Sittingbourne & Kemsley Light Railway

Steam trains still run here, which alone makes it worth a detour if you're staying anywhere near Sheerness. The Sittingbourne & Kemsley Light Railway is a narrow-gauge heritage line that operates vintage locomotives and carriages - the sort of thing that gets fathers genuinely excited and keeps children occupied for a couple of hours without the crowds you'd encounter at bigger steam railways.

The railway uses original track bed from an old industrial line that once served the paper mills, so you're literally riding on piece of local industrial history. The journey itself is modest - a few miles at a gentle pace through the Kent countryside - but that's rather the point. It's intimate rather than spectacular.

You can expect to spend two to three hours here comfortably, including time to look around the locomotive sheds and have a cup of tea in the café. It's free to wander the site, though you'll pay for train rides themselves. Go on a weekend when the trains are actually running; weekday operations can be patchy depending on volunteer availability.

If you're camping at Painters Farm nearby, this is a solid afternoon activity when the weather's decent but not dramatic enough for a beach trip. The railway sits on the outskirts of an industrial area, so it's not surrounded by rolling hills, but that somehow adds to its charm - it feels like you've stumbled onto something genuinely local rather than tourist-focused. Worth the short drive from your accommodation.