A Softer Ride

OS Landranger 177

Another glorious morning in north London when I woke up with a call to arms. Some weeks had passed since the last sortie to the coast with the bike. I hadn’t woken with any specific intention in mind, but within a few minutes I’d formulated a plan that wasn’t going to involve navigating across London to a central railway terminal, and then an hour or more on a train. I wasn’t that organised and the thought of preparing some interesting sandwiches, and then mapping out a route before 10am, didn’t much appeal.

So, ad lib. Some months earlier I had cycled through north-east London from Stratford to Woolwich and then on the south side of the Thames to Erith. It’s worth mentioning, for the benefit of other cyclists or walkers, that the Greenway path from Stratford to Beckton that allowed me to undertake this ride is just waiting to be exploited. Running for several miles above the route of the big old Victorian sewer that cleaned (and still does) the waste of millions, and rising above the roof tops, not only is it an almost direct link between two very different parts of London, but also gives views in all directions that you don’t get anywhere else.

I figured that in the time available I’d aim to get beyond the Queen Elizabeth Bridge at Dartford before seeking out a train back to London. To achieve that I decided not to start with the Greenway but instead cycle the odd mile to my nearby station, take the Overground round to Barking, and then cycle what I estimated was just a mile or so to the Woolwich ferry.

The train arrived on time and 30 minutes or so later pulled into Barking station. Slightly unfamiliar with my surroundings I set off in a vaguely southerly direction, but after some time turning the wheels I began to worry that I was heading blindly in a completely random direction. And, on checking the phone map, it seemed apparent that I was! Some navigational changes and after some further progress on hideously busy roads I found the connecting one that runs past the Beckton Alps (ha!) and then the site of the old, and now obliterated, Beckton Gas works (where famously Oliver Stone convincingly recreated the Battle of Hue in “Full Metal Jacket” and Oasis asked us if we knew what they meant – which of course we didn’t). Then, on through to the bridges over the waterways of the Royal Albert Docks, where London City Airport provides a relatively new form of transport in and out of the Smoke, and finally into North Woolwich. It’s all exotica around here – believe me!

Shortly I arrived at the slip road running up to the north bank ferry entrance, with some three or four extra and unpredicted miles behind me, and at around 11am. All good, and just a few minutes or so before a ferry would arrive and take me and the others the short hop over to Woolwich on the south bank.

I once used the ferry on a random ride and was standing at the opposite terminal entrance waiting for the barrier to go up. Some sort of hold up on embarkation. A family were parked up in an adjacent car with the windows open and conversation flowing, excitement in the air at the prospect of the crossing. The adult female in the front passenger seat turned to the male and asked if there would be a restaurant on board. The man gave a moments thought, and then answered slowly, slightly unsure, that he didn’t think there would be. I nearly burst out laughing, but then had a slight shudder at the thought that maybe the first time I used the service I may have had the same hope.

Back in the present and gazing east and west then east again and suddenly from around the sweeping bend of the Thames something vast, beyond immediate comprehension, was edging into view. My initial thought was, what I, (and the guy next to me who was quickly pulling out his phone camera), were witnessing, was a new multi-storey block of flats being pulled up the river and intended for bank-side insertion somewhere upstream in a new aspiring part of central London. It would at least explain how some of these new developments quite literally seem to be sprouting out of the ground in many areas of the Capital.

Actually, that’s not really what I thought. It was obviously a huge cruise ship heading towards town, and was making rapid progress towards the two small vehicle ferries which continued to hip hop across the river, until it was clear that any further hops would result in the immediate long-term closure of the service. The vast structure of the Viking Sun, with its infinity pool at the stern, loomed above us as it glided between the north and south terminals, being pulled and pushed by two large, and obviously very powerful, tugs, and then on west and towards the Thames Barrier. Even at a distance it dominated the landscape.

The event was magnificent, unexpected and in many respects quite surreal, although I rationalised that only half a century ago, and in my lifetime, similarly large, and possibly even larger vessels, would have been a daily, maybe even hourly, sight along this stretch. Well – no one was throwing out the confetti and raising the bunting here, and once it was safe the little open decked ferry loaded up and set off south, completing its neat mid-channel pirouette, before docking on the other side. This is a free service but I have rarely seen other cyclists using it. Why this is I don’t know, but as a satisfactory means of getting across the Thames, a good few miles east of Tower Bridge, or the Greenwich foot tunnel, it scores highly. But a warning, in case you are on a long journey and have factored in refreshments and a lite bite on the crossing, don’t. There really is no restaurant or café and it only takes about four minutes.

