine wild scenery after the first kilometre or so. In the afternoon you are on grassy paths, but these too are usually pretty firm underfoot.

Herne Bay has various cheerful tea places, not mentioned in the walk document - a large cafe on the seafront whose name escapes me, or try the structure on the prom about 100 metres beyond the clocktower (a former bandstand and open air dance hall?) which has another nice cafe.

Trains back are at 21 past to Victoria and 44 past to St Pancras: for the latter train you need to have paid the high speed supplement (and you can't have a boundary zone ticket), but any ticket holder can take St Pancras trains to Faversham and change there (arrive 58, depart 03) for a Victoria train.

6 comments:

Chris L said...

"And you are going east, so strong winds from the west will be straight in your face." Actually you're going west, so you will indeed be facing those westerly winds.

Walker said...

Thanks, Chris. I have corrected the post.

Anonymous said...

anyone planning on going? this sounds like a great one

thanks

Anonymous said...

To have the wind at our back, shouldn't we be starting at Herne Bay?

Walker said...

Actually, looking at the current weather forecast (which is alas quite wet at time of writing) it would not help to reverse the walk, as the wind is due to come from the south. The problem with doing the walk in reverse is also that Birchington has no tea places, as far as I am aware, though Westgate on Sea just over a mile further on MAY (repeat MAY) have a beachfront cafe open: another mile and three quarters takes you to Margate.

The main objection to reversing the direction of the walk, however, is that it will create confusion amongst those going on it, splitting the group into those that start at Herne Bay and those that start at Birchington.

Given that it is a southerly wind anyway, I would stick to the Birchington start.

BrightSpark said...

n=6
w=drizzle
Weather not as forecast. In fact there was only light drizzle towards the end of the walk. The tide was out so the rock pools (at the beginning of the walk) looked very attractive in the Winter light. If you get excited by Saxon churches - commes moi - there is one on this walk, albeit a ruin. Lots of interesting information boards on the Herne Bay seafront were read by two of us before we had a nice cup of tea at a pub by the station. The only down side to this walk was the amount of unpicked up dog mess.