The Saxon Shore Way
Second leg: Gillingham to Sittingbourne (20 miles)
14 February 2004

I decided to skip the path between Rochester and Gillingham as it's mostly road running through the two towns...so it was off to Gillingham and a puzzling few moments working out how to get down to the strand from the station. Thanks to the nav course I simply dug out my compass and headed north, which got me to the start of this leg with no problem.

A grey start to the walk on Gillingham Strand

It was overcast but mild - and I was soon shedding a fleece. It looked like it was going to rain later on, and this walk was all about different shades of grey, from sea and sky and the long reaches of mud flats. The route goes along the sea wall, overlooking the marshes which stretch out into the Medway. Once I'd got beyond the traffic, the main noise was sea birds and a constant hum of aeroplanes high overhead, approaching London.

A thousand shades of grey and oyster catchers busy at work

I headed round the coast to Sharp's Green, and looked over to Horrid Hill, so-named because Napoleonic prisoners of war were kept in awful conditions on hulks moored here.

Pussy willow already out - the bend to Sharp's Green

Concrete tubes covered with moss - a change from all the greys

The path juts out into the river before heading back inland, past a fine field of sprouting broccoli. The map showed a route through a caravan park...which had turned into an orchard.

Apples not caravans

There were a couple of miles of road walking before I spotted an extraordinary church roof ahead. I was so interested in it that I missed the path leading off over the fields. But it was worth the visit to Upchurch. I read on the train home that Sir Francis Drake's dad was vicar here.

St Mary of Antioch church with a hat on the spire

I found a footpath through a housing estate that quickly joined back up with the shoreway, and after a mile or so, I was back to the water.

Looking over to Hamgreen saltings

This patch of the walk felt very remote - the only people I saw were a couple of men working on a boat at Twinney wharf. Another very useful skill from my navigation course was learning how to read time and distance from the map - and I often stopped to work out roughly how many minutes a certain stretch would take. The wind had picked up now and it began to rain quite hard as I headed for the village of Lower Halstow.

Ducks nestling down in the rain

There was a little bridge over the creek and then the path went past a beautiful small church with very handsome 17th-century house opposite. The route headed inland again, and after a couple of miles I climbed up behind an old brickworks and took a bearing as the path was out of view over the hill. The next style turned up exactly in the right place. The rain had stopped, so I perched on an old air raid shelter to munch my sandwiches and essential hard boiled egg.

The next part of the route was the only place where I got confused about the path. The wayposts petered out, there were new farm tracks and the orchards on the map had been grubbed up. And the fence lines had changed. But I'd taken a bearing, and knew I was heading in the right direction but below the shoreway. I decided to follow a fence line south at 90 degrees, and after 200m found the path again. Thanks to Del I can now make more sense of all the boundary lines on a map.

Sight of water again past Raspberry Hill

After passing Raspberry Hill Farm, I came to the road and the path leading back over the Chetney Marshes. It even looked like the sun might come out later in the afternoon. I decided to keep to the old ferry road and pick up the path at Kingsferry, and after a mile the bridge loomed ahead.

Kingsferry bridge in the distance

As I approached the bridge, I could see long queues of traffic waiting to cross. The reason became apparent the closer I got: Kingsferry is a draw bridge and a container ship was passing up the Medway. There was a cable ferry here for centuries, crossing over the the Isle of Sheppey. This bridge was built in the 60s, and I loved its uncompromising shape.

The path along the seawall passes past Kingsferry Bridge

After a few minutes the sea wall is cut off by the wall of Ridham dock, so it was back inland to skirt an industrial estate the first of several sewage works on this part of the route.

Heading for the seawall at Coldharbour marshes

It was now five miles to Sittingbourne, and I was starting to fantasise about cups of tea. The sun came out, and the marshes glowed orange against the mudflats.

Looking over to Elmley Hill - at 10m, a high point

This next part was rather depressing: I walked past a huge landfill site; the path rutted by lorry tracks. And every bit of vegetation was covered in plastic bags. I thought about how many plastic bags I throw away each week.

Smoke from the many factories on Kemsley marshes

The plumes of smoke and steam from the industrial estates was dramatic against the dusky sky. There were more sewage works, and then I headed round into Milton creek. Milton Regis, over to the right, is one of the oldest settlements in this part of Kent, and this used to be a busy trading river. I looked over to a huge industrial estate on the banks opposite, and ahead to Sittingbourne and the end of this leg of the journey. I got to the end of the creek at 1630, which made it just over seven hours for the 20 miles.

The sun beginning to set at the end of Milton creek

Another mile and I was at the station where, joy of joys, a little cafe sold real tea out of a pot and huge chunks of decent chocolate cake. And just when I was back on the platform, a London train pulled in.

This was a good day's walk, and I felt much more confident in reading all the detail on the maps, and using it to navigate to and from the marked path. And on the next leg, I'll have reached open sea.

On to leg three