Jane’s Walk 2025 – Day 9

Another lovely day forecast. Today, we are joined by a charming couple from Maidstone who had left home early to join us at our hosts’ house at 8.45. We returned to our endpoint and followed the Faversham Creek to its endpoint, where we crossed over to the other side by the famous local brewery of Shepherd Neame, still an important industry in the town.  Faversham grew in importance in the Middle Ages as a port on what was a large inlet of the Swale. It was also a town beside Watling Street, the important link between Canterbury and London. It first had a charter in Saxon times. Its prosperity grew through shipbuilding and its gunpowder mills. Its oyster beds were famous and its Oyster Company is said to be the oldest in the world. 

We walk along Abbey Street, one of the finest old streets in Kent, with many medieval houses and some fine eighteenth-century buildings as well. After leaving Abbey Street, we return to the creek and negotiate our way around Iron Wharf Boatyard. Here are a number of larger boats; one wonders whether they are able to sail out of the creek even on the highest of tides?

We leave Faversham behind us, one of the most charming of towns, and make our way back towards the marshes and the raised dyke beside the Swale. We are surprised to see a huge solar farm, which must be 3 miles long and at least 1 mile deep along this stretch of the marshes. It has only been recently completed and caused considerable resistance at the time. 

This is a beautiful stretch of the Swale which eventually opens out at the end of Sheppey back to the final stages of the Thames Estuary as it flows out to the North Sea. We enjoy a delicious picnic on the sea wall, brought by Richard who has walked on a footpath through the middle of the solar panels to meet us.

Our final 2.5 miles take us to the edge of Whitstable. We notice that the mud of the banks of the Swale is gradually turning into shale and sand. We stop at the Old Sportsman Inn. It was previously a fisherman’s house surrounded by huts for tanning sails. During the Napoleonic Wars, local smugglers met French prisoners of war here and led them through the reed beds to escape to France. After having a welcome drink at the Old Sportsman Inn we returned back to Faversham.