Birchington to Herne Bay Walk

Main route: 14km (8.7 miles). 5 hours. For the whole outing, including trains, sights and meals, allow at least 9 hours.

West extension (Whitstable) : add 7km / 4 miles

East extension (Margate) : add 4.5km / 3.8 miles

OS Landranger Map 179, Explorer Map 150

1 out of 10

This is an easy coastal walk - it is entirely flat - along the north Kent coast. It passes the dramatic landmark of Recluver, the remains of the twin towers of a 12th C church set amongst the ruins of a Roman Fort (free entry, English Hertitage, Wikipedia).

In summer there are opportunities for sea swimming throughout (see notes below), and though the walk is almost entirely on tarmac or concrete paths, with only a 1km section beyond Reculver that is on grassy clifftops, there are still plenty of rural delights.

After an initial section on the seafront promenade (or cliff top park) of Birchington-on-Sea, a quiet seaside town, you follow the raised sea wall over remote flat marshland (a sea channel until the 12th century: see Points of Interest below), along an unspoilt shingle beach which has interesting wildflowers (in summer) and seabirds: also fine views of distant shipping and windfarms, and the ruins of Reculver church as an aiming point on the horizon.

Beyond Reculver your path takes you along the top (or bottom) of a very pleasant grassy slope facing the sea, which again has interesting wildflowers in summer, to the charming, if slightly faded, seaside resort of Herne Bay, complete with pier, beach huts, cafes and bars.

Incidentally, while one may think of this as a perfect summer walk, it makes a nice winter outing too, if the weather is fine. The low sunlight on the sea and marshes can be quite entrancing, and at this time of year the birdlife is more numerous, particularly at low tide when they feed on the shallow shingle and mudflats. Best of all this is a walk almost entirely without mud. Note that there is no shelter, however, so in rain it can be fairly wretched. If the winds are blowing strongly from the west, consider reversing the walk (see below.)

It is quite possible and easy to do this walk in reverse - indeed, if the wind is blowing strongly from the west, this is a good idea as there is otherwise no shelter on this walk. The only disadvantage to doing the walk in this direction is that the flatlands of the marshes between Reculver and Birchington might be a bit of an anticlimax after the scenically more dramatic section around Herne Bay. (You also do not have the towers of Reculver church as your aiming point as you walk across them). Birchington is a fairly quiet place to finish and does not have the charm of Herne Bay: but it does have some tea options: see below. Walk directions for this option are below.

This walk can be extended to the east or west to link up with our other coast walks (Margate to Ramsgate, and Faversham to Whitstable) if you want to walk the entire coastline. Just choose one, doing both at about 16 miles on pavement is a bit too long. We did look at splitting this walk into 2 shorter 8 miles walks, but the stations just weren't in the right place...

West Extension : Herne Bay to/from Swalecliff and Whitstable

You can continue along the coast past Herne Bay for 4km to Hampton (pub) and Swalecliff (Long Rock headland / nature reserve), then head inland for its station,

Its a further 3 km (i.e. 7km / 4 miles total) to Whitstable, a large seaside town with some historic buildings.

The beaches are shingle, there is a good flat promenade, with occasional lines of beach huts and beach cafes, backed by quiet residential neighbourhoods until the outskirsts of Whitstable. Both stations are closer to London on the same line, so your return ticket is valid.

East Extension : Birchington to/from Westgate and Margate

In the reverse direction, you can carry on past Birchington for 2km (1.2 miles) to Westgate-on-Sea which has a popular and busy seafront cafe in season and a station just inland of its main bay.

Another 2.5km (1.6 miles) (so 3.8 miles total) brings you to Margate, whose station is clearly visible from the seafront just at the start of its main beach.

All of this walk is on seafront promenades or quiet residential clifftops, with short headlands seperating small towns with quiet beaches.

If extending the walk in this way you will need to buy a day return to whichever town you end up in.

The initial section of promenade, from Birchington to Reculuver, is wide, flat, and car free - it's suitable for cycling with young children or nervous beginners.

