DEAL TO
DOVER
I know the
Dover to Deal walk was posted last Sunday, but I think it is definitely worth
re-posting (in reverse) for Saturday, as the weather promises to behave itself; the flowers
on Deal beach should still be out on display, in addition to which the scenery
improves as you walk along the coast, and you should get stunning views of the
cliffs of Dover as you approach it.
Length: 17.2
km 10.7miles.
Difficulty:
3/10
Travel: Take
the 10.04 direct train from London St Pancras arriving at Deal 11.31.
Return
Trains from Dover Priory:
16.18 to
Victoria;16.28 to Charing X; 16.45 to St Pancras; 17.28 to Charing X; 17.45 to St Pancras; 18.28 to Charing X; 18.48 to St Pancras; 19.28 to Charing X.
Ticket type:
Buy a day return to Deal (please check whether you need to pay the high speed
supplement)
Lunch:
Zetland Arms after 4.6km/2.9 miles; or carry on for another 4.7km/2.9 miles to
the Coastguards pub in St Margarets Bay, with its pleasant terrace overlooking
the sea.
Tea: Many stops for tea and cakes along this
route.
Swimming: Best places to swim is St Margaret’s
bay. Walmer and Deal have swimming
spots, but very strong currents at these beaches.
Full details
of walk including lunch and tea stops, shorter options, map and GPX can be
found here: L=cw2.30
#2026-06-13T10:04
3 comments:
Low tide at St Margaret’s Bay is at 5.16pm. You should aim to be there by 3.15pm or so to have sufficient depth for swimming. You can swim at Kingsdown, by the Zetland Arms but currents are strong here (parallel to the shore). St M’s Bay is much nicer.
Incidentally, you do DEFINITELY need to pay the high speed supplement to do this walk. There is no viable slow train alternative for the outward journey unless you want to get the 8.34 train from Charing Cross (8.43 London Bridge) to Ramsgate, arr 10.45, and then get the 11.08 to Deal arrive 11.27 - a nearly three hour journey.
The day got off to a bad start when our train was delayed by 20 minutes due to a problem on it inbound. As a result it did not stop at Stratford. Did we lose anyone boarding there?
The train was busy, especially when the back half terminated at Ashford, but it emptied quite a bit at Dover. For a time it looked as if there were only three of us on the walk, but three more emerged at Deal.
So six of us set off to walk the flat beach section. Flowers here were good (sea pea! narrow-leaved ragwort!) but a bit reduced from their late May peak. Somewhere on this section we lost one of the group. Not sure what happened there, as we were not walking that fast.
I had urged on the others the importance of getting to St Margaret’s Bay in time to swim before the tide got too low. So we ignored the blandishments of the Zetland Arms and headed up onto the cliffs. The flowers here were very nice, and I heard a corn bunting. We got to St Margaret’s Bay at 2.15 and went straight in for a dip.
The water was VERY cold. It had not warmed up a bit since my last swim here 18 days ago. My two companions sensibly swam for a fairly brief time. I managed eleven minutes and was then fabulously hypothermic. I put on all three extra layers I had with me and still shivered for the next half hour or so. Eventually I was lent some else’s jacket too and finally (and blissfully) warmed up.
The latter all happened over a late lunch at the Coastguard, where we ran into walker number N=7 who had got a train an hour earlier, had a swim, and lunched at the pub before we arrived. She joined us while two of us ate and others had drinks. I should say that up to now it had been w=mostly-sunny, but annoying cloud had lingered over St Margaret’s Bay during part of the swim. Now it finally cleared to full sun and stayed that way for the rest of the day.
We finally set off to do the last part of the walk at about 4pm. Fairly soon afterwards we decided to stop for tea at the South Foreland lighthouse. We texted our backmarker to say we were doing this, but he was in airplane mode and so inadvertently became the frontmarker. We had a nice tea, sitting at a table with a view of the sea, but with the coast of the EU obscured by haze.
We lost another of our party on the next section. Arriving on the Dover seafront I tried unsuccessfully to persuade my fellow walkers to have a second swim. They opted instead to explore the drinking options of Dover. The drinking options proved disappointing so we went to M&S and got “supplies” instead. We took these to the station, where we met our erstwhile backmarker/frontmarker, and started to consume them on a sunny bench on the platform.
We then got the 19.48 train, failing by a whisker to get the last vacant table, but getting four seats across (with one behind). The train got very busy and a bit raucous at Folkestone but by this time we were cosily esconced with our wine and humous.
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