Day 151 – Grain to Rochester: 18.1m: 6.5h

Our 7 am breakfast is perhaps a little disappointing, but we can get a good cab ride out to Grain and are able to set off from the pub in good order, in time to see a fox enjoying the early morning before the regulars have even reached the Hogarth. We must go to the eastern end of the Isle of Grain but that is reached swiftly: we walk down the sea wall for a mile or so, looking nervously out to see the S.S. Richard Montgomery’s masts peeping above the water outside Sheerness. We then turn inland to get past one of the power stations that, together with big gas and oil storage tanks, seem to be an Isle of Grain speciality, and begin the slow walk back westwards along the southern edge of the Hoo peninsula towards Rochester again, hugging the meandering shore of the Medway and occasionally crossing the railway line and road which connect Grain to the outside world. The wind of yesterday has abated, so it is warm and pleasant (though raining in Winchcombe apparently), but we feel slightly cheated by not being rewarded for yesterday by having a following wind today.

On our way we are delayed by a coarse fisherman (a man who fishes for coarse fish, nor a rude angler) who wants John to photograph him with a carp he (the fisherman, not John) has just pulled out of the water. This was a bit of a whopper (the fish, not the story) and allegedly weighs 19lb 11 oz. John’s deed of mercy done, we carry on past another power station (Kingsnorth) and, John and Ben now beginning to feel the two days’ walking wearing on us, trudge along the Saxon Shore way to a pub that Mike knows (is there any other sort), the Ship at Lower Upnor. A reviving pint allows us to muster the energy to carry on, up the inevitable hill to Upper Upnor and a thriving industrial estate, past Strood station (previously mooted as a bail out or is it bale out) and across the Medway, reaching Rochester in time for John and Ben to catch the 3 05 and leaving Mike to take the St Pancras train in due course, with perhaps a beer at the Wetherspoons in prospect to ease his journey north.

Day 150 – Cliffe Pools to Grain: 15.7m: 5.4h

Gary drops a bombshell before the walk to say that he may be suffering from COVID, as Sally definitively is, and pulls out of the walk. After hasty discussion the rest of us decide to go ahead, even though this will leave Ben trying to get to Rochester on his own. John manages to make sure this is achieved without incident by diverting via Victoria, from which Ben’s train departs, leaving Mike to find his own way on the other line from St Pancras.

The meet up at around 10 am goes smoothly. Ben deposits his rucksack at the hotel (a mere stone’s throw for Rochester station), also containing a few possessions of John’s, leaving them both with a lighter pack. Mike eschews this concession to being a southern softy. Despite an accident causing local snarl-ups,the taxi deposits us in approximately the right position for our mile or so walk out to the end of last excursion’s walk at Cliffe Pools.

The walk is perfectly pleasant for the first, second, third and indeed fourth hours: the Thames away on our left, a slow and from time to time eastward meandering along the north edge of the Hoo peninsula. We meet no other walkers or indeed other human beings before finally we make it to Allhallows, which, despite the novelty of it being the first actual place we had reached all day, seems a comparatively uninteresting holiday park full of chalets and caravans, though we do spot a house or two of more permanent nature. We are beginning to get a bit tired as the wind has been directly from the east into our faces throughout, though it has been dry, mostly sunny, and a pleasant temperature for walking

After leaving Allhallows, we strike off toward the Isle of Grain, which is we believe accessible via a single bridge which, it being late in the day, we are relieved in the end to see. We are now only a mile or so from Grain itself, which we reach by soon after 4 and enter the Hogarth Inn (the finest on the Isle of Grain, we are told: there may not be substantial competition) for a reviving drink. The pub is doing a decent trade for that time in the afternoon, and indeed some of the customers appear to have been there since the advertised hot breakfast. We are told one or two tales of smuggling tunnels and the S.S. Richard Montgomery, a ship that has been marooned off the east coast of the island since 1944 and is full of enough unexploded munitions to flatten the island apparently (though it is in truth flat enough already). We are warned about the exorbitant cost of taking a cab back all the way to Rochester but nonetheless do so, reaching the hotel in time for John to struggle with the Wi-Fi connection for which he apparently paid £2.99. We venture into Rochester to eat and are rewarded for our initiative by a rather good fish restaurant, which does us proud and is doing a decent trade for a Monday (having said that, everywhere else appears to be shut). Returning to the hotel, John and Mike partake of a couple of stickies while Ben makes his excuses and leaves

