RAMBLE AT YALDING & EAST PECKHAM BY THE MEDWAY RIVER

On Sunday 21st September 2003, we were lucky to have such a lovely warm morning with sunshine. It was getting hot later on especially for late September! There were 21 adults, five children and 4 dogs turned up for the ramble. I was pleased to have more people compared to last time at Penhurst.

Some people arrived at Yalding early at 9.30am for breakfast at the “Tea Island” café, which was nice for them. Most people arrived around 10.30am for tea or coffee at the café before departing for the walk at 11.00am. I was waiting at the car park for three more people to arrive but at 11.10am I gave up. By the time I walked back to the group Peter and Louise turned up late. They were lucky to meet us just in time before we left at 11.15am.

We began to walk on the footpath by the river. We saw many people fishing, swans and ducks. We couldn’t talk to each other due to narrow path! When we arrived at an open field, we caught up with chatting before the narrow footpath began again. It was pleasant walking under trees and along beside the river. There were lots of large funguses near the trees. We went under a railway bridge and over large log. We continued to walk, crossing over a road until we reached the weir locks after two miles.

We were lucky enough to arrive in time to watch a boat to go through the weir locks. Some of us thought one lock had to open first before the boat go in but no! Bottom lock had to release water until it came to certain level before the lock could open to let the boat come in. The top lock released water into the bottom lock until it filled to the required level before the top lock could open and then the boat could go out free onto the higher level of the river. It took about 30 minutes to sort out with these two locks. We also found it interesting to watch five canoes on the high level river come to a small dam with a narrow trench at left hand side for the water to run down into the lower river at about twenty five feet below. All of the canoes managed to go down that running water into lower river. It was a fantastic sight! After 40 minutes everyone was feeling the heat and humidity, so we felt we had had enough and we walked back to Yalding. When we arrived at Yalding, we saw lots of boats and yachts left at boat moorings.

We couldn’t wait to have drinks so we walked quickly to a lovely old pub and had a nice cold beer and some of us had a dinner and burette as well with a nice view of the river. We really thought of a game to play later but we decided not to due to hot weather. Luckily enough all of the children had enjoyed themselves with the river. It was a brilliant day for all of us, the ramblers.

Richard Monk, Ramble Leader.