We had decided to run/walk the 10 or so miles from Kingsdown to Sandwich today. The coast would provide us with a footpath until the outskirts of Sandwich – but the river estuary would prevent us from walking right along the seafront – and we would have to weedle our way inland a touch to make our final approach into Sandwich.
As we drove from home to Kingsdown though we did notice that the trees were waving a little and sure enough as we began our walk from outside the Zetland Arms the wind was right in our faces – not just a little breeze either, it was a heck of a wind. And it stayed with us all the way to Sandwich, constantly in our faces. To make the run even more difficult I was also carrying a rucksack with our supplies/change of clothing and so it was destined to be a tough-ish run.
Oh – and the sun had gone in.
Not to be distracted by mundane discussions about the weather, however, we set off from the Zetland Arms – which, according to its own publicity is the “The Nearest Pub Restaurant to France”.
Kingsdown isn’t much of a village but it does boast two other pubs in addition to the Zetland though I’m not sure who would frequent them because there were not many people out at all on this particular morning – and not a huge number of houses either. The village overlooks a stretch of sea known as The Downs – which became an important place for ships to anchor and shelter from bad weather. In 1926, the first woman to swim the English Channel, 19 year-old Gertrude Ederle landed on the beach at Kingsdown. She had actually swum some 35 miles instead of the shortest distance of 21 miles.
Running along the coastal path we soon arrived in Walmer – which although a separate town is often considered a part of Deal. It is reckoned that Walmer was the official landing point for Julius Caesar when he invaded in 55 BC and 54 BC – and we ran past a stone commemorating the event. Walmer itself is dominated by its castle – one of three on a short stretch of this coastline – the others being Deal and the destroyed and largely disappeared Sandown.
Walmer Castle is the official residence of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, whose previous incumbents include The Queen Mother, Winston Churchill and the Duke of Wellington - indeed the castle has an exhibition of Wellington memorabilia. It was built by Henry VIII to help prevent the French and Spanish invading.
From Walmer it is almost a seamless crossing into the town of Deal and we stopped to admire their RNLI station on the seafront. Deal is not just a coastal town with a rich history of fishing and seafaring – it was also a former mining town and also a proud garrison town. But it is for its shipping, smuggling and all round-things-to-do-with-sea that made Deal famous. Many noted writers and commentators through the ages have had to cause to comment on Deal and its rather colourful inhabitants – from Pepys to Dickens and from Churchill to Jane Austen!
It too has its castle – very similar at an initial glance to Walmer which is hardly surprising as Henry also commissioned this one too!
The fishing boats on the shingle beach at Deal reminded us of Hastings a little – and there was plenty of evidence of a once strong and powerful fleet … but now with much less activity. Real shame.
Continuing along the sea front we came across the Bandstand built as a memorial to the 11 members of the Royal Marines School of Music who were killed by an IRA bomb in 1989.
It’s only when you take to the streets so to speak that you see fascinating things which, as a driver, simply pass you by. I don’t know how many times I’ve driven along the sea front at Deal – but in all those times I had never noticed the Timeball Tower.
On the site of the old Naval Yard there is now a tall building which was originally used as a semaphore tower and then as a Timeball Tower – and it is now a museum today.
The Timeball is an old (Victorian) maritime GMT time signal on the roof of the tower and which was established in the mid 1850’s. The timeball fell at 1 pm precisely, triggered by an electric signal directly from the Royal Observatory. Prior to being a timeball tower, the tower was a semaphore tower used to send signals to the ships at anchor in the channel. Prior to that the tower was a Shutter Telegraph - one of a chain of telegraph stations between London and the Naval Yard at Deal – and it was used to send rapid communications between the two places. Even in those days they reckoned that by using the chain of towers, a message could be received in London just two minutes after being sent from Deal.
Right next door to the Timeball Tower was a lovely old cinema building. The Regent has obviously fallen into serious disrepair – and why these buildings aren’t grabbed by the likes of English Heritage or the National Trust rather than them focusing on large country piles is beyond me. These buildings say so much about our history and our culture and it is a crying shame that they are left to rot. The place closed down as a Bingo Hall in 2009 after 40 years but apparently there are plans to re-open the Regent as a 300 seater cinema – let’s hope their plans come to fruition.