Trains go once an hour each from London Victoria or St Pancras, to Birchington on Sea with a journey time one hour 38 minutes from Victoria and one hour 26 minutes from St Pancras. Slightly cheaper fares can be obtained on the Victoria trains, and you can also use tickets from London travelcard zone boundaries on these trains, which you cannot on the St Pancras ones. Herne Bay is one stop before Birchington on Sea, so buy a day return to Birchington on Sea. Trains are 2/hour Mon-Sat, and 1/hour on Sunday. Margate, about 1hr 30mins, has a better service.

Suggested Train: Take the train nearest to 9.30am.

By Car: This is a long quiet seafront. Everywhere outside the town centres has free parking.

Food and drink options are listed below from east to west. If on the main walk (Birchington to Herne Bay), the most convenient lunch stop is Reculver, with tea in Herne Bay, though if you start late, Minnis Bay has possible lunch options and tea could be had at the cafe in the Reculver Visitor Centre.

On the reverse walk (Herne Bay to Birchington), Reculver is again the best lunch option, with other possibilities at the start of the walk in Herne Bay. Minnis Bay provides the best tea options, though there is a later pub option by Birchington station.

On the east extension Westgate-on-Sea and Margate have late refreshment options, while on the west extension that is true of Hampton, Tankerton and Whitstable. If starting from Whitstable or Swalecliffe and walking east, Herne Bay is a possible early lunch stop and Reculver an early tea stop.

Margate

• A Tesco Metro on the seafront road, about 200m west of the station, or,
• The Mechanical Elephant, a Wetherspoons about 200m east of the station

Westgate-on-Sea

• The popular West Bay Cafe is on the seafront promenade on the east side of the bay.

Birchington

• If reversing the walk and finishing here, Minnis Bay (see next paragraph) is your best option for tea or other refreshments. However, if you get to Birchington station and have some time to wait for a train, carrying on over the railway bridge brings you in 60 metres on the right to a pub called Christie's. Turn left on the main road after the pub and follow it round to the right to come to the town's high street, which has fish and chip shops and a Sainsbury's Local supermarket.

Minnis Bay

• The Minnis Bay Bar & Brasserie is a seafront pub at the head of Birchington's main beach. As well as having table service for meals, it serves hot drinks, cakes and scones in its bar area.
• Next door to it is the Waves Cafe, which serves both hot and alcoholic drinks, some cakes and meals, and is open until 6pm daily.
• Immediately behind the Minnis Bay Bar & Brasserie there is also the possibly seasonal Honey'z Cafe & Beach Bar, and on the seafront itself there is the seasonal Winshack Cafe.

Reculver

• The King Ethelbert Inn, Reculver Lane CT6 6SU, (tel 01227 374368) Located 8km from the start of the walk (if walking from Birchington). This is a friendly and cheap pub which is popular with locals and users of the adjacent caravan park. It has a varied menu of meals and serves large portions: very good value.

• 150 metres west of the King Ethelbert Inn, the HatHats Coffee Company is a cafe in the Reculver Visitor Centre.

Herne Bay

• Mackari's is the name to look out for in Herne Bay. They run a cafe on the corner on the seafront 100 metres east of the clock tower, but better is their other branch 100 metres west of the clock tower in the old bandstand: this has both inside and outside tables and is altogether a pleasanter place to sit if the weather is fine.

• Herne Bay has several pubs: on the road near clock tower is the Saxon Shore is a very pleasant Weatherspoons outlet.

• The Heron, Station Road, Herne Bay, CT6 5QJ (tel 01227- 657818). is another pub, located just outside Herne Bay station.

• There is a pleasant eating area on the pier with seating shared between several stalls.

Hampton

• The Hampton Inn, a seafront pub.

Tankerton

• Several sea front cafes and the Hotel Continental cafe/bar.

Whitstable

• Many places in the town centre, including a few fish and chippies on the beach at the start of the high street

Almost the whole coast you follow on this walk is suitable for swimming, though it is worth noting that when the tide is running there can be a fairly strong current lateral to the shore. Usually this just means that you make little progress relative to the shore when swimming in one direction or the other, but don't go too far out unless you are confident in such conditions. If in doubt, only swim where you see other people doing so.

