England Coast Path (ECP) now officially called King Charles III England Coast Path.
Having completed all 15 currently open UK National Trails in the summer of 2022, 2023 has seen us start in our quest to walk all 2,700 miles of the England Coast Path.
For a link to the official website click Here.
The walk is split into 5 sections:
ECP first started in 2014. It appears that progress in 9 years has not been particularly speedy. Apologies to Natural England if that’s a little unkind but we find it quite odd that none of the already open 630 miles of the South West Coast Path, from Minehead to Poole is not officially included in the currently open ECP, for example. Perhaps the renaming of the path to King Charles III England Coast Path may speed things along.
Nonetheless, there is plenty to keep us busy for this summer. Being close to our home, we decided to cover the section which provides a continuation of the Thames Path from Woolwich to Grain in the South East. There has been a Thames Path extension in existence for some time to Erith, I think, but this is not, or no longer, mentioned on the National Trails website. So we had a slight advantage in our quest to reach Grain.
As you can imagine, this party of the walk is flat, so enables a good pace. Some people may find it a bit dull but we found the mixture of industrialisation and countryside interesting enough. Walking under the Dartford Crossing bridge, Queen Elizabeth II to give it its royal title, gives a great view of the more productive side of man’s creativity. It’s easy enough to get to and from the walk here as buses and/or trains are always within easy reach to break your walk. As with any coastal walk there can be some lengthy stretches inland where there’s no nearby crossing of other waters available.
Gravesend to Crayford – 14 miles
Our first day took us from Gravesend west to Crayford – a tad under 14 miles. It was our first long distance walk in a while, but we made reasonable progress. We parked near the trail and took a train from Slade Green station (about half a mile away) to Gravesend. Gravesend has a lot of history and is certainly not as grim as the name would imply, at least not for a swift visit. After a quick pint in The Robert Pocock (Wetherspoon, of course!) we headed east. It was a very satisfying feeling to be walking “with purpose” again and a target to aim for.
Allhallows to Gravesend – 20 miles
A few days later we drove over to Rochester to head off to Allhallows. Never heard of it? Us neither. There’s a reasonable bus service to the dead-end town of Grain, which stops in Allhallows. I don’t mean this disrespectfully. It is literally a dead end though. You have to go back out the way you go in. It’s actually the Isle of Grain. We chose Rochester because it has a Spoons! Seriously, because it provided the bus to Allhallows and the train back from Gravesend. Be warned, Rochester is a bit of a ‘mare for free parking. It’s a funny old town, with a lovely high Street and castle but some of the outskirts are a bit ropey. The Path in general, is well signed but, if you’re not an experienced coastal walker don’t be fooled into thinking it’s obvious: always take the route closest to the coast. Not far past Allhallows’ pretty large caravan site, we chose to remain closest to the water’s edge before having to backtrack as it disappeared into the Thames. An extremely well-hidden sign, missed by us, directed the walker further inland to avoid a marshy area.
We didn’t think we had time or, more truthfully, the energy to walk the 25 miles from Grain to Gravesend, settling for 20 miles from Allhallows instead. The way we both felt as we nursed a pint in the Gravesend Spoons whilst waiting for the train back to Rochester proved that to be a wise move. We’ve walked further on hillier terrain and felt less knackered!
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There is a gap between Grain and Iwade, under the bridge to Isle of Sheppey, so we will wait for that to be filled in before we do the short stretch from Allhallows to Grain. To be fair to Natural England it does look a bit tricky to navigate around the River Medway to continue east but 9 years tricky? Iwade to Whitstable is open but then there’s a gap to Ramsgate. After a couple of days continuing on from Minehead to Burnham on Sea in the south west section, we returned closer to home to explore Ramsgate to Camber and Eastbourne to Worthing.
Our choice of direction is governed primarily by the wind direction and the secondary consideration is public transport timings. You may think we are wimps but there’s quite a difference in walking 20 miles with a tailwind assisting us, than battling a strong headwind. We’ve learnt from experience!
GPX
We highly recommend downloading GPX from UK National Trail official website. You do not need any funky equipment to download and follow the GPX – just a simple and FREE app – we use our Samsung mobile and it works just fine.
To find the GPX file go to the trail you are planning to walk and select “Trail Information & Map”.
Click here for the link to the ECP South West as an example.
Scroll down to interactive map and it’s there where you find GPX Download tab. 