Once I had disembarked on the south Woolwich side, I set off on the days journey. And just a reminder of the optional rules. Staying as close to the coast (or tidal limits of a river) is the first rule. There aren’t any other rules, but I already knew from my earlier journey to Erith, that the first section would allow complete compliance to the first and only rule. That said, and not forgetting the other ambition (not a rule), which was to carry out a visual assessment of residential retirement opportunities and associated communities, this section had already been discounted. Escaping the Capital a necessity.

Which of course just begs the question – why bother with this bit at all? Good question – no logical answer. Because it’s there?

The route from the south terminal to the river is short, but a bit confusing if it’s the first time. There are signs, but the little wiggle through a small industrial/office area can be off putting. Once the river path is achieved you pass an area of major residential redevelopment (on-going at the time), and very soon you’re at the old Royal Arsenal barracks, no longer used for military purposes, but an attractive and historical point on the journey (even if there is a lingering, and some might suggest, unsatisfactory association with a north London football club).

Proceeding further east, and past areas that have clearly undergone significant new residential development in recent decades, you notice the Thames widening bit by bit, foot by foot. Whilst the tide still ebbs and flows, this is where the river begins its ending, and the sea starts to exert its dominance. This is the start of an enormous bend that heads north, then east and then south towards Erith. Throughout, the cycle path hugs the bank of the river (or coast depending on the definition) and works as well as any coastal cycle path can. Flat, wide, pretty straight and well maintained. What this means is that you can cycle yard after yard without giving a seconds thought to the sort of things that can catch you unawares and unaccountably pitch you into thorns, nettles, or in the worst case, the nearest water source. And instead, depending on your confidence, you can ride, hands free if you wish, lengthy distances with eyes right or left, and taking in the sort of things and events that otherwise might be missed.

To be entirely honest, on this particular day not a great deal of interest was observed, either to the left where Gallions Park, and extended scrubby land, stretched for a mile or so, or to the right on the water where, on the previous foray, two or three freighters had passed by, and then the rather surreal sight of a highly decorated (red and gold) barge, of Tudor antecedence, being rowed up the river and towards London. So nothing like that today but making the most of the conditions I rode on past housing estates at Thamesmead before coming to the huge sewerage works at Crossness, fronted up by a Victorian building erected in the time of the great Joseph Bazalgette, without whom it would be impossible to imagine what London, and our lives, would be like now (you can surmise here that nothing of note actually occurred as I add in some gratuitous historical padding to the narrative).

After the sewage works the bend in the river starts to turn south-east. On the Essex side of the river to the north, evidence showing of where some sort of old landfill site or quarry has been reclaimed and a significant landscaped hill rises. In front, on the banks of the river, stands the Tilda factory. In case this isn’t a universally known product, the specialism is rice. I cycled that stretch of the river two or three years ago, and nearby, where the water meets the land, a number of Second World War concrete barges are tied up, rotting away slowly with each season and every tide. If you are interested in this sort of thing, and don’t know already, these small boats were used on the beach heads during the Normandy landings. A curiosity across the water, and what with Tilda’s association with sub-continent cooking, you could say that when in Rainham, don’t miss out on the Onion Barges (or is that Concrete Bhaji’s?). Okay, I can’t tell, never mind write, a good joke, and this one (no I know it’s not) was cooked up when riding past the Tilda factory, clearly in some sort of hallucinatory state, and left, neatly filed away until now. So, just to be on the safe side, I go to Google to double check how to spell Bhaji and for the hell of it, type in “Concrete Bhaji.” I am now deeply troubled because these two disparate words take you to a page called “Images for Concrete Bhaji.” I’ll just leave it at that because I really can’t explain, and can’t be bothered to even understand how that works.

