COASTGUARDS have discovered the body of an elderly woman at the bottom of a cliff at Capel-le-Ferne, near Folkestone.

It is thought the 84-year-old woman, from Hythe, fell while out walking along Abbot's Cliff.

The woman, who has not yet been named, was reported missing on Tuesday morning after failing to return home on Monday night.

Police said she would regularly take a bus from her home in Hythe to the Valiant Sailor in Capel. She would then walk along the cliff top to the Cliff Top Café before getting a bus home.

Two search teams were sent out on Tuesday morning, including the coastguard, a helicopter and the lifeboat from Littlestone.

The woman was taken to the William Harvey Hospital at Ashford where she was pronounced dead.

A coastguard spokesman said: "We found the body part way down the Abbots Cliff. She had fallen quite a long way down." Police are not treating the death as suspicious.