The race was on! Could I make it to Lower Stoke before the bus?

For some reason there was a big gap in the scheduling of buses, I could wait for more than an hour or I could set off now and probably make it to the next village before the bus would arrive. It meant a lot of road tramping but there was little in Grain to hold my interest.

I pressed on and made it to within a stones throw of the bus stop at Lower Stoke before being overtaken by the bus – I was beaten but only just.

Thankfully the walk from now on, for the rest of the day, was going to be much more picturesque. I had two options – a walk along the northern shore or to cut across the middle of the peninsula. As I had already walked a fair distance the longer northern shore walk was discounted and I also hoped to find some more interesting countryside further inland along the higher ground.

I still got good views of the River Thames from the middle of the peninsula and the walking was more interesting with a mix of farmland, small villages, woodland and orchards – I think I had the best of both worlds.

The views across the marshes at Cliffe were breathtaking – this is certainly no place for airport development. I made my way down onto the marshland and around the RSPB reserve with its large lakes and headed for Cliffe Fort which was where I would pick up the shoreline path.

From the Fort I continued along the Saxon Shore Way and made steady progress towards Gravesend. It was such a nice day I continued into Gravesend instead of cutting inland to find the B&B for the night at Worth – in doing so I walked a little further but at just over 18 miles it was a good days walking.

I caught the bus out of Gravesend and made it to the B&B just before dusk.

Center of map

Route

View the map in Google Maps, or here is the Google Earth KML file.

See all the pictures from all the days walking here in this gallery.