Conyer to Swale Halt – 20th August 2019
Conyer is an attractive village tucked away down a small lane from Teynham (pronounced “Tenam”), a small town between Sittingbourne and Faversham. It is also located at the head of Conyer Creek, giving access to The Swale and Thames Estuary. Not surprisingly it is a Settlement dominated by its marina.
We decide to park at The Quay, a quiet road, quite close to the village pub – The Ship Inn (where we finished up after walking from Faversham). It being a weekday, there is plenty of parking available. I suspect things may be more difficult at the weekend when commuting householders are at home.
A short walk brings us to Conyer Wharf, where it is only a short walk down to the gates of Swale Marina. The Saxon Shore Way takes us around the marina, but we have plenty of opportunity to rubberneck at the boats as we circumnavigate the marina’s laurel boundary hedge.
Swale Marina, Conyer, where boats of all shapes and sizes await the incoming tide
I am always fascinated by collections of boats. Each has its own story to tell, about the places they have been and their significance to the lives of the people to whom they belong. I suspect the vast majority are owned by weekend sailors, perhaps the residents of the nearby modern houses.
Sailing is not a cheap hobby, especially when you consider the price of a mooring – which can set you back a couple of grand on a 10 metre boat. However, most of the boats are a little shorter than this and the facilities do look very attractive.
There are a number of sizeable exceptions, with several steel canal boats either moored on floating pontoons or sitting on the dock-side. At 15m, one of these must cost £3,000/year just for the mooring. This may well be a temporary arrangement, with the boat in transit before being craned into the water at Conyer in preparation for being taken up the Swale, either as far as the Medway, or possibly on to London.
I indulged in a similar venture 20 years ago, cruising up the Medway to a much cheaper mooring at Tonbridge for a couple of years. At least one of the canal boats here is a live-aboard, with all the trappings of residency – tubs of flowers, stacks of wood for the stove and all the bits and pieces anyone needs to live in any kind of home. Living at the marina is possibly a budget option, compared to living in a house within commuting distance of London. The downside of having a steel clad boat on saltwater though, is the corrosion that comes with the territory.
Moving along the creek we pass even larger vessels moored alongside the bank. One in particular looks like a gin palace compared to the marina boats. It is several decks high and at least 30 metres in length. Should the owner ever decide to leave, turning it in the narrow creek is going to be a challenge. Perhaps it is being fitted out to become a restaurant boat somewhere?
Five minutes later Conyer is a forgotten place as we enjoy our walk in the midday sunshine, along the grassy top of the sea wall. ‘Wall’ is a misleading term, suggesting lots of bricks or stones. In fact the sea wall is likely to be mostly excavated earth, from the adjacent reclaimed fields. This would have been achieved, over several centuries in some cases, by building banks of earth across the salt marsh at low tide. Eventually the enclosed land would have been drained fully and used for farmland. The soil embankment would have been protected from the elements by a stone cover, visible in places where the earth has been eroded.
Low tide at Conyer Creek, with the Isle of Sheppey and The Swale in the distance
Eventually we reach a split in the path, with the Swale Heritage Trail peeling off west. This route follows the slightly higher ground towards Sittingbourne. Our quest however, is to stay as close to the sea as possible, so we continue along the west bank of Conyer Creek to its junction with The Swale.
A month or two earlier we were on the other side of the creek looking this way. It now feels like we are looking back at ourselves. I half expect to see a month-or-so younger version of myself stroll into view, as though we are time travelling. In essence we are. The sea is timeless, but the seasons have moved on significantly, with the last flowers of summer – sea lavender, golden samphire and wild carrot – in full bloom.
I am trying out a new app on my mobile. I talk to it and it records my thoughts in text format. This is supposed to help my aging memory and save me the bother of one-finger typing this account at some later date. On the screen appear the words “Betty is enjoying herself so nice and sunny but with cloud and it’s lovely cool Breeze and Sophie smoking” Most of it makes sense, and captures the moment – but I have no idea where Sophie came from. She might be a cool ‘chick’ from my past, languidly drawing upon a Camel and blowing smoke from the side of her mouth, with a come-hither smile playing across her lips. Now I am definitely time travelling, but in a parallel universe!
