Dungeness to Rye the way along the Beach

Many years ago, more than I care to remember as a family we walked the Saxon Shore Way from Gravesend to Newhaven, my girls were six and three when we started and it took as a couple of years going out at weekends. Recently Beverley and me have been walking along the south coast between Eastbourne and Rye and whilst doing this I thought it would be a good idea to fill in the missing coastline not covered by the Saxon Shore Way, that involves the Isle of Thanet from Reculver round to Sandwich, and the Dungeness peninsular. 

Well we have already "done" Rye to Hythe which was quite straight forward, drive to Hythe, park at the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway and catch one of it's trains to Dungeness and walk back. This we did back in May, minus the children as they are now 22 and 26 but we did have Flosi our dysfunctional first generation farm collie.

So that left the section from Dungeness to Rye, the problem is that Lydd Ranges occupies a large slice of the coast here and the path is only open about 65 days a year and not that often on weekends. Fortunately at the August Bank Holiday the range was open on both Saturday and Sunday so we planned to walk this section on the Sunday.

So the logistic planning kicked in, how to do an end to end work and get back to beginning. Simple, the answer was leave home at 07:45 and drive to Ashford International! We got there in plenty of time, but even with half an hour to spare we were barely able to sit down on the platform before our train arrived having to locate the car park, ticket office, toilet, Pumpkin for coffee and crossiants, and finally ensure Flosi was trussed up as she enjoys giving grief to Trains.

The train was then 09:05 to somewhere but we were only going as far as Sandling, from here it is approximately a 2 mile walk into Hythe which we did in double quick time giving ourselves plenty of time to catch the 10:05 to Dungeness.

Having arrived at Dungeness we visited the cafe opposite the old lighthouse and the nuclear power station for bacon sandwiches and tea before setting of on the 12 mile walk into Rye.

Now there's not much information on the web about the path between Dungeness and Rye apart from the fact it goes along the Range and is on loose shingle and you are restricted to a single path, but it doesn't say where it is. The OS Explorer map shows a path along the coast high water mark, well I think it's a path, whilst parallel to this is a track of sorts. However when I looked on Google maps the track did not look very accessible, although when we arrived at Jury's Gap at the end of the Range this track was very obvious, being rough aggregate concrete and stretching off back the way we came How far you can walk along it I don't know, although a chap was walking along it very confidently looking as if he knew where he was going and what he was doing.

Anyway I'm getting ahead of myself, Re-wind back to Dungeness. Needless to say Dungeness, which I understand is Britans only designated desert owing to the amount of rainfall it receives, is dominated by the Nuclear power stations. Which did have four reactors, two old ones in Dungeness A which ceased power generation in 2006 and two newer ones in Dungeness B which began operating in 1983 and 1985 respectively. 

It's quite a sight, and I was amused to note that the internal roads in the complex have funny names such as Outfall Avenue, Transformer Avenue and Turbine Hall Avenue. 

Our route took as along the sea side of the site, right along the perimeter fence along an access road and then a concrete plinth, this being a newer construction the concrete still being very clean and very bright reflecting the sunlight.

There was no obvious security apart from the high fence, no obvious CCTV but I expect there was, I took a few photos and half expected a security operative to appear saying "Oh! you can't do that mate" but they didn't, well it was Sunday after all.

Having passed the Nuclear site without obviously being nuked or radiated, the scene opened up with a large flat shingle area in front of us with a high shingle embankment on the left and the beach, ahead was a huge B&Q type building with power lines going in one side and coming out the other end and heading off across Dungeness on huge pylons, quite an impressive sight really.

About half mile further on we came across a fence, which I thought would be the start of the firing range, but I was mistaken as it was ramshackle and serving no real purpose. We could now see a lookout tower ahead which is were the range commences. 

On arrival there were the normal signs about this being a dangerous area, don't pick up any unexplored bombshells and don't enter when the red flag is flying that type of stuff. There were a number of people here as there's an access road, they were all fishing, I've never ever seen anyone catch anything in all the times I've passed people fishing on the beach.

