The tide is on our side, and the firing range is closed, so here goes: a walk like no other...now fully written up.
Rye to Dungeness and Lydd-on-Sea, or Rye Circular, or Rye to Dungeness to Lydd
Length: 21.7 km/13.5 mi or 17.6 km/11.0 mi or 27.3 km/17.0 mi
Rye to Dungeness and Lydd-on-Sea, or Rye Circular, or Rye to Dungeness to Lydd
Length: 21.7 km/13.5 mi or 17.6 km/11.0 mi or 27.3 km/17.0 mi
Ascent/Descent:
negligible
Net
Walking Time: ca. 5 hours or 4 hours
or 6 hours (incl. time added for
the shingle and sand for options 1 and 3)
Toughness:
4 out of 10 or 1 out of 10 or 5 out of 10
Take the 09.34 Margate train from
St. Pancras I’nal (Stratford
I’nal 09.41), change at Ashford (10.11/10.24), arrives Rye 10.45.
Trains from Victoria or Charing X to Ashford can’t be recommended, as they either just miss the connection, or leave only one minute to change trains!
Trains from Victoria or Charing X to Ashford can’t be recommended, as they either just miss the connection, or leave only one minute to change trains!
At
the end of the walk, from Lydd and Lydd-on-Sea take buses back to Rye or on to Ham Street or Ashford.
Return
trains are on xx.47 from Rye and xx.01 from Ham
Street. Total journey time 67 mins from Rye.
Buy
a Rye (Sussex) return.
This is a fascinating and most unusual walk,
initially leading from the historic Cinque Ports Town of Rye along the Rother River to Camber Sands with its shallow and wide sandy beach lined by magnificent sand dunes and with a
selection of lunch stops. After lunch you follow the coast along the beach or
the seawall through the Lydd Firing
Ranges (only open for about 65 days a year, today is one of them) into the
desolate, vast expanse of shingle
(one of the largest in Europe) that is the Dungeness
National Nature Reserve and then past the Dungeness Nuclear Power Station. You pass a couple of lighthouses (old and new) and
a few tea options in Dungeness and then continue past Derek
Jarman’s famed garden to The
Pilot Inn in Lydd-on-Sea, from where buses take you back to Rye or on to
Ham Street or Ashford stations.
Note: to shorten
the exposure to the shingle do the walk on days when low tide is around early
afternoon (it is, at 14.47).
A circular option from Camber back to Rye through grassy marsh land cuts out all shingly sections.
An alternative ending from Dungeness leads to Lydd through the shingly Denge
Beach area and a large RSPB Reserve.
Return travel by bus:
From Lydd-on-Sea (The Pilot Inn) by line 102 to Lydd
and on to Rye (xx.50 to 18.50) or by line 11 to Ham Street or Ashford (17.10, arr. Ham
Street 17.46, Ashford 18.10);
From Lydd Church by line 102 to Rye (xx.01 to
19.01 then 19.57).
The Lydd Ranges are closed this
weekend, see here.
Low Tide is at 14.47, so we should be fine to avoid most
of the shingle.
Lunch: The Owl pub or The Rye Bay Bar & Café
in Camber (about 6.0 km).
Tea: [Dungeness/Lydd-on-Sea]
The End of the Line
café or The Britannia Inn, 2.0
km from the end, or The Snack Shack or The Pilot Inn at the
walk’s end.
[Rye] Too numerous to list here, check the pdf. [Lydd] The Dolphin or The George Hotel.
[Rye] Too numerous to list here, check the pdf. [Lydd] The Dolphin or The George Hotel.
2 comments:
"More than 500.000", even according to the Tory-press, on the 'Final Say' march, but just 9 off the train at Rye, plus 1 other on an earlier train, who we caught up with after lunch. This included 2 first-timers, pulled in via our automated feed-through post on Meetup.
It was w=sunny-and-hot-for-the-season, there was a little breeze at times, the tide was receding as we followed The Rother to the Sea and then turned left along Camber Sands, revealing a good 300m of sandy beach-width at that stage of the tide. There were horse riders, dog walkers, bucket-and-spade tourists, floatsome and jetsome, and even a few people in the water! The pub lunchers got to The Owl just after opening, a couple of others had drinks outside, the picnickers stayed on the dunes-backed beach (some of them went for a bit of a paddle, I hear). We continued after lunch all together, with the two first-timers falling behind soon though (as they had planned to: we met them again on the train back, they had walked out along the beach for as long as they wanted, then returned to Rye the same way). The tide timing was just perfect, the sandy beach revealed for as long as there was a sandy beach, which is to the far boundary of the military range. Then it was a mixture of shingle and sand, forcing us into a bit of a dance to try to walk on the sandy bits as much as possible. At long last, the Nuclear Plant at Dungeness, its Tsunami-Defence shingle wall and a concrete path around its perimeter. Never has a concrete path been so welcomed!
The first group reached the End of the Line Cafe at Dungeness at 16.00 hours, and - just after all had sat down - a steam train pulled in. As we left, the others passed the spot and we continued together. The steam train then departed for its return journey, back to Hythe, passing close to us on our final stretch. Our bus was to be the 16.52, and it was delayed, so much so that we needed a mini-sprint in Rye to catch the 17.47 (apologies to Miriam: you were right, we should have taken the 17.10 in the other direction to Ashford). And then, on the train, the sun started to set and the fluffy clouds turned all red.
All in: perfect. Rather perfect. n=10
Those who slogged over the seemingly endless shingle yesterday may be interested to catch up with the BBC The Living World radio programme which was all about the Dungeness habitat - not as it might appear just lifeless heaps of stones but full of fascinating life.
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