Coastal Railtrail - First Ten Days

 

After ten days of walking the Coastal Railtrail.(plus rest days) I wanted to make a few reflections on the walk so far.  I have been writing about each individual walk on our Facebook Group, (and recording gpx files for our coastal pages) but I wanted to make some more general observations.

One thing that has struck me is how different the first sections, along the Thames Estuary, are from what I know is to come.  It is largely flat, all marked by human activity, but not as urbanised as you might imagine, considering its proximity to London.  I have been treated to some fantastic displays of wildlife, particularly birds, which thrive along these shores, despite everything that humans throw at them.

That proximity to London makes it easy to walk here by rail, because the network is so dense, although the frequencies vary considerably.  The line serving Southend-on-Sea was very frequent, whereas here on the North Kent coast, many of the suburban stations only have an hourly service.  The off-peak trains heading out of London always have lots of spare capacity, whilst I often hear people complaining about traffic and parking problems - so that is the challenge for the rail industry.  How do you make use of that spare capacity? Well we can certainly show you, and millions of your potential customers, one way.

So far eight other people have joined for different stretches.  They were all existing Railwalks supporters, apart from Joe from trainsplit.com, whose sponsorship has been very helpful.  The biggest disappointment so far is that none of the traditional local media have picked up on it.  That may be because there are so many sponsored walks for charity.  We have been more successful on social media, which is where we need your help.  Can you spread the word about the fantastic opportunities we are discovering?

The weather has been great so far, but there have been some other problems.  After the longest day, 15 miles, carrying the full pack, I started to suffer the first warning signs of tendinopathy, a new problem for me, but one which apparently you must take seriously.  This has highlighted one of the biggest advantages of long-distance linear walking by rail.  I have been rearranging my accommodation, so from now on, I will only carry that big pack on short days, or rest days, where I am moving on by train.

If you imagine that relying on the train will make you vulnerable to travel disruption, I can say, this is not like commuting.  Only once in 15 journeys (on over 20 trains) has there been any serious disruption, with replacement buses.  But even that was no big deal.  I saw the situation on the app, whilst sipping my coffee, and waited a little longer.  It made no difference to the walk.  There may well be other problems later, but nothing I have ever encountered so far has ever been insurmountable.