It was all stop and start for us around here – the whole point of walking is to look and investigate when something of interest pops on to the radar – and we are voracious readers of plaques, signs and storyboards. So, it was only a few yards later when we stopped again – to check out the pier. It was astonishing that we’d come all this way along the coast and that Deal was the first pier we’d come across – it is the last remaining fully-intact leisure pier in Kent and the only new pier in Britain to have been constructed after the Second World War.
We decided to celebrate by running/walking its full 1,026ft length. It was busy with fishermen today – and there were not too many hardy souls simply ambling along its length – the winds by now were very strong indeed.
Deal has had a number of piers throughout its history and the present one was opened in 1957 – it would have been fairly easy to date it because of its plain concrete structure. Very NCP-like. The previous piers had been destroyed by gales and a 2nd World War ship collision. The present pier features a cafe, bar, lounge, and fishing decks – the lowest of which is almost always underwater and has become disused – yes, it is a design fault!! For goodness sake!!
We continued our walk/run back into the strong headwind and the ‘end’ of the town soon came into view and we arrived at the end of the sea wall promenade and had to divert inland slightly to pick up the footpath amongst the dunes. The apparently random bits of concrete at this spot – and the stone flower beds hide another piece of local history because standing here are the few remains of Sandown Castle – the third of Henry VII’s castles in the area.
It has been partially demolished by the sea and partially by the local authorities who thought it would be useful to use the stonework in constructing sea walls, promenades etc!!
From here we made our way through the dunes which run through the first of the many golf courses we meet on the way along this stretch of the coast. The Royal Cinque Ports Golf Club is just another waste of good land in my opinion – and it does follow the golfing stereotypes with plenty of warning, private and keep out signs.
The footpath here takes us into Sandwich Bay and the area consists of sand flats, salt marshes and coastal sand dunes. The Sandwich Flats here stretch for about five miles along the coast with much of it now designated a special area for conservation, birds and the like.
As we made our way along the coast we came to a quite strange place – suddenly we are walking/running on a perfectly tarmacced road with some very expensive housing apparently built as holiday homes for the English gentry from Edwardian times to the 1970s. This, apparently, is a private road leading through Sandwich Bay Estate and the road we are on is, in fact, a toll road that levies a toll of £5 per car, although pedestrians pass for free. Why anybody would wish to pay £5 to travel this road or park up on the coast here is beyond me – there are no facilities at all. Indeed, there were very few people at all – which, I guess, was the purpose of the toll – to keep us oiks out of the place. So the policy works!
Sandwich Bay led us towards the estuary of the River Stour and, being unable to cross this we headed along the footpath into another Golf Club. This one – the Prince's Golf Club – was equally unwelcoming and, what’s more our run through its grounds just led us to … another flippin’ Golf Club. This time, the famous Royal St George’s, where, apparently some big tournament will be played next year, as if I’m at all interested. Though I was interested in the fact that Ian Fleming – who used to live down the coast at Kingsdown, used the Royal St. George's course under the name "Royal St. Marks" in Goldfinger.
And so, eventually, we arrived in Sandwich and the end of our walk/run for today. Sandwich is, of course, a very historic and, to be fair, very pretty-looking town. One of the original Cinque Ports, it retains many of its original medieval buildings and gates but, whilst it was once a major port, it is now two miles from the sea – much the same as our home town of Rye.
In 1255 the first captive elephant was landed in England at Sandwich, delivered as a gift to Henry III and taken on foot to the king's zoo at the Tower of London. Just across the river was the ancient Saxon town of Stonar which disappeared almost without trace in the 14th century. The Fisher Gate on the quay dates from 1384 and is the only one of the original mediaeval town gates to survive. The nearby Barbican dates from the 14th century and stands at the end of the bridge over the river where it acted as a toll house.
The town's connection with the humble butty is, apparently, due to the 4th Earl of Sandwich who ordered his valet to bring him meat tucked between two pieces of bread. Others then began to order "the same as Sandwich!" But this story may be apocryphal.
But we were in no mood for sandwiches when we’d finished our run – we were now on our 7th leg of our journey round the coast and today had seen us claim our first pier … and it also saw us claim our first fish and chips!! One would think that travelling the coast of our country it would be relatively easy to indulge in fish and chips – for so long the staple of the British seaside resort. So, how ironic that our first tasting was at the point furthest away from the sea!!
Mileage 9.42
Time 2.27
Miles covered to date 57.76 miles
Time taken to date 18 hours and 54 minutes
