I love Christmas but always approach the new year with a certain amount of trepidation. For as long as I can remember I have just felt terribly sad as the old year comes to an end, and having written a diary since the age of seven, the empty pages of a new volume have always filled me with an overwhelming sense of anxiety that something awful is going to happen rather than excitement at all the things that I might achieve. I have only ever been out to celebrate New Years Eve once, way way back in my early 20s, and I absolutely hated it. Being surrounded by all that enforced jollity (as I saw it), was no fun at all, and since then I have always spent it quietly at home, sometimes staying up to watch the fireworks on the television, but as often as not, choosing to go to bed well before midnight.

After a very wet and windy 1st January, where we remained indoors and marked the occasion with my now traditional New Year chestnut and vegetable pie, I needed to get out of the house to take my mind off my doom mongering!

The absolute joy of living where we do is that, not only do we have some wonderful countryside, but we are also surrounded by a whole range of coastline within very easy reach, all of which offers something very different. Cliff top walks (both chalk and sandstone), pebbles, sand, promenades, piers, busy resorts and sleepy towns and villages ….. we are spoilt for choice!

Our first walk of 2025 was on the white cliffs of Dover. As a child, I lived in a village just outside Dover and this was where we always came for our annual Boxing Day walk so it holds a lot of special memories of this time of year. Even though it’s no longer feasible to carve out enough time on Boxing Day to uphold the tradition, it’s a walk that I still like to do at some point over the Christmas period. We caught the bus to Dover, steeled ourselves for the steep climb to the top of the cliffs, and then enjoyed a bracing walk to the South Foreland Lighthouse. On the way back I noticed that you can actually see the sound mirror which I wrote about in my Dover to Deal walk post, that I hadn’t even known existed. I was ridiculously excited to spot it, and if you’re interested, it’s the concrete thing in the middle of the darker green area in the photo below. I thought that you could only get close to it by paying to go for a Fan Bay tunnels tour, but I could see that there was also a path that ran alongside it! Having said that however, the path did look incredibly steep and I am very doubtful that I would ever manage to either hike up or slither down, so now I know that it’s there, I may well just have to admire it from a distance!

The following day we headed to Deal. The weather was glorious, with a blue sky that made you feel that the winter would be so much easier to bear if every day could be like this. We wanted to try The Sicilian Cafe which has been full every time we have looked in, but today we were there in time for elevensies rather than the lunchtime rush, and enjoyed coffee/hot chocolate and delicious pistachio cannoli to fortify us for our walk to Kingsdown and back. It is owned by a Sicilian family and is very authentic. We’ll try something more substantial another time, but in the meantime it made a fitting location to discuss the possible destinations for the trip to Italy that we are hoping to make this summer!

For our final walk we caught the train to Margate, and after breakfast at Wetherspoons, with a view overlooking the main sands, we walked along the coast to Westgate on Sea. The tide was right out and we were able to stroll along the beach, peering into the many exposed rock pools, which made a lovely change, and was a lot more fun than just marching along the promenade.

We made a little detour into the town itself and were pleasantly surprised to find a very quaint and picturesque parade of shops nestled under Victorian canopies. I’d read that Hazel, from the most recent series of Bake Off, provided cakes for a bakery/deli there and so we were interested to have a look. Either she hadn’t been baking that day or they had already sold out, but there wasn’t much left on display in the window and nothing that tempted us. Probably just as well as our cupboards are still full of Christmas goodies, but I’m sure we’ll be back so we’ll try again another day.

These three lovely walks have helped get me through my New Year low, and although I will inevitably face a slump before the winter is through, I am starting to feel more positive about 2025 and what it might have in store. I am excited to continue with my big Kent Coast walk, and we are also planning to actually make a start on the North Downs Way instead of just talking about it – a couple of overnights in Surrey to get us started, and the rest of the route should all be doable as day trips. Then there’s the Saxon Shore Way, the Augustine Camino, the Royal Military Canal Walk to name but a few! Watch this space – and fingers crossed that my energy levels hold out!