Jane’s Walk 2025 – Day 10

Back to the Old Sportsman Inn where we meet up with Camilla who works for our Charity ZANE. Camilla, who lives in Whitstable, knows this area well so I can relax and not be concerned about reading maps, which is a relief. Infact it is an easy route today as we keep to the sea wall, through Seasalt, Whitstable and ending up at Herne Bay.

Apparently in Roman times the coastline stretched a mile further out. Storms and tide eroded it and the fact that the town of Whitstable is still standing is thanks to its sea walls and sluices: the first being built in 1494, reinforced in 1798 and again in 1806.

We walk through Seasalt named because in Saxon times it had a flourishing trade exporting salt to France and other countries further north. We walk beside a number of brightly coloured beach huts, which Camilla tells me go for exorbitant prices of between £50–60k.

We pass the rather battered looking Old Neptune Inn standing on the beach. Much battered by storms and floods it has been an ale house for two hundred years having been a fisherman’s cottage before that.

We pass the Royal Native Oyster Store, which used to store the famous Whitstable oysters for the London market. Oysters continue to provide a successful business for the Green family who own most of the oyster beds in this area.

We then walk into Whitstable crossing over the Canterbury Whitstable line which is affectionately known as the ‘Crab and Winkle line’ and was the first line in 1830 ever to operate fully under steam power.

We then walk along the backs of at least about 120 more rather smaller beach huts, a number for sale, and then to the inner harbour, built in 1832 which used to import coal and was linked to the railway. Now the harbour shelters a small inshore fishing fleet.

Back to the seafront we walk past a number of fine seafronted houses and we are then picked up by Richard who takes us to an excellent fish restaurant where Tom indulges himself with half a dozen oysters and I have some excellent prawns.

After lunch we make good progress to Herne Bay, which grew up in the nineteenth century as a seaside resort complete with, at the time, the longest pier in Britain of over a mile long.

Sadly in 1979 it was destroyed in a storm leaving the end tower on its own out to sea and a smaller section still intact by the beach.

There are the usual amusement arcades, ice cream parlours, and shops selling beach items all along the central parade, including a bandstand and rather fine clock tower which commemorates the dead during the Crimean war and according to the plaque was the first freestanding clock ever to be built.

Here too is a rather fine life-size statue of Amy Johnson whose plane came down in the sea near here during World War 2 and had won many solo flying records in the past.

Here we end our walk and enjoy excellent ice creams as a reward.