Rye to Lydd-on-Sea – 15th February 2019
We arrive at Rye shortly before 11 a.m. and elect to park adjacent to the town’s bowling greens, overlooked by the Castle. Having parked up Betty goes off to purchase a ticket, only to return empty-handed with a surprised tone to her voice.
“£5 for one day!” she explains, “it’s only about £3 at the station car park – can’t we find a suburban street to park in?”
It seems a bit of my Yorkshire parsimony is rubbing off on her and I beam with pride. Of course she is right. £5 will buy us the greater part of a couple of well-earned pints at the end of our walk. We pull out of the car park, Rye £5 the poorer for their extortion, and find a quiet road just the other side of the Rother.
By 11 a.m. we are on our way, striding along the footpath which runs on the eastern side of the River Rother. It is low tide, with the Rother looking like a trickle, lost In the deep channel that normally fills with sea water at high tide. Fishing and pleasure boats stand high and dry in the thick brown mud.
Pleasure Craft stand high and dry in the thick brown mud of The Rother
We are soon overtaken by a couple of other walkers – a remarkable occurrence, not because we are particularly fast walkers, but because we rarely meet anyone else out walking during our East Sussex walks. On the few occasions that we do meet other walkers, we rarely exchange more than a “hello” with them. The couple engage in a minute of pleasant conversation asking us if we are heading for Camber.
I answer “We had hoped to get to Dungeness, but we don’t know if we are permitted to pass the firing range at Lydd”
“No,” the man responds, “we had a look there once but weren’t allowed to pass.”
It is always interesting to hear what other walkers’ experiences. I’m pretty sure we’ll give it a miss too and settle for just doing a local circular walk, rather than the 11 or 12 miles to Dungeness.
The walk down to Rye Harbour is about a mile or so, giving us time to examine the various industrial buildings on the far bank. One of these is a large warehousing complex at Rye Wharf. It appears that large vessels must pull alongside the wharf and unload their cargoes into the 9 or 10 vast warehouses. The channel here is impressively deep and doubtless needs constant dredging to keep it that way.
As we continue downstream we draw level with Rye Harbour, a pretty, if small settlement in its own right. The building of the Martello Tower No. 28, during the Napoleonic Wars, stimulated the development of the harbour. The ancient cinque port of Rye was in decline due to silting up of the Rother, so much of its maritime activity moved downstream.
Today a few fishing vessels and a smattering of small pleasure craft moor here. The RNLI Station dominates the harbour which also boasts 2 pubs and several cafes.
Rye Harbour from the East Bank – Martello Tower No.28 is on the left
Adjacent is the Rye Harbour nature reserve an area of several hundred hectares of marsh open water and shingle. This is one of the most favoured bird watching sites in the UK and has many national and international designations. Some 360,000 visitors come each year to walk its paths and enjoy its wildlife.
Rye Harbour Nature Reserve – old visitor centre to the right. Sluices (centre of shot) control water levels on the reserve
From the east bank the nature reserve appears to be almost hovering in the air above the Rother at low tide. The massive piles lining the riverbank must rise a good 30 m above the river at low tide.
To our left is a golf course, which is separated from the coast by a strip of sand dunes. Beyond these we can see Camber Sands stretching eastwards towards the Dungeness foreland. Very few people are to be found on this beautiful stretch of sand in February. In fact far more are playing golf. Even in the summer months this western end of Camber Sands is astonishingly quiet, compared to further east. At the height of summer, thousands enjoy the sands, cafes and other facilities at Camber Sands village, but few tourists trouble to walk to this end. 200 yards is apparently the usual walking limit for most of the British public.
A single trail of human footprints betrays the total number of human visitors to the sands here since last high tide. As we make our way eastwards, close to the gently spilling waves, we pick up otter shells, scallops and muscles scattered across the sand. They’ll look attractive as a mosaic in the garden.
The lone walker
Camber Sands – seashells on the strand line
The sun is so bright that we sport sunglasses, and despite the cool air we quickly get up a sweat, as we march along. Betty is a little worried that the turning tide might swallow us up, since there are numerous wet hollows further up the beach, which suggest the racing tide might outflank us.
Although this is not Morecambe Bay – where allegedly the rising tide can outpace a running man – we decide it prudent to head inland towards the cafe and bar located on the edge of the dunes further east. Not yet ready for liquid refreshment, we hurry on past this relatively busy area to the point at which the dunes give way to the sea wall which protects the marshes to the landward.
A number of impressive modern houses are nestled in the dunes, possibly holiday lets or second homes, but some look very well used. Judging by their potential exposure to high tides and storms, I suspect their owners are not concerned about the long-term viability of their investment. Perhaps they are sceptics of climate change and sea level rising. Time will tell.
The seawall to the east of the dunes has been significantly bolstered and raised, suggesting that the Environment Agency certainly believe the science sufficiently to spend significant sums of public money on rising sea level mitigation.
