If Britain’s 54 piers were to be renamed after outdoor athletic events, and we don’t think they should be, then this would be the marathon. Not only is Southend pier the longest in the world, but today we need to get buses from Southend to Herne bay (not impressed, look at a map, the bloody Thames is in the way!).

At 11.30 GMT we placed our first tentative footsteps onto this gargantuan structure.. or did we? Before we could make good our photographic commitment with the local newspaper we were stopped in our tracks by Mae and Ken. Pier2Pier has a skeleton in it’s cupboard.

Pensioners Mae and Ken have shared a lifelong ambition to be the first people to visit every pier in Britain. Earlier this year they began developing plans for this epic journey and placed a circle around their chosen start date of September 1st. Yes, as the more attentive of you have already guessed, Mae and Ken are setting out to become the first people to visit every pier in Britain the day after we become the first people to visit every pier in Britain. Doh!

We are shamed to admit that we have known about this particular pickle for sometime but had hoped to hide it from our public. Yes, we have broken the hearts of Mae and Ken. As the two of them headed towards us at the entrance to Southend Pier we shared a gulp and considered, as they say in these parts, legging it. We needn’t have worried. Mae and Ken haven’t reached pension age without learning a thing or two about staring defeat in the face and as such they wished us well, spat in our faces and headed off to the post office. Not really, they were lovely.

Since anyone who cares about piers has already been to Southend, and those that don’t probably aren’t interested anyway, it is long and quite good.

The Welsh for Herne Bay is Bae Herne. Now we all know that it’s not in Wales, but it might as well be considering the distance that we have to travel to get there from Southend. When Tim (pier2pier’s “Mr Logistics”) planned this he had the idea of cheating (or ‘preparing’ as we call it) by getting a train. Luckily for our sponsors and The Guinness Book of Parochial Records, pier2pier has a sterling back room staff of unsung blaggers, headed up on this occasion by Richard “Group4Security” Banks. “Groupsie” managed to convince the marketing director of Arriva that pier2pier was for them. Great work Groupsie. Duly supplied with our own double-decker bus and driver Ann, we headed off on our considerably easier journey to the north Kent Coast

There’s a couple of things that you should do if someone loans you a bus. The first is to stand forward of this notice and distract the driver - which we did. The other is to smoke on the bus – which Rich and Chris did (of course highly trained athletes like us don’t). Ann let us cover the windows in our posters and we basically thought we’d won the FA cup or something. A couple of hours later we arrived in Herne Bay and after a big thanks to Ann and her daughter Faye we headed to the pier.

If there’s one thing that pier2pier likes more than piers and buses, it’s fonts. And the font on the front of Herne Bay pier is nothing short of spectacular - have a look at it. And the fun doesn’t stop there because the pier is actually a Leisure Centre on stilts. Above the sea if you please. All in all, an unusual pier but definitely worth a visit, especially if you’re obsessed with attending roller-discos