Rye to Camber Christmas short circular

The Rye Christmas Festival event takes place this afternoon and onwards but to make a whole day out, we have a scenic morning walk to visit the famous (or, now, infamous) beautiful sandy beach of Camber Sands before we return to explore Rye itself. Please sign onto the walk and Christmas events separately.

Rye is a very attractive former coastal port on the very Western edge of Romney Marsh. Rye is in East Sussex whereas most of the adjacent marsh is in the county of Kent, stretching across to Hythe to the East and Dungeness and the sea to the South. The town is very popular with tourists and much of it is familiar to television viewers from the two series of 'Mapp and Lucia': dramatisations of humorous books written by E. F. Benson who lived in Rye and based his fictional town of Tilling on it. Rye is on a hill and as such has good views in several directions.

Camber Sands is one of the best and sandiest beaches in the South East and is extremely popular with the access roads being jammed with queues of cars on hot Summer days. In the Winter months, it is a dramatic place to visit with dogs, horses and windswept walkers braving the elements to enjoy this special environment.

As Rye has the nearest railway station and Camber is so well used, there is a good path which vaguely follows the road to Camber and we shall take this from Rye, across the Western marshes and straight down to the beach. Depending on the state of the tide, we shall walk along the beach in a Westward direction, perhaps to view the mouth of the River Rother which separates Camber Sands from the quite different and much stonier Winchelsea Beach. Apart from crossing the sand dunes twice, the walk is mostly flat until we get back to Rye.

Heading back, we walk up and over the sandy dunes which keep the sea at bay from the reclaimed land behind and walk right across a golf course. There used to be a tramline which went from Rye down to Camber and we shall see evidence of this as we follow its route in parts. The footpaths follow the River Rother and indeed one photograph shows the view to its mouth from this path, across beds of inaccessible salt marsh. We cross back over the river at the point where the tramline station used to exist and thence up into Rye.