Jane’s Walk 2025 – Day 5
The sun is shining this morning with no sign of rain for the rest of the day. It is good to discard our walking gear and be back in T-shirts.
The walk looks an easy one through farmland which started well but then deteriorated rapidly. The first problem was as soon as we left the road out of the village we were confronted with a newly ploughed field and no defined footpath across the middle. Farmers have 2 weeks after ploughing to put back their footpath which had not yet happened. This meant a rather torturous trip around the edge. Things deteriorated further. The local authority had been very diligent about their signage and putting in swing gates but unfortunately the farmers had ignored the routes across their land.
Oil seed rape fields, unharvested, were impossible to cross, other fields were poor quality scrub with the paths full of nettles and brambles. Moses really struggled to get through and I was concerned about his paws being torn by their thorns. At last we come out the other side between 2 small ponds. One has a number of fish; we think were carp, swimming along the surface of the water with their backs visible. We think they must be catching flies but are not sure.
We meet an old local chap with his ancient tractor harrowing his field. He is very despondent about the state of the country and also annoyed that the new owner of the next door farm was turning 200 acres into solar panels. I told him he is lucky as we have an application for 2500 acres round us at Blenheim.
After crossing a busy narrow road we are back on the shoreline and it is a relief to be back walking on the embankment. Moses has a much needed swim although the edge of the water is very brackish. The embankment here is covered with rabbit holes and Moses gets very excited as there are a number of healthy bunnies around. I had forgotten what damage rabbits en masse can do to a bank and the embankment was badly eroded along the way. Sadly further along we came across a number of sick rabbits with myxomatosis, so it is still around.
In the distance we could see one of the Thames Barges that we had seen last night, in full sail, it was an impressive sight. This whole place is a bird conservation area and I am frustrated that we don’t have our binoculars with us. There are a number of ducks and geese in the many inland pools and partridge in the scrub land above sea level.
We stop for a picnic lunch in this rather barren countryside and are shocked to see a number of dead fish in one of the inlets. Richard says this is probably due to the fact that the hot dry summer has deoxygenated the water.
Our walk ends between road bridges linking the Island of Sheppey to the mainland.
