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We
parked at our destination, Rainham station, and took the train back to Rochester. Less than quarter of an hour later we were
leaving Rochester
station. As we had only reached the
Strood end of the Medway road bridge yesterday, we walked back to the Rochester end along the
High Street, a pleasant walk through the old part of town that included both Cathedral
and Castle. Between the two was an old
tree (18th century?) of Catalpa,
known as the Rochester
Catalpa, for which there is a
preservation appeal. Various boughs
are already being propped up. Returning
to the station we had to take the busy main road bordering the wharves, with
no riverside walks except where there were new housing developments or office
blocks. We were soon in Chatham, which merges into Rochester. The Medway Towns – Strood, Rochester,
Chatham and Gillingham
– are all now one giant metropolis. Here
we could leave the streets to walk beside the water, as we turned north
following the bend in the river, through a small park, and a pleasant walk in
front of council offices. We soon
enough had to return to the trunk road, but there was adequate pavement and
the pedestrian route to St Mary’s Island was
well signed past Chatham Historic Dockyard. (The Saxon Shore Way here diverges through
the council estates of Gillingham.) We crossed the bridge on to the “island”
(actually the tip of a peninsula virtually cut off by three artificial
basins, one of which is a marina). A
promised river-side walk on the west shore, reached through the Milton
Keynes-like estates, was fenced off for further house-building, so we
returned, past the school, via a park-like hill path to the bridge. By now we still had fewer than a score of
natural history records, although we saw our first brimstone of the holiday
and a cormorant on a buoy in one of the basins. Having crossed the bridge we turned east and
found a seat facing the cormorant’s basin to have our lunch in the sun, with
sea pearlwort in the cracks of the paving. This area, almost deserted, had been created
for new offices that were still mostly empty. We returned to the roundabout where the road
through the Medway Tunnel emerges and found a pedestrian and cycle way beside
it. After lots of boatyards, the
entrance of The Strand Leisure Park brought relief and an end to most of the
urban street-walking. We could get a
welcome ice-cream here on a scorching July-like day, among many families
enjoying the escape from nearby Gillingham,
and thereafter would more or less remain beside the river marshes, except for
one intruding factory. As we
approached Riverside
Country Park,
another popular destination attracting many people even on a Friday, the
natural history interest increased, although still a highly controlled
environment. We took a detour up a
narrow causeway to Horrid
Island, popular with
tourists. There were decent views from
the end across the Medway, especially of Kingsnorth Power Station! After this we noticed grass vetchling,
hiding among common vetch but just distinguishable by its different shade of
red, plus star-of-Bethlehem and three-cornered leek. On the mud most of the birds were
black-headed gulls, and we saw only one pair each of herring and black-backed
gulls all day. There were a few
shelduck and oystercatchers, and lots of starlings. We walked round Bloors Wharf,
the remains of a former clay-digging industry, to reach the peninsula tipped
by Motney Hill. Beside the road up the
west side, we first saw a garden warbler singing on a telegraph wire, and
then immediately noticed a pair of turtle doves, a very exciting sight. Apart
from their beautiful plumage, the male in its display flight spread out its
tail, which was black underneath bordered by a wide band of white. It was also singing its chugging notes that
we heard in several places on this peninsula, which must have hosted several
pairs. At the north end of the road we
descended to a shore with two collectors of cockles, the only shell we
recorded here. We walked further up
the beach as it changed from stony to sandy, but eventually found the pong of
the sewage works occupying the tip of the peninsula overpowering and returned
on a path above the beach, past bugloss in flower, to the road that crossed
to the east side of the peninsula. We
walked the embankment down this side, behind more wharves, and took a path
through a large orchard to the road and a kilometre walk to Rainham Station. Most of the way there were hawthorn bushes
in full flower, appropriate for may/May, some looking as if covered with
snow, the flowers obscuring all the leaves.
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Brimstone
Grass
vetchling
Hawthorn
in full flower
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Trunk
of old Catalpa in front of Rochester Cathedral
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Cycles
in mud below bridge in
View
across Medway from
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