Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

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As a part of his interests, Mark wanted to explore the nature reserve. Having looked at a map, we found it very big stretching towards Winchelsea and we needed a couple of days to complete the entire course. He also wanted to do a bit of shopping before going back to London. I therefore suggested we would do a long walk on Sunday 15 May and a short walk on Monday 16 May.

After having breakfast at Top O’ The Hill Hotel, we walked down to the town. All of the shops were closed on Sunday morning and it was very quiet. After reaching the roundabouts of Strand Quay Road and Wish Street, we turned left and followed on A259 Road. Then, we turned left when seeing the signboard for Rye Harbour Nature Reserve.

We soon found the footpath around Brede Lock, and started the trail. Bushes and wildflowers were left overgrown, and it was a bit awkward to walk through. The track led us to open land of the Castle Farm, which was the home to countless sheep, lambs, and ewes. They were eating grass and resting under the trees. Some of them were standing and eating on the banks of the stream. While walking round the pasture land, there was a sight of Camber Castle on the right hand. We carried on the course along the meadow, and reached the woodland walks flanked by the ponds and trees. The course was in parallel with industrial buildings and factories on the Harbour Road.

The woodland walks led us to the concrete road. We walked eastwards on Harbour Road, and arrived Rye Harbour Church. The church wasn’t opened. We looked at the memorial for 17 crew men of the Mary Stanford who died while trying to rescue the Latvian steamer on 15 November 1928. We found some of victims who were drowned were very young.

Rye Village Harbour was the doorstep from the church. We found the little supermarket and bought snacks and drinks. Quite a few people were around the centre of Rye Harbour Village. We popped in Lime Kiln Cottage Information Centre. The Information Centre was selling various types of souvenirs, e.g. postcards, T-shirts, and reference books.

Afterwards, we went back to the footpath on the Rye Harbour. The coastal path was flanked by shingle beaches. The shingle beaches contained black, brown, and white pebbles. A multitude of sea kale was blooming here and there on the shingle beaches and its bunch of pretty white flowers appeared like a herd of sheep in the distance. There were also myriads of hairy caterpillars with orange spots and branches where caterpillars were making webs. As we followed the trail on the southwest direction, we saw more colourful flowers, such as yellow horned poppies or red valerians.

Mark was delighted to pop in the bird watching hides. We were amazed with the view from one of the hides overlooking Ternery Pool There were thousands of seagulls and various types of birds, e.g. black headed gulls, comterns, oyster catchers, ringed plovers, cormorants, redshanks, tufted ducks, avocets, and shelduck, etc flocking around islands and water.

There were several cyclists and families with children and dogs doing the trek on Rye Harbour on 15 May. We continuously received sea breeze whilst walking. The trek stretches to Winchelsea Beach. We decided to make a return journey around Rock Gabion Wall and followed the trail surrounded by wildflowers and water. Due to the dry spring in 2011, the water level of the ponds was extremely low, and I couldn’t see very much water around Rye Harbour and the footpath remained arid and hard.

Mark was leading the trail for me and tried to go back to the village centre. There were groups of holiday chalets stationed in the middle of the nature reserve and it seemed to have blocked one of the footpaths as well. We had to walk back a bit on the trail and followed the gravel path towards the residential area. A good thing was that we managed to find a pub just after we had completed the course and we were able to rest for a little while.

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