04-August-2026
Steps: 24,811
Miles: 10.6
My blister was substantial on the bottom of my foot, it was going to be interesting as to how far and how painful it was going to be today, but with the plasters, wadding and Cuprofen (not Cuprenol) on we drove to Ramsgate, armed with bear’s claw sized almond croissants, and parked up on the East Cliffs to start our final day of this trip with an undecided distance but hoping for fantastic bird reserve and walks along the Royal St George golf course.
By concentrating on walking properly, things were ok. This time we took the 7-8 flights of stairs from East Cliff down to the beach and walked onto the harbour. The harbour was very humbling as unavoidable to escape thinking of all the brave women and men who fought in the World Wars. Ramsgate is rightly proud of its part in Operation Dynamo where numerous boats left the harbour here (and many others) to rescue Allied troops off the beaches of Dunkirk. These harbours must also of taken more than their fair share of bombings as well during the War to target the harbours, local airstrips and just offloading cargo before returning to the Continent and under the East Cliffs were the Ramsgate Caves that must have a rich history but were last used as a shelter during the War.
To get bang up to date, high on Kim’s lists of things to tick off in Ramsgate was the biggest Wetherspoons in the world! Right by the harbour, it used to be the town’s ballroom from the halcyon days of British tourism. Credit to the Spoons, they had done a good job renovating it and although only 10.30 it was welcoming its first thirsty clientele of the day. Like the Spoons in Whitstable which was wonderfully ornate in the old cinema, with much its Art Deco features preserved and named after local hero, Peter Cushings, you realise that these conversions are massively capital intensive that only Spoons can afford, so thank you to them for preserving some of our heritage.
It is then up and out of Ramsgate by the West Cliff, past another of my heroes blue plaque, where Charles Darwin came to help his daughter recuperate, hopefully not drinking the sea water. There was a boating lake where the cafeteria was architecturally very similar to the Latvian country residences, low and ornate (and tired). There were rose gardens, band stands and orchards and for the first time we saw tents and homeless people sleeping rough.
We now dropped into Pegwell Bay area where there were a couple of pubs with a rich history of smuggling and redemption when they served shrimp paste and high tea to Queen Victoria and received Royal Appointment for shrimp services provided. It was then a strange walk through narrow forest never quite striking the bay, there were plenty of plums and blackberries to keep us going but not much else to see until we got to the Viking Café and ship the Viking Hugin. Kim was delighted to get photos for her Viking House at school and we stopped for Magnums and Iced Coffee.
KIM PICTURES
From here on in the walking was an anticlimax as the nature reserve was parched without many birds, leaving it to the butteflies again to maintain interest where due to the overgrown nature of the paths I suspect people had not been here for a while.
… and then horror of horrors the path turned into a long stretch of dual carriage way with garages, rent-a-skip, KFC’s, haulage cafes with beer garden etc etc. It was grim, in all it was 4.5km as measured on return bus journey and with Kim’s permission, I turned my hearing aids to noise cancelling and some jazz to keep me going. Why was the path so awful? I think it was a combination of; the River Stour to cross, a lot of large industrial units and power stations, some of which had very threatening sign that they did not want to fully fence and finally probably the smug members of Royal St George maybe being very happy with the arrangement. So after 4.5km we arrived at the bridge into Sandwich very thirsty and hungry and in complete agreement that the walk would end here for the day.
The highlight of the day was awaiting though, after walking around the food options, we settled down to a pint of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord and a Ploughmans in The Crispin which has been serving them since 1491, and it was wonderful. The best meal of the week by far and left me so contented. We have since stocked up on piccalilli but perhaps you need to walk 40 miles in 3 days for it to taste mind-blowingly good.
Kim photos
Sandwich was lovely, the church in the middle of town was very attractive on the outside but it had been retired as a church and inside was a bric-a-brac community shop. I could not decide if I needed to take my cap off or not but it was also where another of my semi-heroes, Thomas Paine, got married before he was instrumental in 2 critical revolutions in France and USA.
We got the bus back to Ramsgate and then drove home, and for what seemed like a long time drove along the 40 miles we had walked.