The England Coast Path, 13/3500, Woolwich to Dartford.

I am writing this from my bed on a dreary Monday morning in February. Every time I think this cold/flu/virus whatever has shifted, even if I have felt good for days, the moment I do something that pushes an edge, it comes back. I have been battling this for nearly a month now. I feel grateful that I don’t have any work today or tomorrow and that most of my work is online these days so it doesn’t have to stop because in this world… I can’t afford to be sick.

My body doesn’t give a shit about that though. It’s in its full chronic illness revolution era right now. So we keep going and taking rest wherever we can. This has been my life for over two years now, this constant negotiation between my body, capitalism and actually wanting to live my life.

It’s been a liminal space, a threshold filled with paradox and complexity. And it’s been shaping me into something different. Like any threshold this has come with a diversity of experiences. Grief, anger, numbness and confusion. I have been shedding an old identity. An identity that treated my body horribly. So part of this has also been a slow shift from hating myself to cultivating compassion for myself to now actually being a little bit in love with myself. It’s a long, slow and necessary process.

Today that looks like cancelling everything and staying in bed without shame.

So that is where I am but that’s not what I came here to write about today.

2025 was a required shrinking of myself. A disappearing into the mulch that I didn’t have much choice in despite how much I fought. This winter has been painful, bleak and also enlightening. I have been in a void, letting go of old versions of me and also reclaiming parts that were lost. It’s been a needed collapse.

And last week as we crossed the threshold of Imbolc, the moment where Spring starts to emerge in the Northern Hemisphere, my inspiration came back. Just a little spark. And not for work (which is my usual default) but for walking, photography and aliveness.

I was in a bookshop last week trying to find some more anatomy books and instead I found a walking guide book by Christopher Goddard, titled; The England Coast Path, Book 1: The South Coast, River Thames to River Exe. My body came alive with a big fat YES.

I have always been a walker. When I was at school I always chose the 6 mile round trip to school everyday over the bus. I loved the repetition, I knew the route intimately and found a lot of joy in the nature along the way. Come rain or shine I would walk to and from school, gladly. I would also disappear into woods for hours, walking miles over the local common and as I got older it didn’t change.

As an adult, I have walked up mountains before dawn for fresh snow, often enjoying the hike just as much as the snowboard down in fresh powder. I walked miles and miles of London when I lived there and in 2020 I walked the South West Coast Path, 630miles in 36 days. In 2023 it was the West Highland Way. With lots of long day adventures in between.

And then life started to collapse.

To be clear, this collapse has been necessary. Alongside big walks and running marathons, I was working myself to death. Running a 6 figure business, alone and an events company. My bodies revolt is valid. It was not sustainable.

Since 2023 I have been retraining and shedding. So walking kind of stopped other than my little daily route along the coast in Folkestone.

And when I saw that guide book I realised how much I have been missing it.

This year, I enter my 40s, the beginning of my middle years.
A threshold. Another one.

And I want to rekindle my love of big walks. I am longing for a pilgrimage again. You see walking for me has always been about connection. To myself and to land. As an Autistic body, I have always needed solitude and long walks are where I am always myself.

The repetitive motion, the moments of joy & awe. I never listen to anything and my imagination comes alive. It’s also how I process a lot of life.

And so I am taking up the journey of a long walk again. But this time it’s going to be oh so very slow. Not like my first time around the SWCP where I was meeting tight deadlines, constantly creating content and doing fundraising at the same time. That first time I was very caught up in how fast I could do it.

For the English & Welsh coastlines, I am giving myself a decade.

This is going to be a slow act of devotion as I walk the edge of this land. This ecotone between sea and earth. This is also about bearing witness. Our coastline is changing rapidly and that will continue as the climate catastrophe unfolds. These coastal areas are also a blend of rich tourism and huge amounts of deprivation & fascism.

This is also a walk of grief.

Giving myself a decade, gives me space, to care for my body along the way and also really meet this edge, to be deeply present with this time and place.

The two coast paths combined is an estimate of 3700miles. I haven’t created a schedule, just a commitment to begin, who knows I may get round Scotland as well but there isn’t a connected path around that part of the UK, so we will see.

This also isn’t going to be dominated by content creation. My phone is staying in my bag, apart from when I need it to navigate. My Fuji camera will come with me as I document this walk and I will write one article on here for each of the sections. I want to share the experience but in a way that’s slow and cultivates a deeper presence.

This documentation is also for me, rather than just you.

I began yesterday with the first 13 miles from Woolwich to Dartford. And below you will find my thoughts and images of this section.

SECTION 1.1 Woolwich to Dartford.

I drove myself to Dartford, in fog and drizzle where I left my car before getting a bus and a train to Woolwich Arsenal. This South East corner of London has been shapeshifting over the years as it becomes more gentrified. There was a bit of a walk to the official start which is next to the Woolwich Foot Tunnel, just behind a derelict swimming pool with a snake slide.

I stood here and watched the ferries for a little while, taking in the city. Several questions alive in me at the beginning of this journey.

