In early spring 2025 I decided on the Kent coast as a new project.
The England Coast Path is largely open in the county, save for annoying fragments east of the Medway and on the Isle of Sheppey. The rail links from Stratford International means that accessibility from my home in Essex is no great problem.
For the purpose of this page, we’re talking historic Kent, so that it’s legit to start where the ECP starts, at Woolwich. From here I’ve passed through the Medway towns and reached Rainham. You’ll find accounts of the Swale to Margate and Margate to Dover sections here too.
Faversham Creek
The ECP isn’t the first coast path in Kent. That honour goes to the Saxon Shore Way, which runs from Gravesend and across the county boundary to Hastings. But the SSW follows, as you might expect, the coast as it was in Saxon times, and that is often very different to the shoreline now. The principal differences are the Hoo Marshes, Grain peninsula, the exclusion of Thanet – then, very much an offshore island – and west of Dover, by reason of the later drainage of Romney Marsh.