Returning to the real world of sun, cloud and breeze, Betty has found an excellent stand of wild carrot flowers to photograph. These grow in profusion on the sea wall, with their pure white umbels of flowers, the middlemost of which is strangely always reddish in colour.
Betty lost in a sea of wild carrot blooms
Now continuing our passage upstream alongside The Swale, we are re-aquainted with the mass of the Isle of Sheppey, to starboard. We are avoiding including island coastlines in our epic walk. Sheppey alone must have a coastline of 35 miles, increasing our journey by perhaps 3 days. Throw in Anglesey, Wight, the Scillies, Lundy, Steep Holm, Flat Holm, Man and all the other islands and we will surely run out of available lifetime.
We encounter a rarity, another couple of walkers coming the other way. Young people are always self-conscious in their ‘hellos’, as though they can’t possibly admit that they are having as good a time as we are. This sweeping statement is almost immediately blown out of the water, when we come across a young chap, busily removing grass seeds from the inside of his boots. He is quite happy to tell us where he is going and what a great time he’s having. Frances slips into mothering mode, advising him that he should invest in a pair of gaiters. She points at her own pair, which “do a marvellous job of keeping all the seed crap out” of her boots. She suggests the alternative of the cut-down gaiters that I am wearing – something like latter day puttees. He’ll think twice about talking to strangers in future.
Discarded 21st Century settee keeps company with a discarded 20th Century Thames Sailing Barge
Having dispensed her motherly wisdom, she sets about snapping pictures of a beached wreck, its rotting wooden ribs exposed to the elements. Somewhat incongruously next to it is a discarded maroon settee, dumped by a fly-tipper. Both are cast-offs, past their useful lives (not Betty I hasten to add), but there the similarity ends. One is a casualty from an age when nothing of use was ever discarded lightly, whilst the other represents all that is wrong with modern day attitudes towards sustainability. Oddly enough the dumper of the settee must have driven miles out of his way to dump it.
Whilst Betty is busy snapping wrecks, I decide it is time for lunch. On our walks we seem to stop at some of the best ‘restaurants’ in the UK for lunch. This time I’m looking across The Swale on a sunny day in August. Even the meagerest of fare tastes good with a view like this.
Lunch concluded we walk as far as Milton Creek, where a large area of open freshwater catches my eye. The OS map refers to it as an Oyster Pond (disused), which is quite possible – considering we have already passed an oyster farm at Reculver further down the coast. I suspect this one was initially a clay pit, since this whole area is underlain by London Clay. London Clay was formerly used to manufacture bricks around here, although today the old clay pits have filled with water.
The area of water is now designated as The Little Murston Nature Reserve. Nature reserves do not all necessarily serve the same purpose. This one is owned by The Kent Wildfowlers, whose prime reason for buying land is to shoot wildfowl on it. This is a quite different philosophy to that of the Kent Wildlife Trust – who do not.
Following Milton Creek towards Sittingbourne, Betty indulges in a spot of blackberry foraging just as a less than attractive smell wafts across from the factories across the water. Referring to all the ripe fruit she is consuming, I joke that a similar smell may well emanate from our bathroom when we get home this evening.
My 1997 OS map shows that the Saxon Shore Way winds through the centre of Sittingbourne, taking us through industrial estates and along busy roads. I suspect the creators of this long distance path didn’t have downtown Sittingbourne in mind when they dreamt up the idea.
Crossing the new road bridge across Milton Creek
So it is much to our delight when we discover that they have built a bridge across Milton Creek since my map was published 20 years ago. How thoughtful of them. This is something of an unexpected bonus, shortening our walk by 3 miles and saving us from having to enjoy the delights of Sittingbourne’s modern industrial estates.
We stopped for petrol at Sittingbourne when we drove to Conyer this morning. It is a bit like a doughnut, with residential areas making up the dough, whilst industrial landuse makes up the hole in the middle – a most apt metaphore. Unlike Faversham, which regards its historical waterway as a thing of civic pride, Sittingbourne has gone the other way. Faversham is now a vibrant, historical town, attracting tourists and well healed residents who commute to London. Sittingbourne does not. However, it does provide all-important work for the local population. The two towns are like chalk and cheese.
As we cross the Milton Creek Bridge we pass a modern day supplier of bricks – Marshalls. I suspect no bricks are made on site, but it is interesting to note the link with the past. The view from the bridge is extensive, but hardly aesthetic. Behind us is the town’s established industrial area, whilst ahead of us we are faced with the prospect of passing newer industry, including a paper mill and a waste recycling plant.
