Coastwalk

Lydd → Hythe, Kent

Distance: 18.4 miles
Ascent: 341 metres
Duration: 6 hours 5 minutes

Turning north again
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For a long time I'd been saving the Dungeness → Hythe section so that I could walk it in the company of friends. A good length walk along the beach, and a steam train ride back to the car. It seemed like the perfect place to celebrate completing my thousandth mile of coast. But a combination of frustration from not reaching Dungeness on Monday and a desire to crack on meant that I walked the entire section today after reaching Dungeness from Lydd.

And I'm glad I did: it was a tedious, dull walk.

Mum was in support again. She had a school in north Kent to inspect during the afternoon, so dropped me off in Lydd, met me for an early lunch in the shadow of Dungeness Power Station then finally met me after her meeting in Hythe.

There was activity on the Lydd Range again - red flags flying, and the occasional boom accompanied the three mile walk to the coast. Once there, the long trudge began; first on shingle to Dungeness (I'm glad now I'd not walked the shingle bank all the way from Camber), then - after lunch - north towards Hythe.

I genuinely expected this walk to be beautiful: the long sweep of Romney Bay, the wide open sands, the faint smell of steam trains in the background. Instead, I found the A259(T) lined with ugly bungalows and a foreshore that sustained frequently planted signs saying "Private".

Thankfully I was spared from too much shingle; much of the walk was either on the road or on the sea-wall. By the time I reached Dymchurch Redoubt I'd had enough and didn't have the energy to decipher the increasingly complex Range Notices that marked the boundary of the Hythe Range so followed the road in to the town.

With perfect timing a mile from my destination Mum found me and supplied a can, and relieved me of my bag for the final steps. Hythe didn't look any more attractive than the rest of the walk, but perhaps that was simply my weary eyes. What was attractive was the ride home in the car, resting my feet on the dashboard after another prolonged day.

Update, 10 February 2005:
John Davies reminded me of one sight I'd photographed but not commented on here. Right on the road in Dungeness is Prospect Cottage with its unusual garden create by Derek Jarman. That I stopped to take a photograph shows how striking the garden is. There seems little chance of growing anything here but somehow an explosion of colour and shape is defiantly maintained. Well worth a visit.