Day 149 – East Tilbury to Cliffe Pools: 10.1m: 3.8h

Ben awakes with a dry cough and a few concerns over his energy levels which, perhaps not surprisingly, lead to suspicions of COVID. Hopefully, they will prove to be inaccurate diagnoses. Today we’ll be crossing the Thames into Kent via the Tilbury/Gravesend ferry. This only runs every hour and our key timing requirement is to get to the Tilbury terminal for the 10:15 crossing. We reckon that the terminal is not much more than three and a half miles away from the Coalhouse Fort. However, this assumes a direct route alongside the river being available and, to give us the time to deal with any navigational issues such as those which arose yesterday, we’ve decided to allow ourselves a couple of hours to get to Tilbury. We’ve therefore booked a cab for 7:30, so it’s an early (and substantial) buffet brekker, and we’re back at the fort car park in time to get under way at 8 o’clock.

In fact, the route sticks to the river bank all the way to Tilbury. The underfoot and overhead conditions are good and, without rushing, we’re approaching the terminal just after 9 o’clock. There’s a crossing at 9:10 and we can see the ferry coming over from Gravesend, so we increase our pace and reach the terminal a couple of minutes before the ferry starts to board. The crossing takes just 5 minutes, so we’re now an hour ahead of schedule. Our destination is Cliffe Pools on the Hoo Peninsula and our cab pick up point is the Six Bells in Cliffe at 1:30. We don’t want to spend an extra hour in the pub (no, really!), so a mid-morning coffee in Gravesend is called for. We anticipate that there will be a suitable stopping point in or near a riverside park complex on our way east out of the town. However, part of the route through the park is closed and we have to make our way around the closure via some roads and small industrial estates which don’t bring us back to the river until we’re outside Gravesend. We therefore make our stop at a mobile refreshments stall by the entrance to a police training establishment which doesn’t serve the best coffee in the world, but at least achieves the objective of delaying our progress, if only by 10 minutes.

Back by the Thames, we’re just three and a half miles or so away from the Hoo Peninsula, and the route seems pretty straightforward through grassland alongside the river. However, Ben is beginning to feel increasingly weary and, having passed by a firing range and the Shornemead Fort, we initially miss the turn onto the path which leads directly – and with more purity – to the peninsula. By the time we’ve doubled back to walk along the path and arrive at the fenced off Cliffe Fort, we’ve almost entirely eaten into the time which we saved by catching the earlier ferry. Once round the fort, it takes almost 30 minutes to reach our finishing point on the coastal side of the RSPB site at Cliffe Pools and then the same amount of time to walk into Cliffe itself. We arrive at the Six Bells shortly before 12:45 and manage a couple of drinks before our cab arrives. This takes us to Strood station from where we’re due to be catching a high speed service to St Pancras International. However, on reaching the station car park, we’re told by staff that no trains are running in that direction due to an incident on the line. The only alternative is the service from nearby Rochester to Victoria, and the cab driver gets us over the Medway to Rochester station in a matter of minutes. It’s also a matter of minutes before a train to Victoria pulls in, and we leave Rochester almost 20 minutes before we were due to leave Strood. Therefore, although (to nobody’s huge surprise) it’s a slower journey than the high speed route, we still arrive in Victoria with more than enough time for John and Mike to cross London and catch their trains from Paddington and King’s Cross. And so far as Ben and Gary are concerned, Victoria provides a very convenient direct tube line home.           

