It is always good to have a definite objective in mind at the start of a long walk and, on a recent 12-mile circular walk from Faversham that objective was The Sportsman pub at Seasalter.  I hadn’t been to The Sportsman for years; decades.  Little did I know it, but that absence was going to prove my undoing.

I set out from Faversham early on a wet summer morning.  I planned to walk to Seasalter by the countryside route via Goodnestone, arriving at the pub in good time for lunch and a well-deserved pint, and then returning via the footpath, which hugs the estuary and Faversham Creek.

It did not take long to leave the town of Faversham behind and hit open fields.  Anticipating a steady drizzle to be my own companion, it came as something of a surprise to encounter a veritable crowd in the ploughed field ahead.  Detectorists, undeterred by the damp conditions.  There were more than thirty of them.  For some reason, I found their silent sweepings slightly sinister that wet morning––rather more AntiquiSearchers than DMDC.  I recalled the advice of Andy and Lance from Detectorists and, as a rambler in their territory, I refrained from asking if they had found any gold; in fact, I gave them a wide berth altogether, whilst still surreptitiously surveying the ploughed earth beneath my walking boots for the merest glint of Anglo Saxon treasure.

I crossed the railway line––always an event, which provokes a slight thrill––to be propelled into a world of vast polytunnels and intensive farming.  The crop was strawberries; and a farm, which yields over 10 tonnes of the fruit each day.  I could have picked a couple of pounds myself but I resist, mindful of building up an appetite for the lunch at The Sportsman ahead.

I look into the fine Norman churches at both Goodnestone and Graveney, without taking in anything about their histories and, in a brief moment of sunshine, cross fields of golden barley, flecked with red poppies.  But, by the time that the short line of beach huts at Seasalter has become the dominant feature on the horizon, the rain has started to fall again in earnest and I am feeling hungry and rather dispirited.  The Sportsman appears as a welcome sanctuary to a tired walker.

However, a notice on the door of the pub gives warning of a possible problem: FULLY BOOKED.  Fully booked?  This is not The Sportsman that I remember with its door always open to any passing itinerant.  Times change.  My muddy, bedraggled figure is greeted at the door with a critically appraising look and a:

“Do you have a reservation?”

“No,” I am obliged to confess, as the rain continues to fall on me.

“I’m very sorry, but we are fully booked for today’s five-course taster-menu.”

Five-course taster-menu?  Visions of a sustaining pork pie are quickly vanishing. 

While I continue to stand in the cold, the occupants of a large BMW are hastily ushered past me into the warmth and shelter beyond; there is little need to ask if they have a reservation.

“Can I just get a drink?” I persist.

In the end, I think that it must have been my rain-soaked forlorn appearance, which swung it; that or a vestigial throwback to the hospitality of The Sportsman of old, which was renowned as a walker’s pub.  A chair was brought out to me in the conservatory; a pint of Whitstable Bay beer put in front of me.  I felt rather like the dog being served a bowl of water, but I was grateful for the courtesy extended.

From inside the pub, enticing snippets of conversation, richly voiced, like a bevy of Rowley Birkins, reached my ears: “Blah, blah…  particularly fine sausages… blah, blah.”

I felt a sense of disappointment about the change, which had overtaken a pub that I had known of old, but it was a change that was perhaps inevitable.  Adapt or go under.  The simple fact was that I had been a solitary walker on my footpath that day; my custom alone would not have sustained a viable business model.  In comparison, the BMWs and Mercedes were myriad; the five-course taster-menu was clearly popular, just to a different clientele from the walkers of old.  I wondered if I would ever be back again?  Probably not, unless I was driven there in an expensive car.

Finishing my drink, I ventured into the pub’s toilets, where I was amused to encounter an embarrassed five-courser sticking out her bum to dry the seat of her designer white jeans at the hot air dryer.  Even the five-coursers were not completely immune from the weather.

The rain had subsided by the time that I returned to my route, following the easily-navigable coastal path of the Saxon Shore Way.  I nibbled a bag of crisps––not the pork pie that I had dreamed about, but good-enough for a hungry rambler.  I paused briefly to photograph a curlew––there had been an item on the local news only that morning saying that their numbers were falling.  I hoped to spot an avocet, but no such luck.

Storm clouds threatened on the horizon, but for the time being they passed me by.  An old brown-sailed barge kept me company, plying a route in the same direction, through the mudflats and wind farms of the estuary.  Opposite from the sea, longhorn cattle and marsh sheep––the rams rather sinister-looking with their three horns––had their heads down, feasting rather more abundantly than had I.

Turning at Faversham Creek, I was suddenly conscious that the tall, distinctive spire of St Mary of Charity Church in Faversham still appeared a long way distant across the flats and creeks––a helluva long way distant––and I picked up my pace, keen to get back to the town by mid-afternoon.  However, as is often the case, distances proved deceptive, and it was not long before the familiar sight of the Oyster Bay House on Standard Quay was ahead of me, signalling the end of my walk and, just around the corner, the even more welcome sight of The Anchor and, what might just be, the most welcome plate of fish and chips in the world.

© E. C. Glendenny

E. C. Glendenny builds up an appetite walking.