There was another sign that made me chuckle a little! Surely it would be easier to go directly to the dump?

Now it was here that I expected to get directions as to where the path was but there was nothing so we just continued along the beach, this was tough going, so we moved inland slightly and walked along the scrub, as this made the shingle firmer but after a while this died out so we returned to the top of the beach and walked in the tracks of a vehicle that had be driven along here earlier, I expect this was a military vehicle of some sorts, most probably with tracks as opposed to wheels and a turret and canon.

Walking in these tracks was slightly easier as the shingle was slightly more compressed, but it was tough going but not as tough as when we walked along the stones at Pevensey Bay as they were larger.

I had read that it was best to walk along the beach at low tide but unfortunately it was high tide and we could not do this. In the distance we could see another lookout so we made that our next destination and our lunch stop.

I did expect see more people taking advantage of the open range walk, but apart from the lookouts where there is road access the only other people we saw apart from the chap at the end of the range was a couple beach-combing, they had collected a fine collection of buoys and what appeared to be a body board, I asked if he had found that on the beach which he confirmed, and said he also found a box of treasure but was unable to carry it so had left it for us. Unfortunately we never found it, although Beverley did make a collection of sundry shells and a lump of sea shaped tile which she explained could be used as a coffee pot stand, whilst the shells will be displayed in a nice pot in the garden "And when will all this happen Beverley?" I asked "When you've done it" was her reply. Currently they are on the raised bed in the garden.

Having arrived at the second lookout tower we stopped for lunch, from this spot you could actually see the ranges, range towers, and range markers, big letters on poles.

After lunch, the tide had gone out sufficiently to enable us to walk on the beach where the shingle was more compressed by the action of the sea. Flosi found this easier and paddled in the sea. In fact we all found it easier.

From time to time I would walk up the beach and look across the ranges, where there were a number of old tanks, armoured cars and trucks, targets I expect.

As we neared Jury's Gap and the end of the range there was an enclosed mock village used for urban warfare and house clearance exercises.

At this point we had to divert onto the Road as there was sea defence work going on along the coast as far a Camber, fortunately the road was not to busy so we could walk along it and make good progress, moving onto the verge when cars came along, which could be seen well ahead as the road was very straight.

It was still very flat here. I was looking forward to re-visiting Camber Sands, I think the last time I was here was when I about 12 or 13, my Mum used to take me there.

I'm afraid my childhood memories took a knock as there's now buildings and car parks on the beach which never used to be there, and what's more people enjoying themselves on the beach, outrageous, there never used to be any one here. I used to spend hours in the sea on a lilo with my best friend Mike Nichols, I wonder whatever happened to him.

We walked along the beach so, far but had to divert up the dunes as dogs were not allowed until 30 September, this wasn't surprising and indeed was fully expected. But not before stopping for a cup of very enjoyable tea obtained from one of those building on the beach, I wasn't complaining now!

Walking the dunes was marginally more difficult than the shingle, but I remember running up and down these playing Desert Rats versus the Africa Korps as a kid.

The final few miles took us through Camber, the Golf Course to join up with the track along side the River Rother, and when I say track I'm referring to the old Rye and Camber Tramway. Where the path joins the track there's an old corrugated shed which was the Golf Links Tram stop, I didn't have the wherewithal to photograph it unfortunately and neither did I realise this is a permissive path into Camber across the golf course using the old tramway route.

There's still evidence of tracks in the concrete, which we followed alongside the river before turning left whilst the tram headed straight ahead, where a lake now stands.

We quickly arrived at the bridge across the Rother (where the Tramway Terminus was), having had lovely views of rotting hulks in the muddy banks of the river, whilst the oncoming view of Rye high on the hill never fails to impress.

I said to Beverley "You know what, we always end up at these nice towns but never have time to explore them" today was no different we had a train to catch and it was 18:15, but first a couple of pints in the Cinque Ports Public House before catching the 19:38 back to Ashford to pick up our car and drive home.