After almost missing my train because there was a queue at the one counter that was open and the ticket machine didn’t recognise Birchington as a destination (the chap on the barrier told me that this was a common problem as I speedily tried to purchase a ticket online), I arrived in Margate where the strong smell of the sea assailed my nostrils the minute I stepped onto the platform. The station is just set back a little from the beach and the sands were pristine, ready for a new day.

I had unfinished business with a Chelsea bun, so set off in the opposite direction from where I should have been going, back along the sea front and towards the Old Town.

It was only just opening time but there was already a queue at Rise and Bun, and in my turn I purchased not one but two buns – biscoff and tiramisu – as my daughter was due home from her travels that evening and I thought we could try a bit if each and compare. The box went into the bottom of my bag and it wasn’t coming out again until I got home!

Back along the seafront. The gentrification of Margate Old Town has its benefits and the influx of hipster London day trippers is obviously good for the town’s economy, but overall I think I prefer the more authentic seaside experience that you find on the sea front.

During the summer there is an open top bus service that runs between Ramsgate and Minnis Bay (which is just a little bit further on than where I was heading today). I could have hopped on and covered the distance in a flash, but where would be the fun in that!

Just across the road from the station, you can find the Nayland Rock Shelter, a Victorian shelter famous for the fact that TS Eliot, whilst convalescing in the town for nervous exhaustion in 1921, wrote part of The Waste Land as he sat in it.

“On Margate Sands.

I can connect

Nothing with nothing.

The broken fingernails of dirty hands.

My people humble people who expect

Nothing.”

It’s recently been renovated and is a good place to sit and contemplate.

There’s a second tidal pool on the beach at this end making Margate the only town in England to have two! (The other one is at Walpole Bay which I passed on my previous walk.) Both were built in 1937 when sea swimming was enjoying a revival.

Past the sadly decaying splendour of the Victorian Nayland Rock Hotel (used as a filming location in the final series of Killing Eve), past an adventure golf course, and into Westbrook Bay.

If you look carefully, tucked behind some new build holiday lets, you can just spot the Greek style portico of what was once the Royal Sea Bathing Hospital. This was founded in 1791 by a Quaker physician, Dr John Coakley Lettsom, for the treatment of the scrofulous poor of London, and was pioneering in its focus on the benefits of fresh air, sunshine and sea bathing. As the rates of TB declined, it became a specialist orthopaedic hospital in around 1900 (although it continued to treat TB patients until the early 1950s), and in fact I remember my dad going there for knee surgery in the late 80s/early 90s. (I didn’t know at the time that it was their specialism and always thought it was rather random.) The hospital closed in 1996 and has now been converted into apartments.

Westbrook Bay, like so many of the others, was lined with beach huts that are available to hire. Some of them are positioned right on the sand, and I noticed that theses ones were all chained to the promenade, presumably to prevent them being blown or washed away in bad weather.

The beach hits that were set back a little seem less vulnerable, and looking at the people sitting outside them, my mind started running away with the idea of how I might hire a hut for a week each summer once I have grandchildren, so that the whole family can get together to enjoy it. (They might not enjoy it at all but I would, and I didn’t want the fact that they might not want to come to spoil my daydreaming!) This then made me think of The Fortnight in September by RC Sheriff, one of my very favourite books, where the hiring of the right beach hut by the Steven’s family for their annual holiday in Bognor, is a moment filled with excitement and anticipation that might make or break their stay.

As I walked along, musing on beach huts, I suddenly noticed that Reculver Towers had just come into view on the far horizon. In fact it came in and out of view several times over the course of the morning, but will feature much more prominently in the next leg of my Kent coast walk. (And goodness, what a lot of seaweed!)

As you get to St Mildred’s Bay, you can see more of the extensive chalk reefs that stretch along the coastline here. Apparently Thanet has the second largest unbroken stretch of chalk reef in the UK (the longest is in Norfolk in case you’re interested), providing a valuable habitat to a range of marine life.

There are some beautifully painted beach huts here. I especially like the Marmite one, as I love both Marmite and the 100% Vitamin Sea sentiment,

but there’s no denying that fish and chips at the seaside is a British institution!

Just a little bit further and there are a couple of cafes/restaurants that sit on the prom – a convenient place for me to take a break as it was roughly half way.

I stopped at the St Mildred’s Bay cafe for an iced mocha, which was very nice when it finally arrived. It took about twenty minutes and I wasn’t sure whether they had forgotten about me, couldn’t see me sitting on the bench in front of the terrace, were super busy, or whether I had misheard what the waitress said when I went inside to order, and I’d been supposed to wait for it to be made and take it with me! I was in no rush though, and happily sat in the sunshine reading my book.