The other issue is the state of the tide. At low tide the sea retreats some way across a flat sandy (at Birchington and Herne Bay) or shingle bottom. At such times you have to wade out a long way to get enough depth of water for swimming - and if you wade too far there may be sticky mud underfoot. When the tide is at the mid level, however, this means that there is a large expanse of not too deep water to swim in. Given this, where you swim will probably be determined by at what point on the walk the tide is highest, but from a scenic point of view the nicest swimming spot is probably the long beach running into Herne Bay, which is backed by green slopes. Incidentally the sea hereabouts is a bit brown, but this is due to sediment from the muddy bottom, not pollution: North Kent beaches generally all meet bathing water standards these days, one possible exception being after heavy rain, when there can be some sewage overflow.

In winter at the Birchington end of this walk you can see a good variety of seabirds, including oyster catchers and large flocks of dark-coloured brent geese. The latter migrate to here from their summer nesting grounds on the Siberian tundra to spend the winter feeding on the mudflats at low tide, roosting at high tide in the marshy fields of the former Wantsum Channel (see next paragraph).

The Isle of Thanet was once a real island and was separated from the rest of Kent by the Wantsum Channel, which stetched from Reculver to Richborough, just outside Sandwich. The Romans had a fort at either end of this sea channel, and it is on the ruins of the Reculver one that a Saxon monastery was built, whose ruined church is such a feature on this walk. The Wantsum Channel started to silt up in the 12th century and was soon reclaimed for farmland, but even today you can see the broad swathe of flat land where it used to be.

The sea wall between Minnis Bay and Reculver was built in 1954-5 as a response to the disastrous floods of 31 January 1953, when a combination of high tide, wind and low pressure created floods of up to 5.6 metres above sea level from Lincolnshire to the Thames Estuary. Not surprisingly the waters penetrated a significant way inland at this point.

Offshore windfarms divide opinion, but for many they provide a point of interest on this walk. The one that is most obvious is the Kentish Flats array just north of Herne Bay: this was the UK's very first offshore windfarm and has by modern standards a very modest 30 turbines, with plans for 15 more. Further out to sea, on the far horizon to the north east (so over your right shoulder if walking from Birchington or ahead left if you are coming from Herne Bay) you can also see on clear days the massive 100 turbine London Array. Finally due eastwards towards Margate you can glimpse the Thanet Offshore windfarm which is off the coast of Ramsgate.

On either side of the Kentish Flats windfarm you may be able to see a cluster of dark box-like structures on stilts. These are the Maunsell Forts, anti-aircraft gun platforms erected in the Second World War. The ones to the left (west) as you are looking out to sea at the windfarm are the Red Sands Forts and the ones to the right (east) are the Shivering Sands Forts. In the early 1960s these were for a time used by pirate radio stations under the (mistaken) assumption that they were outside UK territorial waters.

If you are wondering what the odd wooden pavillion-like structure way out in the sea to the north of Herne Bay is, it is the original end of the town's pier, most of which was destroyed in a storm in 1978, though a shoreward stump that you can walk on still remains. The pier is actually the third on this site, the original opening 1832, with a very serious purpose. In those pre-railway days sea was often the quickest way to get around, and for thirty years paddlesteamers from London used to call at this pier carrying passengers not just for Kent but also for the continent (travellers carried on by road to Canterbury and Dover and then took boats across the English Channel). This original pier apparently had a wind-driven railway to carry passengers' luggage to and from boats (if there was no wind, the carts carrying the luggage had to be pushed by hand). The pier needed to be so long in order to provide sufficient depth for ships to anchor at all states of the tide (see the pier which still exists in Southend, which is 1.3 miles long for the same reason). After the coming of the railway in 1861 the pier was more of a embarkation point for pleasure trips. In the Second World War it was partly dismantled for fear it might be used by invasion forces. Restoration after the war was apparently not very well done, and the result was the loss of the pier in the 1978 storm. Only its far end still remains as a reminder of just how astonishingly long it once was.

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National Rail: 03457 48 49 50 • Traveline (bus times): 0871 200 22 33 (12p/min) • TFL (London) : 0343 222 1234

Feb-24 DAC