Back to a sort of reality, and I continued south, now with industrial estates to the right, and the strong smells of industrial processing playing with my senses. The river view here is impressive as the sweep of the next bend down towards Erith comes into view and then beyond to the first peek of the Queen Elizabeth bridge. Whilst the path was still in good condition here, there was a need to keep a closer focus. There was an increase in the detritus of petty hooliganism and crime. Broken glass that can shred a tyre, bits and pieces of things that might, or might not, have been parts of redundant (sorry – stolen) mopeds, and the small sites of where things like tyres, trolleys and stuff had been set fire to. At one point the path climbs severally over some sort of conveyor that leads from a factory to a large river side concrete facility (which probably has a rather stark beauty if you’ve just drunk 10 cans of Special Brew).

Once past the industrial zone, the path continued into Erith and along the sides of old slipways and small harbour sites, with quite a lot of residential development, some of it new, land-side. The view towards the Dartford Crossing develops and widens dramatically here. Quite photogenic when the sun peeked through the clouds, which kept the temperature down to a more tolerable level compared to the days before. A small park with what looked like the remains of an old fort leads towards the pier! That, I hadn’t expected. Not the sort of pier you’d associate with the Victorian or Edwardian age, certainly not. Modern, functional and leading straight out into the river, and then a 90 degree turn to the right and a similar distance stretching downriver. I cycled to the point where the pier branched to the right and stopped for ten minutes to take in the view and general ambience.

Kids, and some adults, were fishing from the sides and a few dog walkers stretched their legs. Hard to date the construction but the supports were concrete and so probably not much before, or soon after the War. At the end there was a small weather boarded hut, which I’m sure anywhere else would have been a place serving posh coffee and 20 varieties of tea, but for the moment, whatever function it once served, the doors were closed. The pier was a place where the number of functions performed are few, but almost certainly rewarding, even if that’s just to watch ships and boats passing up and down the channel.

Beyond the pier the route took me inland a bit, and then along a short stretch of main road with industry to the north, and then back to the river, some fields and then, past another industrial outcrop, to the mouth of the River Darent. A minor encounter occurred at the point where the end of the town met the fields by the river. The road here wrapped round the back of an industrial site of some sort, and led to a gate that kept out vehicles from the river path. Sometime before, and thinking a bit about how the day might pan out, I’d considered the possibility that some of the locations on this section might just come with the prospect of teenagers with a bit of old fashioned attitude. Sad to even think I could have had such a thought but it was there nonetheless. As if to prove some dreams do actually come true, there, in front of the gate, were two teenage lads, lurking with indifferent intent with moped, bike and a drifting whiff of dope. A slight sinking in the heart as I mused momentarily on how vulnerable I might have looked, but it was what it was and they were between me and the restricted point that led to the fields. I cruised to the pinch point and dismounted just to the right of the pair. Immediately the one with the moped, spotting the opportunity and demanded with intent (unfair, he asked), if I had a smoke? Fortunately, I didn’t, and so was able to state the truth and with purpose shoved and scrapped the bike through the concrete and metal barrier and muttered something like “thanks boys for sparing my pathetic life.” As I cycled away on the raised path I was enriched by the reality that no crime had been committed, that it’s far too easy to stereotype and that once upon a time I’d stood at dodgy locations with others and may have appeared intimidating too. I was nevertheless grateful for the fact that if the lad had changed his mind, and realised that there was more to be gained than a cigarette, there was no way the moped was going to get through the restriction barrier.

The first thing of note at this point, apart from getting a full-on view of the Dartford Crossing Bridge, is a concrete structure that acts as a tidal barrier to the estuary. The distance between the west bank, where I was, and the east bank, where I wanted to be, was probably 30-40 yards. The hope was that the barrier structure would provide a footpath of some sort to bridge the gap. The reality was that it didn’t, and so ready for what was to follow, I cycled inland, following the sweeps of the river, and past a couple out on a midday walk.

Once I had cleared the industrial zone, and a series of tracks that showed evidence of persistent fly-tipping, the route started through marsh land, on dry paths raised above the levels. Reasonable for cycling but as the meters past the undergrowth increased in density and spread across the path. Did I say I was wearing shorts? Certainly not. With the increased foliage, came the incremental increase in minor leg lacerations. Nothing too severe, unless the aggressor was the commonly thorn’ed bramble. As small trickles of blood opened up on my shins and thighs, at least the fluid loss was being compensated by the increasing intake of blackberries. Of which, it must be said, were large and juicy, and a crop that had been giving in abundance alarmingly early this year.