As I continued walking around the bay, I looked back at the great expanse of sand, saw other people strolling along down there, and suddenly wondered why I had stuck to the prom and not taken advantage of the low tide to walk on the beach for a change myself.

But it was too late, I’d missed my chance. The next set of steps down to the beach ended in a pool of water,

and immediately after that, the position of the coastline meant that the sea came right up to the sea wall so I wouldn’t have been able to get round.

Oh look, there’s Reculver Towers again.

And so on to West Bay. More chalk reef and more beach huts.

Looking back (I seemed to have been doing quite a lot of that) you can see that there’s another cafe here (The West Bay Cafe and Beach Bar!) where we enjoyed an al fresco breakfast last summer, but it was good to try somewhere new – even if it had taken twenty minutes to get a drink!

And more chalk reefs.. It really is a very wiggly coastline. One minute there’s lots of sand, and the next the tide is high.

I had been busy pondering on whether I was likely to make it to Birchington in half an hour for an easier train connection when AAAAhhh! I thought that this walk was going to be a straight forward ‘all the way along the prom’ walk that I’d done before, and suddenly here were railings stopping me from going any further. At this point, I realised that I had never actually walked this short section before, as the last time we went to West Bay, we walked from Margate and back again, and when I’ve walked from Birchington, I’ve always gone in the other direction towards Herne Bay. This was an unknown quantity.

No choice but to re-trace my steps, looking for a way around the cliff. There was absolutely no way that I was going to make that train!

Back in West Bay, at last I spotted the stairs that would take me up onto the cliff top. I wondered what the sign said. Had I been too busy thinking my own thoughts and not noticed that I was heading towards a dead end?

To be honest, even if I had seen it earlier I would have assumed that it was for vehicles and not walkers, and not taken any notice.

So along the cliff top I went, looking down at the path I had previously taken and feeling a bit cross.

There was a golf course across the road, and as there were golfers on the tee, I thought that I’d better have my wits about me this time. I didn’t want a blow to the head as well. There were no shouts of fore, and no errant balls though, I am pleased to report.

Here comes the last bay of the day – Epple Bay.

I found a path leading back down to the beach

and took some rusty steps back down to where the prom re-started. (If I had taken the cobbled slope a bit further along then I would have seen historic alcoves built into the walls to allow pedestrians to make room back when boats and seaweed wagons were pulled up and down the slope by hand. The building on the side of the cliff looks like some kind of fortification, but I haven’t been able to find anything out about it, so maybe it is purely for sea rather than military defence!

Another looking back shot, showing the stretch of cliff between West Bay and Epple Bay that had caused the obstruction.

Maybe it was because I was tired but this section was most definitely not my favourite. I appreciate that sea defences are important in the fight against coastal erosion, but it was just unrelentingly grey concrete everywhere – and even the cliffs were off-colour

There was a derelict building precariously perched mid cliff that I wondered about

and lots of blocked up tunnels and doorways – maybe once access points to get from the houses up above down to the beach?

And amidst all the spray can graffiti, I was mildly amused by the fact that somebody had gone to the trouble to write insults in chalk about the same boy (mostly that he was a fart!!), at regular intervals all the way from Margate to here! I admired their perseverance. Who says that the youth of today don’t get out into the fresh air!

At Beresford Gap I said goodbye to the sea for the day and headed to the train station

passing a very cool Summer of Love hippy post box topper on the way.

I would never have made it to the station in thirty minutes as, even if I hadn’t had to back track, it was further than I thought, but of course it was sod’s law that on arrival I discovered that the next train was going to be delayed and wouldn’t arrive until 3 pm. The whole walk had taken much longer than I had anticipated and, unlike last time, I had not come prepared and had had nothing to eat. I was too tired and light headed to walk to the High Street to pick up something there, and resisted the urge to start on the Chelsea buns! However, it gave me plenty of time to appreciate the lovely station master’s house on the opposite platform (and I will always make sure that I have a snack in my bag in future!).

(Verdict on the buns from later that evening – I was very impressed. The buns were really soft and fluffy, and although I’m not really a fan of frosting – which makes me wonder why I had wanted to try them in the first place – they weren’t nearly as sweet as I was expecting, and tasted delicious. I will definitely be going back again to try some more flavours.)

Read my Kent Coast Walk Part 11: Broadstairs to Margate here