Ferry Marshes

21st March 2026.

5.4miles.

I grew up on the north-Kent coast so have always felt very at home with the marshes which stretch across forming the Swale and Medway estuaries. This is an area of Charles Dickens Great Expectations, where you expect Magwitch to crawl out from behind a church grave. My book Grid 178 is based on the area.

The walk is part of the Saxon Shore Line and also the King Charles III Coastal Walk, and it was an easy walk along the top of the dykes.

I planned a walk yesterday across the Ferry Marshes at sun rise, getting up at 3am and getting down there just as the darkness was receding. It was cold, the ground wet with dew but the dawning light was stunning. All the sounds were the distant humming of the industry and docks; and migrating and awakening birds. I went with two friends, had a picnic breakfast and didn’t see any other person.

We set out beneath the looming spans of the Swale Estuary bridges, as morning light began to rise in the east over the Isle of Sheppey. There was an irony to our northward walk along Horse Reach of the Swale—we were walking away from the dawn, compelled to keep turning back to catch each shifting hue and new variation of colour.

My main aim of the walk was to take some photos of pylons for my future book on these iconic structures, and across the marshes marched electrical cables stretching from Ridham Docks towards the towering cranes, smoking chimneys and bulbous tanks of Grain. The mudflats reflected the morning light; the pools of marshland water reflecting the pylons.

To the western side on Bedlams Bottom lay an old barge graveyard, beached timber and metal boats onto the shore. After the earlier brighter sun rise, a sea mist rolled in and blanketed the landscape creating a ghostly post-apocalyptic landscape with the broken boats looking like sea monsters.

I love a marsh.