As I begin in Woolwich will I make it back here again? And when?
I wonder who I will be then?
How will the land be different?
Will Woolwich still be here?
How will the wider collective be different?
And how will the edge of this land shape me?

As you leave the city behind the England Coast Path is very clearly marked and I was moving alongside Sunday morning runners and strollers. There is both new development and also lots of derelict industrial elements. Nature creeping in through the cracks of concrete. The edge of London meeting the river Thames. A rich threshold.

I feel grateful that the sun was occasionally making an appearance, as you leave Woolwich the landscape gets increasingly more dreary. The tide was out so there was a lot of mud visible which was alive with various seabirds and shopping trolleys.

This actually fascinated me along this section. I saw and photographed dozens of shopping trolleys slowly being absorbed by the mud. Each one probably has it’s own story of how it got there but also I would imagine some common themes of young or drunk people bored and trying to find entertainment where they can.

There is also so much rubbish. I cried quite a few times.

As you edge out of the city, you come to the sewage works. Both the old one that has been made into a museum and the new one. The smell is awful for quite a long time. And I felt a lot watching the ‘treated’ water pumping back into the estuary. This is an edge on all levels. I thought a lot about how much we don’t consider our shit. Vanessa Machado de Oliveira writes a whole chapter about this in her book Hospicing Modernity which has impacted me greatly. I was thinking about this paragraph as I walked along the concrete path to the sounds and smells of sewage…

‘‘Modernity is fixated on a project of perfect form, efficient functionality and maximum regulation, including sanitary regulation. The intention is to control nature and to achieve timeless permanence — to defeat decomposition and death. In order to do that, modernity needs to hide the shit. Flush toilets are a great way of doing that. Flush toilets have been designed to sanitise our metabolic reality. We sit comfortably, dump our shit in clear water and with a magic flush, the shit disappears; it is taken “away” forever. However, if we can pause for a second our sense of separability inherited from modernity, in order to see the planet as a dynamic metabolism, we may realise that there is no “away”: our shit goes somewhere even if we don’t know exactly where or face any responsibility for it.”

And this became all I thought about as I walked.

As I walked and faced the shit of this liminal space.

For the next ten miles I was faced with our waste.

Once I got to the sewage works, the atmosphere of the walk changed. I saw less and less people apart from the occasional man who would come up behind me on a bike. I started to get increasingly tense and a vigilance came over me. Thoughts of winding up with the shopping trolleys were crossing my mind and I felt quite trapped by the river on my left and endless metal fence on my right.

After the sewage works I walked past all the delivery warehouses and lorries for Lidl & Tescos. This was contrasted with continuous derelict infrastructure in the Thames. Everywhere, nature was trying to break through the cracks.

On the approach to Erith, the shopping trolleys increased along with the England flags and Union Jacks, all starting to look worn and old. Erith used to be in Kent but in 1965 it was absorbed by London as part of the borough of Bexleyheath. It has an interesting history, including a stint as a pleasure resort in the Victorian times. I won’t lie, I felt unsafe here as well as sad. I was approached by a couple of drunk men asking if I was going to the marshes, so I moved on quickly, with my heart racing a little.

When I did get to the marshes which take you down the River Darent to Dartford I had the company of lots of men & boys on loud motorbikes and quad bikes for a while. I stopped to eat my sandwiches on a log by the water, surrounded by rubbish. At this stage I was starting to feel very tired and also very low.

This whole area seems ignored and to be the rubbish dump for London.

And I say this literally as for the next mile I was walking alongside the River Darent and it’s diversity of bird life and then huge rubbish dumps.

Bearing witness to the shit indeed.

Piles of cars, metals, plastics, cardboard and goodness knows what else.

This is the honesty that lives on the edges of modernity. The harms caused by capitalism, consumption, extraction and gentrification. And this where fascism takes hold in people who are discarded and left with the rubbish in these liminal places.

At this point my feet & hips were hurting, I was realising that my walking boots were a mistake for this much concrete. And my heart was hurting.

By the time I got back to my car, I was exhausted, my throat was feeling dry despite lots of water and I was definitely reshaped by this first 13miles. (Actually 16miles with walking to the beginning point and then back to my car)

This was a walk in a place where tide meets concrete, this was an invitation to stay with and bear witness to the harm, the beauty, the grief and the memory held in mud.

The scars of industry, capitalism and extraction weeping with flags, sewage, shopping trolleys and plastic. And yet alongside the sound of motorbikes is the songs of birds, beds of reeds and mosses reclaiming the edges.

If I am well enough, I am hoping to do the next section next weekend. More concrete and industry as I walk under the Dartford crossing to Gravesend.

While I am not making this a sponsored walk, if you have enjoyed this writing and my images please consider sharing funds with families in Gaza.

For nearly two years, a community of us have been supporting several families through the fund stewarded by Kayt @citythrifter. This money has been and will continue to be a lifeline and hopefully part of efforts for these families to be able to rebuild their lives. So if you feel called to help, this is a great way. Even if it’s the smallest amount, it all adds up. You can also share the fundraiser from Kayt’s Instagram feed.

You can share funds via her paypal which is here https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/Kaytmendies and she posts receipts to her Instagram every Sunday.