Extreme weather, with soaring temperatures during the day and thunder and lightning at night, accompanied walkers on last weekend’s Cinque Ports 100.
The 100-mile walk, organised by the Long Distance Walkers Association, used footpaths, tracks and country lanes to link the original Cinque Ports of Hastings, New Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich and the associate towns of Rye, Winchelsea, Tenterden, Lydd, Folkestone and Deal.
The annual “Hundred” is the LDWA’s flagship event, with entrants given 48 hours to complete the route. The event was started at Sussex Coast College in Hastings on Saturday morning, May 26, by Admiral of the Fleet Lord Boyce, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, in a ceremony also attended by the Mayor of Hastings and Speaker of the Cinque Ports, Cllr Nigel Sinden.
There were 16 checkpoints en route, where walkers could rest, get food and drink and attend to physical problems such as blisters. Some of these checkpoints were at town halls or council offices, where the walkers were visited by the town mayors. The Rye checkpoint was in the town’s Community Centre, where walkers were visited by new mayor, Cllr Mike Boyd.
The event was based at the Duke of York’s Royal Military School, just outside Dover, and a total of 446 walkers entered, coming from all over the country and beyond, with some from Denmark and the Netherlands. Three hundred and eight walkers finished, with 138 retiring. The first two walkers finished in 23 hours 18 minutes and the last three came home in 47 hours 43 minutes.
Organiser Graham Smith put the high number of retirements partly down to the hot bank holiday weather, with temperatures reaching 27 degrees. This made walking conditions difficult, and helped worsen problems such as blisters and nausea.
One of the walkers, Sally Adams, who had travelled down from South London, said: “The walk was fabulous. An enormous amount of thought, work and history went into the event. “We visited such beautiful towns and villages and walked through a variety of gorgeous countryside. For somebody such as myself who does not know Kent and East Sussex, it was a wonderful way of exploring the county.”
Photos: Graham Smith