With a year before its launch, the Royal Marines Heritage Trails – Deal & Walmer project has been given a £20,000 grant from the Ministry of Defence Covenant Fund.

The trails, which will link parts of Deal/Walmer and Dover areas associated with the Royal Marines – who left the town in 1996 after being here for more than 300 years – will be launched on April 23 next year, the centenary of the Raid on Zeebrugge.

Royal Marines deployed during the World War One raid were based at Deal.

It is a leading project to preserve the marines’ legacy, with Major General Rob Magowan CBE, the Royal Marines’ Commandant General, as its patron.

The project is a registered charity and the grant from the MoD Covenant Fund – an armed forces local grant scheme – follows donations from the Sgts Mess Pantomime, Deal Town Council and Walmer Parish Council.

John Meardon, chairman of the project’s trustees. and former Royal Marine, said: “With 12 months to go before the launch, this grant is a great encouragement for what has become a hugely interesting project to engage as wide an audience as possible with the heritage of the Royal Marines in the Deal and Walmer area.”

The main trail is 2.5 miles long, starts at Deal Castle and will include the former East Barracks site of the Royal Marines School of Music; the former North and South Barracks in Canada Road; the Drill Field (now used by Deal and Betteshanger Rugby Club); the memorial outside Deal Parochial School (the school was built on a site used as a training ground for Royal Marines); Deal Memorial Bandstand on Walmer Green and the Garden of Remembrance off Canada Road (both created in memory of the 11 Royal Marines bandsmen killed in the 1989 bombing); and the former Royal Marines swimming baths (now the Cedars doctors’ surgery) in Marine Road.

It will be previewed during this year’s White Cliffs Walking Festival, organised by the White Cliffs Ramblers and which takes place between August 24-30.

The trail is on the festival programme on the evenings of Saturday and Sunday, August 26-27.

There is also an extended trail which will feature the Royal Marines’ training area at Coldblow, the rifle range at Kingsdown, the sites on the cliffs at St Margaret’s of the World War Two cross-Channel guns called Winnie and Pooh, and the Zeebrugge Bell at Dover Town Hall. There is also a trail for children.

Work is under way with 11 primary schools in the area and the Goodwin Academy in Walmer on a children’s curriculum project based on the heritage of the Royal Marines in the area.

For further information about this project, email project@royalmarinesheritagetrails.org