After a further lashing on a particularly narrow stretch the path reached a point where it began to swing round. Unfortunately, it was swinging round back to the west and in the opposite direction to where I was heading. But this was no longer the Darent. That meandered away south and eastwards. I was now on the River Cray! Who knew at this stage where this might end up. I hoped not the source.

The Cray, which is a tributary of the Darent and meeting it very close to the Thames, along with other small, but historically important rivers in south London (such as the Wandle and Mole), all rise a few miles to the south where water held in the chalk of the North Downs meets impenetrable clay formations. When I say “rise,” I should be clear, we are not exactly talking about the Zambezi, or Amazon. These are short and narrow streams that would barely be noticed from space, but which have in their time been major forces for change – good and bad. Travelling north and into the Thames basin, they have powered industry, been sewers, and formed the early arteries of residential growth away from the centre. At many points they are invisible. Covered over by parks, housing, roads, car-parks, railways and shopping malls. But at Hall House, just a few miles south of where I now was, the Cray, only a few meters wide, snakes gracefully through delightful parkland, forming a decorative tree lined waterway in the meadow beyond the exceptionally well-preserved Tudor House (which I believe had significant connections to the Royals of the day). On a wander through this municipally run, and completely free park a month or so before, I had stood and watched small squadrons of Rainbow Trout gracefully fighting the current in the shallows of the chalk stream. Walking on, and still tracking the river, a small information board explained the wild life to be seen. I scanned but then stopped. Did it really say that salmon were using the river again and spawning further up stream? Yes, confirmed my associate family member. We were both staggered.

A second, more studied read, and the fact was confirmed. Looking again at what could only be described as an enlarged stream, the blatantly obvious was that it was neither the Esk, the Tweed, the Dee, the Don, nor the Deveron. It is true that salmon have returned to the Thames and so why wouldn’t they also try to make inroads to the rivers denied to them for maybe 200 or more years. The fact that these old highways of filth, even in living memory, have been rejuvenated is just a small glimmer that if the will is there it is possible to make a difference on the bigger scale.

Around 44 years ago, along with a load of scallies from south-east London, one of the earliest efforts in the environmentalist revolution took place – and along with others I helped preform a minor civic duty.

I’m guessing it must have been towards the end of a term when the whole of our year, not big, about a bus load, piled onto a hired double-decker bus outside our south-east London school, and set off on a diesel fuelled slow ride up unknown streets and towards the city centre. A bit like being let loose on a film set, and replicating the sort of childish antics seen at Saturday morning cinema, such as St Trinian’s, Please Sir, or other pre-Grange Hill caper type Children’s Film Foundation movies of that ilk (but not to be confused with the the TV Double-Deckers of the early 1970’s), the bus took as up towards the river. With pandemonium breaking out on the top deck, and passers-by being victims of minor taunting and the occasional lump of chewing gum aimed and directed from a top window – all in all probably an unedifying experience, never mind spectacle, but those were the times and we were on a progressive mission, even if that was far from obvious.

Decanted somewhere near Blackfriars, on the south bank, our task was to get down on the banks of the old Thames, during the few hours when the tide was out, locate, find and collect as much garbage as our little paws could grab, and pile the whole lot up for a boat that would come along later in the day and relieve the river of it’s detritus.

If you were to ask me know to pinpoint where the action took place, I’d make no effort. I know that there was a bridge (road or rail uncertain), just to our west, and huge, bleak, semi abandoned Victorian warehouses behind us, running as far as the eye could see. I’ve walked these areas countless times over the last five decades and haven’t yet made a firm discovery. I’m certain that the warehouses remain, but not as they would have looked then, and now performing a completely different, though less productive, civilising function.

The one thing that dominated the vista, and justifying the tatty clothes we’d been told to bring along, was mud. The silts and clay of the Thames basin, laid down over millennia and ready to suck our boots off. Huge swathes of the stuff that had to be traversed in the hunt for humanities waste. Almost certainly it was the mud that led to our main man, and protector, taking off immediately and without permission, and as rumour later had it, seeking out and destroying any wandering Millwall supporters innocently strolling their home turf along the Old Kent Road, completely unprepared for a one-person Palace boy assault on their territory. There were other rumours but I’d prefer to stick with this one.

