Faversham is Kent’s oldest market town — a remarkably preserved medieval and Georgian settlement with an ancient creek port that once made it one of England’s most important towns. The Saxon Shore Way passes through, the North Downs rise to the south, and the Swale estuary stretches away to the north in a landscape of saltmarsh and sky.

A genuinely lovely small town with a thriving independent food scene and the Shepherd Neame brewery, Faversham is an underused walking base for both the North Downs and the north Kent marshes — two very different landscapes within easy reach.