Walking east: Margate harbour to the chalk stacks at Botany Bay

This is the walk that explains the Isle of Thanet, and it is easier than it sounds. Five kilometres, about three miles, roughly an hour and a half one way, level and paved almost the whole distance. You start in the middle of a town and you finish at free-standing white sea stacks rising off a sand beach.

The one rule

The bays along this coast cut off from each other on a rising tide.

The clifftop promenade is continuous and always safe. The beaches are not connected to each other except at low water, and the chalk headlands between them are not climbable. If you intend to walk any part of this at sand level rather than on the top, check a tide table before you leave and plan to be on the rising side of the cycle only with an exit in front of you.

The second rule is shorter: the chalk is eroding actively. Do not sit at the foot of the cliffs and do not climb on the stacks.

The route, west to east

Start at the harbour, beside Droit House, the small building at the landward end of the Harbour Arm that was the old harbour master's office.

1. Turner Contemporary, Rendezvous. Five minutes along. The gallery sits on the site of the lodging house Turner used. Even if you are not going in, this is where the promenade turns and the sea view opens out north.
2. RNLI Margate Lifeboat Station. Just past the gallery, where the promenade swings east and the cliff begins.
3. Fort Crescent and the Winter Gardens. The Winter Gardens venue is cut into the cliff below the road here. It has been closed for some time; check its current status rather than assuming.
4. Ethelbert Terrace, Cliftonville. The start of Cliftonville proper, and the point where Margate becomes a different sort of town: bigger Victorian and Edwardian terraces, wider streets, more sky.
5. Walpole Bay and the tidal pool. About halfway. See below.
6. Palm Bay. The widest of the bays, and the assembly point for the Margate Carnival parade each August.
7. Foreness Point. The northernmost point of the walk, where the coast turns south east.
8. Botany Bay. The stacks.

Walpole Bay, and why you should bring a swimsuit

Below the cliffs at Cliftonville there is a very large seawater tidal pool built out into the bay. At high water it vanishes into the sea. As the tide drops it separates out and holds a body of calm, flat seawater long after the North Sea itself has gone somewhere else.

That is what makes it Margate's serious swimming spot rather than Main Sands. No current, no surf, swimmable depth at times when the actual sea is a long walk away across sand. It is free, open at all hours, and used year-round by a committed cold-water crowd who are in it in February.

There is no lifeguard and no supervision of any kind. Swim with somebody.

One counterintuitive point worth knowing: sea temperature around Thanet peaks in early autumn, not midsummer. September is warmer water than July. If you are trying a cold-water swim for the first time, September is the kind month.

Botany Bay

The chalk stacks are the most photographed thing on the Thanet coast and they earn it. They stand free of the cliff on the sand, with caves and arches cut into the cliff face behind them, and at low tide you can walk out among them.

An honest note that most guides skip: Botany Bay is administratively in Broadstairs, not Margate, on a CT10 postcode. Nobody walking the seafront treats it as a different town and the promenade is continuous, but if you are searching for it, or arranging to meet someone there, that is the town name that will come up.

Go at low tide. At high water there is very little beach and the stacks are standing in the sea rather than on sand. And go early or out of season if you can, because for a bay this size it gets genuinely packed on a hot summer weekend.

Getting back

Do not walk it twice unless you want to. The Thanet Loop bus runs frequently along the coast road, roughly parallel to the whole route, linking Margate, Cliftonville, Broadstairs and Ramsgate. You can pick it up at most points along the way, which means you can also bail out at any stage if the weather turns, which on this coast it does.

Walking west to east, as described, keeps the sun behind you in the morning and puts you at the bus end rather than the trudge end. If you would rather have the sunset in front of you, walk it the other way in the late afternoon and finish on the Harbour Arm, which is where the light is best anyway.

Practicalities

Dogs are fine on the promenade; seasonal restrictions apply on some Thanet beaches in summer, so check the council's beach information if that matters to you. Parking at the Margate end is Rendezvous or Trinity Square, both pay-and-display; parking at the Botany Bay end is limited, which is another argument for the bus.

The promenade is level and paved and usable for much of its length, but every descent to a beach is by steps, and surface quality varies once you are east of Cliftonville.