The efforts to gather the crop were at times nothing less than heroic. Sorry, I mean idiotic. At one point an enormous log started to float by, going downriver. Undeterred, and now on a mission to excel at something over and above anything that could be achieved back at school, several lads threw off shoes and shirts and waded, and then partly swam, to grab the beast and then haul it ashore. Pulling it onto the temporarily dry muddy land it was if they’d wrestled and then tamed an urban crocodile and brought back the trophy. Screams and shouts of joy went up amongst the happy mud larks whilst at the same time the supervising teachers, no doubt having managed to sneak in a quick pint and smoke whilst we were dodging death with the vagaries of the tide and quick mud, made it clear that such risky behaviour wasn’t to be repeated. Yawn!

The afternoon continued to allow for further accruals to a pile of waste that was now towering over everyone’s heads. But the initial fun was waning and the efforts were tailing off. The discovery of an aerosol can was the last major highlight. The can became an imaginary rattle snake and the game was to pelt it with stones. This was an easy game and the target was achieved on many occasions as it was dispatched a few inches one way or another on each hit. Until, hit for the umpteenth time, the thin aluminium gave up the fight, and in a final exhilarating explosion, it exploded!!! A massive release of pressure from within, and like an uncontrolled whizz-bang, the can did a brief, but potentially lethal chlorofluorocarbon fuelled dance between our feet and then collapsed, defeated and promptly discarded onto the pile, but not without a nod of respect from the assembled hunters.

The Ozone, like the Thames rivers, was eventually saved, and maybe the destruction of that can on that day was a metaphor for what was to come. Sadly, and despite our heroic, though probably puny efforts on that odd day in the early 1970’s, the tide eventually came back in, and we watched in despair as each and every can, crisp packet, bottle, sanitary towel, plastic object (it’s not a new problem), condom, dumped TV, and more, slowly found its way back into the flow. The barge with the big scoop never arrived.

And then we had to go back home. The fun had gone. We were alone. It’s not hard to see, perhaps, how dissolution might set in.

Looking back now, and as disheartening as it was to know that all the efforts on that day literally went to waste, there is a certain irony in knowing now that even if the barge had arrived in time and collected the pile of garbage, the likelihood is that it would have been carried on down the river a few miles and then either dumped into a bank-side landfill site somewhere either in Kent or Essex, or sailed on further and tipped out at sea – just kicking the problem down the line.

Anyway, back to the present and just a reminder that in fact the story of the River Cray is a good news story, but just in case you really want to get to the heart of our current waste issues, and offering some options around change, set aside an hour or so and watch the BBC’s “The Secret Life of Landfill – A Rubbish History.”

And just to add that at an individual level, we should do what we can, but don’t beat ourselves up if we can’t, or feel crushed by the scale of it all. In the end, it’s economics, ideology and the commitment of the people we elect that counts.

Reaching a point where the river Cray ran under a railway bridge I pushed the bike through overgrown brambles and then onto a path and road out of an industrial estate which led to the main A206. This moment lasted only a few seconds. Crossing the river there was a road to the left leading to another industrial zone and where a path began to retrace the flow of the Cray in the other direction. The path, not that easy to traverse, continued around the back of a large distribution centre, and then back onto marshland that led to the point where the Cray met the Darent. Pretty green but pretty bleak too. The track then took along the west side of the Darent and to a gate and complicated circular pedestrian access point, too small to accommodate the bike. To that end I had to assume that bikes were not welcome here, but with the necessary effort required, I threw the single pannier over the vehicle access gate and then dispatched the bike too.

I remounted and cycled another 100 yards or so on the A206 before arriving at another gate with an identical pedestrian access point to the other side of the Darent. I may not have mentioned earlier that it was another hot day and I was a bit flugged by now. Repeating the actions of a few moments before I tossed the pannier over the gate, only to see it land and then topple down a dry slope and coming to a final stop on a cow pat. Great! The bike then went over the main gate as before. I was beginning to lose interest in this particular exploit but managed to rationalise that now I was on the east side of the Darent, it was only to be a short hop to get down to Gravesend. Perhaps I should have mentioned earlier too that when I’d started out earlier in the day, my plan had been to reach Rochester. But with the mile or so diversion inland, to wherever it was that the Cray had taken me, and now equipped with the knowledge that there was at least another mile or two cross country slog to get back to the Thames, that could also hold further man-made obstacle’s, and that it was oppressively hot, I’d revised the plan. Gravesend would have to do.