Day 148 – Pitsea to East Tilbury: 15.8m: 6.2h

Our 2022 walks start a month later than originally planned, due to John testing positive for COVID shortly before the scheduled February date. He’s now been negative for 2 or 3 weeks, but says that his energy levels are not at their highest and has suggested that we might take a break for lunch today. With this in mind, Ben and Gary have both prepared sandwiches (or have had them prepared) before leaving home. In other medical news, Mike has made a full recovery from his hip operation and is on the starting grid for the first time since last July. However, David has been suffering back problems and is unable to join us. John and Mike catch early trains to London and join Gary at Fenchurch Street for the journey to Pitsea. Ben has taken an earlier train, but has only been waiting outside Pitsea station for 5 minutes when the rest of us arrive, with the first task for John and Mike being to purchase lunchtime supplies from the station shop. We set off at 10:20 and immediately make a navigational error by turning left at the end of the parade leading from the station rather than crossing the road onto a path into some fields, helpfully signposted “England Coast Path”. Our mistake is quickly rectified, but it does mark the start of a day when the availability of paths along our route isn’t 100% certain and during which we have to stop to study maps and/or retrace our steps on several occasions. The path through the fields initially takes us westward, but we soon turn left and much of the next two hours is spent zigzagging our way through and alongside Vange and Fobbing Marshes (to include the Fobbing Horse flood barrier), generally in a southerly direction towards the cranes at the London Gateway Port on the banks of the Thames. However, when we emerge from the marshes, we’re still a little way north of the river and have to turn right onto a cycle path running alongside the A1014. We’re expecting this to take us to a point just beyond Corringham where we hope to find a road crossing and make our way through Mucking Flats to the river bank, but the path comes to an end about a mile earlier than anticipated. A pause for consideration of alternative routes reveals that there’s a pub in Corringham which it doesn’t take us long to conclude should be a suitable venue for our lunchtime break. Finding our way through some fields between the cycle path and Corringham takes 20 minutes or so, and we arrive at the Bull Inn at about 1:45. Beers are purchased and we’re told that it’s perfectly ok for us to eat our lunch at the tables behind the pub. We leave, duly refreshed, 20 minutes later and immediately encounter another navigational problem. We believe that we can reach the point where we’re hoping to cross the A1014 by going through the ground of East Thurrock United - aka “the Rocks”, and struggling at the foot of the Isthmian Premier League. We’re even assured that we can do so by some gentlemen chatting behind the main stand. But despite walking all the way around the ground, we can find no way out other than at the road which we crossed when leaving the Bull. We cut our losses and walk down that road to the point where it meets the A1014 and, with the traffic being pretty light, are able to cross there into the fields on the opposite side. Once through the fields, we come to a bridge which takes us over the far busier road leading to the Gateway Port and brings us to Mucking Flats and, shortly afterwards, the bank of the Thames. Our destination today is the Coalhouse Fort from which it’s a short walk to the Ship pub in East Tilbury where we’ve arranged for a cab to pick us up at 5 o’clock and take us to our overnight stop, the Best Western Hotel close to the M25 at Purfleet. Whether we get to the Ship on time will depend on how closely we can stick to the river bank. In particular, there’s a jetty on the edge of Mucking Marshes and it’s not clear whether we can simply walk past it or whether an inland diversion will be necessary. When we arrive there, we initially have to go along the landward side of a wire fence but over the fence, about 300 yards away on the other side of what looks like an old landfill site, the riverside path is clearly and temptingly visible. And it seems that we’re not the first people to be tempted because, lo and behold, there’s a section of fence where the wires have been forced apart to leave a gap which even Ben and Gary have to admit will not be difficult to deal with. So we scramble through the fence, cross the landfill site and regain the river bank. But our progress has been slow throughout the day, Ben has recently had to stop for his third al fresco “squat” of the whole walk (this one possibly being caused by the ham in his lunchtime sandwich which was well beyond its sell by date) and timely arrival at the Ship is still looking cuspy. John therefore phones the cab company to put back the pick up time to 5:30 and we continue alongside the Thames towards Coalhouse Fort. As it turns out, no diversions are necessary. We arrive at the fort around 4:45, so we have enough time to walk around the moat, finish on its south side, get to the Ship and have a leisurely pint before the cab arrives. It takes nearly half an hour to get to the hotel. We check in, get sorted out in our rooms, and reconvene in the bar over a pre-supper bottle of white – or pint of lager for Mike. There’s some slight confusion when we place our food order, but the result of this is merely that Mike gets an extra egg on the side with his burger. A further couple of bottles accompany the food and, to mark the beginning of the walking year in the way to which we have become accustomed, we conclude with a large sticky and are back in our rooms shortly after 9 o’clock.