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