Day 10: Hythe to Dungeness

I drive down to Hythe before sunrise, keen to get to Dungeness in plenty of time to explore before darkness descends. Unfortunately, I’m trapped in a long tailback of lorries for the Channel Tunnel exit due to my junction being closed for an accident. A helpful lorry driver allows me to get free and start my walk just as the sun is rising, although it struggles to break through the cloud.

The MOD information on the Hythe firing range is out of date so I follow the footpath between the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway and the Royal Military Canal. A wise choice as the staccato sound of gunfire breaks out. I don’t envy the nearby residents being woken to that dawn chorus.

Having rejoined the coast, I want to explore the Dymchurch Redoubt, built during the Napoleonic War to defend against a French invasion, but it is not open to the public. A small detour to wander round the barbed wire fence reveals a moat filled with various wooden barriers. It would make a great paintball location but I imagine the MOD has a different view.

The 120ft water tower at Littlestone guides me along the beachfront. We have a running family joke about suitable buildings and locations for a commune. As there are seven of us and this only has six storeys, there is a Whatsapp debate about someone decamping to the rooftop battlements.

I make another detour inland to see the huge acoustic sound mirrors at Greatstone Lakes, designed to provide early warning of enemy aircraft. It is the start of some harder walking as the lakes are in gravel pits, more of which later. I amuse some local gardeners on my way back to the beach by striding purposefully past them, only to find myself in a cul-de-sac, and return to stride even more purposefully past them again.

I can’t resist a rotting wooden boat high on a shingle beach …. there are a lot to choose from.

I finally make it to the entrance to the Dungeness estate with about two hours of light remaining. When I plan my walks I try to find a station-to-station stretch to allow me to drive to one station, walk to the other, and catch a train back. The track gauge shown below should explain why I initially failed to find the Dungeness station, shown on my OS Explorer map, on the National Rail map! The narrow gauge railway is closed over winter, apart from the “Santa Special”, for which I may be a tad too old now.

I find the landscape compelling, a vast expanse of shingle, the horizon broken by wooden weatherboard beach houses and dwellings converted from old railway coaches, including Prospect Cottage, formerly owned by the late artist and film director Derek Jarman.

Exploring the shingle beach is hard but worth it to get close to the fishing boats, both abandoned and working.

The only other people I come across are a couple of fishermen, keen to chat about my walks to date, two lone photographers (I nodded at one of them in a collegiate manner, armed with my iPhone camera), and a couple huddled together on a bench by the sea, with the not-so-romantic Dungeness nuclear power station looming behind them.

The former coastguard lookout tower marks the start of my next walk but as the sun sets I have to turn away and complete a circular walk across some desolate scrub to get back to the stop for the bus to Hythe. One of the fishermen told me that the tower was now high-end rented accommodation. Sensing a “tale” I looked it up and, sure enough, a bargain at £2,200 per night in the run-up to Christmas!

I could happily spend more time exploring the wonderfully varied buildings, but I don’t fancy trying to find the path through the trees in the dark, so I press on.

The path back through the nature reserve is a little hard to follow and the light is getting dim as I head into the trees. I am surprised to find smoke drifting across the rather narrow and overgrown woodland track and I can see flames ahead in a small clearing. I am slightly relieved to find two young women in official nature reserve sweaters burning a pile of cuttings. I follow the track back to The Pilot Inn and gaze longingly through the window at the ales just out of my reach while waiting for the bus back to Hythe.

Walk distance: 15 miles.

Total distance: 159 miles.