Day 159 – Botany Bay to Sandwich: 12.9m: 4.7h

The breakfast is good and the team gets under way a few moments before 8am with only 20 yards to walk to get back on piste. The logger precision is blown by John forgetting to switch it on for 5 minutes so an adjustment has to be made. The weather is a bit cooler and after a mile or so on the cliff we descend to the beach and have a pleasant walk into Ramsgate partly on the sand and partly on the promenade. The beach is busy with dog walkers predominating. This may be due to some rule about when dogs are allowed on the beach – only up to 9am? We reach Ramsgate and admire the boats in the marina. John speculates that it would be nice to own a barge and then Helen, Oscar and he could spend their lives on the French canals. Helen makes clear that this will never be more than speculation.

Carine has not been able to join the walk due to having to pick the hops she has grown that have to be delivered to the brewery first thing. She rings to arrange to meet to say goodbye. After passing through the port we meet Carine and walk with her for a mile until we reach the Viking ship. This is a full sized replica commemorating their landing in Pegwell Bay in the 5^th century. A similar replica was sailed by 50 Danes to England in 1949.

We have a pleasant walk around Pegwell Bay which is also where St Augustine landed. Unfortunately, we then have a navigational issue. A permissive path is marked, but it fizzles out after 10 minutes with no obvious way forward. We retrace our steps and instead walk alongside a busy road. It then starts to rain. We walk on with Day 2 feet making their presence felt. Finally, we reach Sandwich and the Quay.

John then makes a further error by persuading the team to walk on a bit further, eschewing a number of attractive pubs, to reach the nearest point of the route to the station. We walk up to the station which proves to have no hostelries anywhere nearby. We end up walking back almost all the way to the Quayside. We do find a pub and have a pleasant hour eating baguettes before walking back to the station and getting the train. As usual John and Ben promptly fall asleep to round off the trip.