The path towards the Thames hugged the river. On the marshes a number of dilapidated buildings whose purpose in the past was unclear. Possibly military, or related to agriculture or gravel extraction. At one point the path was diverted and signs indicated a planning application by the landowner to allow for expansion of old gravel workings. That seemed to be a shame as this appeared to be the only oasis of wildlife in the immediate surrounding area. I’m certain that there would have been local protests, but my money was on the landowner getting their wish.

After some more time I reached the Darent Creek Barrier. To get there I had to dismount again and lift the bike over a concrete structure designed to prevent vehicle access to the marshes. What a pain? 40 yards or so across the water, and to the west, was the spot on the other bank where I had begun the expedition to find the source of the Darent. That had come to an abrupt end on reaching the A206. And it had been over an hour earlier. Urrrrggggg…

The path along the Thames, and towards the Dartford Crossing bridge, was much wider here than it had been on the Darent. The marshes continued to the right, and some gun fire inland indicated that clay pigeons or perhaps ducks, were being downed. Ahead stood the bridge crossing the Thames at its lowest point, and a huge chimney from an energy power source of some sort. What I didn’t know at the time, but do now, is that the area of marsh, now a haven for birds and other wildlife (not being shot at), was some hundred years ago or more, the site of a hospital that was built to replace three hulks (two disused naval ships and a bizarre twin hulled Dover to Calais passenger ferry that failed the Channel test), that took the smallpox sufferers of London to convalesce.

This was a grand development that even had its own tram system, made to bring the patients from the boats that brought them from the city directly into the hospital. The tram lines have now gone, replaced by a metalled path which ironically runs along the side of a modern sewerage works. Other uses were subsequently found for the hospital once smallpox fell out of fashion, but the evidence on the ground today has almost gone, though it might have explained the structures seen earlier on the Darent path.

Take a look at a bit of history almost no-one will know about: http://www.workhouses.org.uk/MAB-Orchard/

After all the excitement of the Darent estuary it was time to crack on to see the further delights of the coast/river bank (whichever suits) heading eastwards. Past the sewage works and the big chimney expelling whatever it has to deal with from the bank-side power station and almost immediately I’m directly under the southern approach to the QE II bridge at Stone.

It’s impressive, but perhaps not that impressive. Your jaw doesn’t drop. It’s functional. Perhaps that’s the best I can do to describe the structure. To the north and on the other side is Essex. Jetties and large ships, and petrochemical sites. Not too enticing and no doubt if you were in Essex looking to the south the view would be similar.

What you get a sense of here is of still being attached in some way to London, but that London wouldn’t want to be attached or associated with this zone. The entire infrastructure here relates directly to what London needs, and also what it needs but which either it can’t contain (the petrochemicals perhaps), or what it doesn’t want (waste obviously but also the lorries and cars just going round and round on the road to nowhere). A bit like the smallpox ships and hospitals from a century before! \

You’re not allowed to cycle across the bridge. There are probably very sensible reasons for this, although it feels like a lost tourist opportunity. Other more impressive bridges here and abroad don’t have such limitations (dig the big one at the mouth of the Seine near Le Harve for instance). But, and this is a useful hint to any cyclists who, for whatever good reason find themselves at this spot, north or south, and then have an insatiable desire to get to the other side, there is a small bus service through the associated tunnel which you can throw the bike on. Just a warning. You first have to find the pick-up points although frankly they are at fairly desperate locations. Anyway – I didn’t need the bus service today so carried on.

Okay, now issuing a “trigger warning.” The following paragraphs contain sensitive topics and observation that may cause a reaction in the reader ranging from mild irritation through to outright violence. If you are of a sensitive disposition you might want to skip the following four paragraphs. If you are of a sensitive disposition but you still want to read on, but then feel that a violent reaction coming on, take a deep breathe, count to fifty and make a cup of tea. Alternative, if these approaches don’t work, just post an offensive message – it seems to be the order of the day.

