Coastwalk

Strood → Allhallows

Distance: 10.0 miles
Ascent: 174 metres
Duration: 3 hours 19 minutes

Hundred
« Rainham | Allhallows-on-Sea »

This, my hundredth coastwalk, represented the other ninety-nine in miniature. All the usual features were there. The worry as to whether I'd left the car somewhere safe. The yuppie flats, industrial estates and marinas. A power station. A path made impassable by chest-high nettles. Extended road-walking. Hacking inland to avoid the advancing tide. Missing the bus, stumbling upon a taxi, writing the walk up over a strawberry milkshake.

Last time I crossed the River Medway. Today's walk followed its north bank to the River Thames. (I've come to realise I've seen the last of the sea in Kent.)

The river bank is like two overlapping dot-to-dots. Clusters of modern flats crop up every couple of miles, while the space in between them is a rhythm of abandoned industrial land. I'm left with the feeling that a grand scheme was drawn up in the eighties to turn this place into a Kentish Docklands, but when the recession hit the developers took what they could and ran.

So Medway is left with burnt out Escorts sitting adjacent to 2004-model Land Rovers.

Still, the words "delightful" and "England" kept demanding my attention. Upnor in particular was beautiful, with its castle on the waterfront, the village bracketed by white chalk cliffs on one side and a dense wood on the other.

I saw new sights too: engineers surveying the area for new mobile phone mast sites; two four-month old Alsatian puppies who've yet to learn to act threatening; a church with a diminutive tower; the narrow sliver of Southend Pier reaching out from across the Thames.

The milestones in this coastwalk have been coming thick and fast of late. Five years, one thousand miles and now one hundred walks. There are more to come later this year, including perhaps the next (or next-but-one) walk in Kent, when I'll finally make it to Gravesend.