The trek inland from Dungeness, around Lydd Ranges, is rather a long one, involving about 6½ miles of road. The first section, from Dungeness to Lydd, is along the Dungeness Road. This is a fast road with no pavement, meaning my wife was on high alert. She dressed my daughter in the brightest pink clothes she could find, so that passing motorists would see her. The clothes were so bright that I was afraid the motorists would be dazzled and plough into all of us.
My wife also tried to dress my son in bright pink clothes. My son, aged 10, has a sensible head on him took the view that it was worth risking life and limb rather than being dressed up in bright pink clothing. He was forced to wear one of my hi-viz jackets instead.
I have to be fair about this – the road is rather fast:
As we walked along we saw evidence of just how dangerous this road is to indigenous mammals. I think this is an American Mink:
Further on we found a fox.
At one point, we found another type of reminder of how dangerous this road could be. Although there were no photographs, notes, or other things which tend to be left at the scene of road accidents, I assume this was one such place.
As we walked along Dungeness Road we had to stop and stand on the verge as cars sped by. Many of them slowed down and moved out into the middle of the road to give us some space. Some didn’t. We waved our thanks to those that did. To those that didn’t, we didn’t. It was two miles before we reached Lydd and some pavement. But we still had another four miles of road walking left to go before we got back to the coast. I wondered if that would be as dangerous.
Points on this part of the walk (copy and paste the co-ordinates into Google Earth):
- Dungeness Road and the start of our walk: N 50° 56.003 E 000° 57.333
- Lydd, and the Safety of Pavement: N 50° 57.082 E 000° 54.708
Walk #42 Statistics (of which this post forms the first part):
- Date of Walk: 5 January 2013
- Walk #41 total distance covered: 12.42 miles
- Coast of Britain Walk Total Distance Covered: 339.59 miles
- CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO INTERACTIVE MAP!!!
The Coastal Path 
“As we walked along we saw evidence of just how dangerous this road is to indigenous mammals. I think this is an American Mink:” – I can see a flaw in your argument 🙂
Bugger!
Indeed, these animals have proved very damaging to the indigenous wildlife especially the water vole that I used to see along the banks of the lake there. To be honest, horrible as it might sound I think one less of these animals is no loss.
This part of your walk didn’t look like very much fun 😦
You need a ‘Like’ button for your comments – I want to ‘Like’ yateschr’s comment 🙂
It wasn’t too bad. Roadkill always holds a certain fascination; quite a lot of the time the animals we find we have never seen before – the mink is a prime example and we had to look it up to identify it. But yes, walking along the shore or over the cliffs is certainly better than a road…
There is no option to like comments I’m afraid. Besides which, you shouldn’t encourage him.