Exploring Kent’s wild side on the Isle of Sheppey

Just nine miles by five miles, the Isle of Sheppey looms large on the horizon of my childhood on the north Kent coast. Described in one prominent travel guide book as a “flat clump of marshy land”, visiting never really appealed until this year, when ferreting out wild places became so much more important to our mental health.  

To get there, I take the old road beneath the arc of the Sheppey Crossing, the Kingsferry Bridge, which has been here in various guises since 1860. The short crossing over the Swale, a tidal channel of the Thames Estuary connecting Sheppey with the mainland, is more exciting than it has any right to be: nearly a year of travel restrictions make my heart leap as I cross to somewhere new. An actual, real getaway island.

My first stop is Elmley National Nature Reserve (pre-booking only), where gatekeeper Mick waves me through the electric gate. From there, a two-mile potholed track unfurls across a wet and flat grassy landscape towards a distant treeline. Stock-still cows dot the roadside and I spot a company of widgeons (colourful, medium-sized ducks) wheeling in the distance.  

I park at Kings Hill Farm where Gareth strides out to meet me. Elmley is a family-run business and Gareth is married to Georgina, whose conservationist parents bought the land for farming back in the 1970s. We walk together along the reserve footpath, past the farmhouse and glass-fronted shepherds’ huts that stand empty for the foreseeable future, towards the viewing screen on the Swale. It’s a mild day and the wide-open sky injects a sense of irrepressible freedom.

“Mid-summer and mid-winter are completely opposite,” Gareth tells me. “In mid-summer, it’s like an African savannah; the grass is about knee high, you’ve got livestock roaming through it and it’s all golden colours. In mid-winter, it’s green and all these dark channels are full of water. Elmley becomes a lake with islands of grass rather than grass with ribbons of water.”

Wading birds in Britain have declined by 90 per cent in the last 35 years, so the conservation efforts at Elmley are vital. Here, in the winter months, wildfowl and waders return from Scandinavia, the Arctic, Russia and Iceland, including tens of thousands of lapwings, golden plovers, teals and widgeons. It’s a place of beauty, off grid and wild, but Sheppey’s industry is ever present, with smoke and steam belching from the factories behind. As the white tail of a hare flashes across the fields and a kestrel hovers above, I think to myself that this encroachment makes the reserve feel even more precious.

But what of the rest of Sheppey? Besides sprawling holiday parks and a trio of prisons, there are walking and cycle routes, vast beaches and plenty of wide open green spaces. The drive to the sand-shell beach at Leysdown-on-Sea is surprisingly hilly, and the silver glimmer of the Swale to the south keeps me company (as does the driver riding bumper-to-bumper behind me). 

If you’ve got two wheels and time on your hands, the Isle of Harty circular cycle route, taking roughly an hour, criss-crosses the farmland in this remote corner of Sheppey; in a car, beyond the caravans and convenience stores at Leysdown, the road skirts the coast towards a naturist beach and the lonely gated hamlet of Shellness. Along this same bumpy track lies Swale National Nature Reserve, where I walk the isolated seawall in peace. 

The mudflats and saltmarsh of this reserve are accessible from the south too, from Harty and its 18th-century Ferry House Inn (which is, sadly, closed for now) and the 12th-century St Thomas the Apostle Church (said to be the most remote church in Kent). It’s at the Harty end that I can make out the black outline of seals hauled up on Horseshoe Sands.  

Back at Leysdown, and it’s only a five-minute drive to Warden and its soft brown crumbling cliffs. At low tide – the only time the beach at Warden Point can be explored – I can see the remains of a gun battery that’s slid down the cliff to an unceremonious facedown end. The beach is slick and sticky underfoot and what looks like rock turns out to be soft clay. 

In fact, London Clay reveals fossils dating from the Eocene period, roughly 50 million years ago, and is the main reason this place is visited at all. The only other soul on the foreshore is holding a shark’s tooth and telling me that fossil hunting is why he comes to Sheppey. I can’t think of a more mindful pastime for this troubled year.

From Warden Point, it’s possible to walk around to Minster, but the light is failing and the walk is tough, so I drive towards Minster Leas. Here, at Sheppey’s best-loved spot to watch the sun go down, I take in the last of this wild isle. 

While Sheppey is in tier 3, takeaway options include The Barn at Elmley National Nature Reserve, where chef Patrick rustles up great coffee, snacks and homemade lunches (for pre-booked visitors to the reserve only) and CAMRA Kent pub of the year, The Admiral’s Arms in Queensborough, where you can get takeaway pizza (and Ben and Jerry’s) on Fridays and Saturdays from 5pm.