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St Margaret’s Bay, seen from the path leading back to Langdon Cliffs (Walk 40)

Separating the Isle of Sheppey from mainland Kent, the Swale is edged on both shores with mudflat and marshland loud with wildfowl, while the River Wantsum (which until the Middle Ages was as wide as the Swale and, linked with the Stour, helped make Thanet an island) is now a minor stream, beside which ploughs turn the soil where ships once sailed. The White Cliffs of Dover remain white because they’re crumbling; were they not they’d be green like the band of grassed-over cliffs at Stone-in-Oxney. Stone, of course, is now marooned from the sea by the expanse of Romney Marsh, but look at the map and allow imagination to roll back the centuries, and you’ll see how things once were. Some of the walks in this book can bring history alive if you understand the clues, and those that follow the coastline as it is now – near Leysdown on Sheppey, for example, or routes near Newington, Faversham, Sandwich and Dover – illustrate the diverse nature of coastal scenery. The walk on Chislet Marshes from St Nicholas at Wade, and that which includes Appledore and Stone-in-Oxney, take footpaths where a few centuries ago it would have been necessary to travel by boat.