Lower Halstow put-in

Halstow Creek carries a shallow depth of water for about one and a half hours either side of high water, referenced to the standard port of Sheerness, where the mean spring range is 5.21 metres; outside that window the creek drains to mud.

The exposed bed is soft mud studded with oyster shells, with collapsed barge hulks and moored or berthed craft lying in the lower reach. In the wider Medway and Swale estuary, the ebb tide runs for a shorter duration and at higher velocities than the flood.

The wharf at Lower Halstow is the surviving structure a paddler lands against. Brickmaking began here in the early 1840s to meet the demand of Victorian London, and by the 1860s it was one of the largest employers in north Kent; Thames sailing barges carried the bricks to London and returned with the capital's ash to fire the kilns. An associated barge-building industry ran at the wharf for nearly fifty years, ending with two barges built in 1901, and the brickworks itself closed in September 1966.

The restored wharf now berths the Thames sailing barge Edith May, built in 1906 by John and Herbert Cann of Harwich, an 86-foot vessel of about 125 tons restored for charter sailing on the Medway. Immediately beside the wharf stands the Grade II listed church of St Margaret of Antioch, parts of which date to the 8th and 12th centuries, built of flint, rubble stone and re-used Roman tile.