The sea wall is fronted by boulders, providing us with cover for a brief comfort break. This is relatively easy for me, tinkling in amongst the rip-rap boulders. Betty has a more problematic time, adopting a hindi-squat, out of sight of the few potential onlookers in the February sunshine. I ride ‘shotgun’ on the seawall, feeling like a meerkat watching out for predatory snakes and eagles. This is an appropriate analogy, considering the rising numbers of drones and the predatory nature of the Internet. We may yet be in receipt of copies of photos of Betty tinkling in the rip-rap, accompanied by a demand for payment of funds into a numbered Swiss bank account.
Outfall permits draining of water from Romney Marsh at Low Tide
(the sea wall and rip-rap beyond permit a different type of drainage!)
Our bladders relieved, we head back down the beach and walk alongside the advancing wave-front, as the tide starts it’s twice daily migration landward. We are approaching the area marked on the map as ‘Danger Area’. We now have to decide whether to press on towards Dungeness, or return to Rye by footpaths across the marshes.
We can see no indication that we are not permitted to walk this stretch of the UK coastline, but decide that in this digital age we can call upon the services of the Internet. Finding an appropriate web site it seems that the ranges are open today (although it is only later that we realise ‘open’ could mean ‘open for walking’ or ‘open for shooting!) .
We are encouraged by this, since it means we are unlikely to be involved in a rerun of the D Day landing practice, which doubtless took place on this very beach some 75 years earlier. So hearts beating just a little faster, we cross the Rubicon, like East German dissenters crossing the no-man’s-land of the Iron Curtain.
Initially the walk along the beach is pleasant with the firm sand enabling us to march at high speed towards Dungeness nuclear power station. However it soon becomes evident that the beach pinches out, especially as the rising tide ahead of us has reached as far as the pebbles of the storm beach that marks the upper Shore.
Soon we are crunching our way through pebbles, our bodies severely listing to starboard as we go. The loose pebbles soon become irksome, with a real risk of us turning our ankles, besides the sapping of energy from our legs. In desperation we decide to try walking along the top of the beach, in the hope that someone has put a nice tarmac footpath there for us.
As we gingerly poke our heads above the ‘parapet’ of the beach, I half expect to be strafed with machine gun fire, or have some squaddie shout obscenities at me from some vantage point. Thankfully all is quiet on the Lydd Front. This is of course good news.
The ‘Parapet’ – the storm beach and firing ranges at Lydd
The bad news is that the whole of the landward area is covered with the same bloody pebbles as the storm beach below. Further, much of this area is also strewn with all manner of flotsam and jetsam washed up on earlier high tides. If sea levels are rising, here is evidence that much of Romney Marsh would be inundated, were it not for the watchfulness of the Environment Agency. We have little choice but to continue walking over the pebbles of the storm beach for the next hour and are treated to some of the toughest walking we have ever experienced on our coastal travels.
An hour later we have the relative joy of emerging at Dungeness nuclear power station where a huge man-made pebble bank is in the process of being erected by a large excavator. Some people are obviously taking the threat of rising sea levels very seriously!
Lydd Firing Ranges(clear warnings are given – but not if you follow the strand line)
As we make our way to the nearest place of refreshment, we make every effort to avoid any further patches of loose pebble material. This is not easy, since the whole of the Dungeness foreland has been created from the stuff. Virtually no trees exist at Dungeness since there is practically no soil in which they can grow. Residential properties are scattered around this semi-desert area, ranging from dilapidated shacks to Grand Design House of the Year entrants. Dungeness is a very strange place for anyone to live.
Thinking it might be possible to grab a drink and catch the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Light Railway, we head towards the station – only to be thwarted by its closure throughout February. No word of apology, or explanation is provided. This suggests that RHDLR operators consider anyone fool enough to come here in February is not worth the courtesy of such a thing.
Being resourceful chaps we decide to make a beeline for the Britannia Inn, which is surprisingly well patronized – largely by locals – judging by their lack of warm clothing and the absence of the mandatory binoculars, normally brandished by any out-of-season birdwatcher visiting Dungeness.
The lady behind the bar is slow in her service and as stony-faced in her demeanor as the pebbles outside. This suggests non-locals are not welcome out of season. Knowing when we are not wanted we take our foaming pints into the ‘visitors bar’ – outside.
As we consume our much-needed alcoholic beverages I check the Internet for buses back to civilization. Luck is with us. I discover there is a bus back to Rye in 20 minutes time. Unfortunately the pick-up point is at The Pilot Inn, a mile or so away at Lydd-on-Sea.
Dungeness – mostly pebbles
Downing our drinks, we abandon our empty glasses (for the stony-faced publican to collect) and quick-march along the road to Lydd-on-Sea. It is with considerable relief that we mount the bus, pay our fare and enjoy the bouncing ride back to the car at Rye.