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Welcome to Town & Around
Featuring this Month
Having almost reached the age of retirement, I was recently reflecting on the changes that I can recall since my childhood.
One of the great treats of the summer for me was to be taken by my father on the paddle steamer "The Medway Queen".
The day started with a walk to the end of the Herne Bay Pier, maybe if I was lucky to ride on the train to the end of the pier, where I waited in anticipation for the arrival of the paddle steamer. Which after what seemed like a lifetime would come into view belching smoke from the funnel and churning the water into white froth with the paddles on either side.
Once aboard and underway, I would go to the front of the boat and look out to sea trying to spot the wartime forts out in the estuary.
We would then continue to the Essex coast where Dad and I would get off at Southend. The pier is over a mile long and the walk to the shore took quite some time. Once ashore my next treat was to be taken to the Kurzaal, an amusement park at the far end of the seafront and go on some of the rides which to me at the time were exciting, (nothing like the rides of today) and maybe a bag of chips and a stick of candyfloss.
Towards the end of the afternoon it was back to the pier for the long walk to the end where we would board the Medway Queen once again for the trip back across the estuary, where coasters on their way up to London would pass us leaving us to guess where they had come from, far off ports in foreign lands. Then it was across to the river Medway and the gentle trip up river past the naval dockyards at Chatham to the Sun Pier where the boat trip ended.
It was at this pier that my mother and sister would meet us (they had been shopping in Chatham), I don’t think my sister ever forgave me as she would have dearly loved to have had the boat ride instead of me just once.
We then trudged up to the railway station, I say trudged as by the evening we were all quite tired, to the station and the train home and dream of next year when I might be lucky enough to go again.
The Medway Queen is currently being restored by The Medway Queen preservation Society. For more information please go to www.medwayqueen.co.uk