The west bank of Milton Creek is dominated by a large modern looking factory, with tall silver chimneys rising skyward. This is the DS Smith paper mill. The mill has moved away from grinding up trees for paper, instead using paper waste to create its product. A large green mound sits next to the factory covered in well mown grass. It looks like a landfill site, but it could also be using biodegrading material beneath its surface to generate energy. Every cloud has a silver lining. Lots of building activity is evident, with numerous diggers and lorries scurrying around as the factory expands to cover the adjacent land.
In stark contrast to the pristine factory and its green mantled mound is our side of the boundary fence, which is dominated by bramble growth. This grabs at the arms and legs of the unprotected walker as he passes by. The natural flora here has been augmented by species introduced by man. A number of mature trees bear tasty Discovery apples upon their branches and we collect a few to take home.
Apples and grape vines have found their niche alongside the Thames Estuary
A less expected introduction is a grape vine, which is rambling over the boundary fence of DS Smith’s land. Who knows, one day this might be the vineyard where the famous Miltons Creek Shiraz is grown. Vines already grow on the South Downs overlooking the English Channel, so why not overlooking the Thames Estuary too? Landuse history is always changing, never fixed – especially in this quarter of the globe.
It seems Betty’s blackberry-foraging pigeons have come home to roost and she urgently has to find a place of concealment to release them. A nearby notice warns passers-by that CCTV cameras are in use. Someone is going to have some interesting footage to send to Harry Hill’s Bloopers!
Defunct grindstones, with Betty in search of a place of concealment
DS Smith have put some of their now-defunct log-grinding stones next to the path for walkers to enjoy. A display panel informs us what they are. Of course some cynical sorts might say they are just high profile fly-tippers and that the cost of their display board would have been far less than the cost of burying the stones in a landfill site.
A further display board reveals what all the building activity is about. They are in the process of building a plant capable of recycling over 500,000 tons of waste and generating 75 MW of renewable energy. It will also produce steam for use in the paper mill.
I am so distracted by all this beneficial building and recycling activity that I miss the Saxon Shore Way, which turns off inland. Instead I walk us a mile out of our way along the shore line. This does however give us a good view of Ridham Dock and ticks off a bit more coast than we might otherwise have.
On returning to the Saxon Shore Way, it takes us to the south and west of Ridham Dock, where we encounter yet more waste. This time it is fly-tipped asbestos and assorted white goods. What it does highlight is that there will always be people more interested in their own self-serving interests, rather than contributing to a collective effort to save our environment.
Roadside fly-tipped waste at Ridham Dock
The Saxon Way now turns off the road to Ridham Dock, along a parallel footpath, atop an embankment – built to keep any future surging tide from engulfing Ridham Marshes. I notice that a disused railway track once pierced the embankment here, as it entered Ridham Dock. Alas railways are no longer in favour, with lorry transport now king. However, no one thought to fill in the hole in the embankment, so perhaps Ridham Marshes are not so safe from the sea after-all!
The new road bridge across The Swale to Sheppey, with the old road and rail bridge (right)
A little further on we mount Ridham Wall, which takes us along the edge of Ferry Reach to Kingsferry Bridge. The original bridge was a combined road and rail crossing, with the middle section lifting to permit the passage of ships. This has now been largely replaced by a huge hump of concrete, speeding cars and lorries to Sheerness – on the 400-metre-distant Isle of Sheppey. Passing under these bridges on my narrowboat, was one of the highlights of my voyage up the Swale 20 years ago.
As we reach the road, a couple of youths ask “Hey Mister – are you the manager?”
They obviously want to launch their jet-ski and can’t get through the locked gate.
“No,” I reply, “I’m just a simple walker.”
We’ve just missed the train to Sittingbourne by 5 minutes, but there’ll be another one along in 25 minutes, so we squat on the seatless platform and twiddle our thumbs. When the train arrives, not surprisingly we are the only passengers to get on at Swale Halt. The rest of the train is made up of returning workers from Sheerness, or residents keen to visit the mainland and sample the nightlife. Although it’s not on our itinerary, we’ll have to give Sheppey a go some time.
I’m sure it’s a fascinating, offshore paradise.