We currently live in the second Elizabethan age. And don’t we just know it? You’d think by now our monarch would have had enough of all things bright and infrastructure being named after her. The bridge that I was fast approaching was opened in 1991 and, probably due to some key event in the royal calendar, imaginatively named after the present incumbent. Okay, fair enough, though a wide range of other options were, I am sure, available – say Herbert or Shirley, or any other person who may have contributed to its construction perhaps? Or just a nearby location (you can fill in the blanks).

However, not content with donating the Royal title to a huge bridge, people who should know better, or are desperate for some return in kind, have felt it necessary to gift the trademark to, and amongst other things (not including an Olympic Park and stadium, a cruise liner – no longer in use -and various hospitals, footpaths and duck ponds), a new underground line in London (the betting is that it’s nip and tuck whether it will be open before Her final State departure), and the biggest pile of floating metal (with nobs and guns on) that we’ve ever sent to sea. It is the biggest object I have ever seen. If you don’t believe me go to Portsmouth, where it is semi-permanently moored, and check it out for yourself. Never-mind the “Viking Sun” with it’s invisibility pool and poop deck, if our new aircraft carrier ever sails up the Thames in the future, as it casts it’s shadow across the East End it’s likely to cause mass hysteria from Silvertown to Rotherhithe. The betting here of course is whether or not it will be fully ship-shape and ready to take an active part in our military threat before Mam’s appointment with the ceremonial box at St Paul’s or Westminster Abbey, or wherever it is that they have these sort of send off’s (it’s been so long now that the Establishments probably forgotten – I know I have). I understand that there are excellent odds on her staying on the throne through and beyond the aircraft carrier (and her sister ship the Charles of Wales the Last) being sold to the Sudan as scrap.

Above are just a tiny fraction of the things and places in the UK baring the signature. If you look more widely, the list is substantially longer where old colonial nations (in particular, but not exclusively) have embraced the homages beyond any rationale. Australia and Canada have excelled, and there’s even a part of the Antarctic, claimed, but in dispute, by Australia, called Princess Elizabeth Land! It’s the coldest place on earth. The fact that it is claimed by a country at all feels completely wrong, but in the fine tradition of exploration, guess who it’s called after? It doesn’t feel as if we are approaching this naming of public spaces, utilities, or big floaty things in a very mature way. It seems a bit cultist – overly fawning. The UK isn’t Tinseltown after all. Or, maybe it is and I just haven’t noticed.

Time perhaps to leave this subject and head on east (“and keep on going to Russia you pinko b……..d,” I hear them shout). End of “trigger warning.”

Next stop Greenhithe, and a slight diversion inland at an ASDA superstore, and then through a thoroughly decent new area of residential development, where a solitary concrete barge rests up (in case you never get the chance to check out the gaggle of similar barges in Essex – see above) and ending at the Pier Hotel. Here the road turned back inland before returning again to the front and another modern housing scheme with interesting historically based styles that seemed to work. Beyond another area of marshland heading north-east and towards a vast pylon with cables that stretched away across the Thames. I don’t have any historical ditties on this area, which was of little interest other than it wasn’t built on, but underneath runs the high speed railway line that leads north to St Pancras International and to the south, the rest of the world.

Due to the enormous pylon, and associated signage that indicated further progress would be a capital offence, the path didn’t entirely follow the river and eventually led to a dusty road reserved for lorries that headed south and eventually to a main road that then met with a roundabout. Turning left at the roundabout, and immediately to the left, was the red rust coloured corrugated iron clad stadium of Ebbsfleet United Football Club: a relatively large ground compared to the status perhaps of the club (no offence).

Worth taking a quick look at if you are interested in the non-league version of the game, but a strange sign on the outside of the east stand was issuing a message that didn’t appear to be compatible with the ethos. I’m guessing, but if you were passing and wanted to know what was happening inside the structure, you’d never guess that the entertainment on offer could involve association football:-

Of course I may have been missing something here but it struck me at the time that there might have been some infringement of the Trades Description Act, or if not, at the very least, a new interpretation of the off-side laws.

Pushing on and past the ground, a small road led back towards the river, although there was little to get excited about. After a minute or so it came to something of a dead end. Walls, in disrepair, fencing and evidence of industry (dead or alive unclear). All a bit messy and desperate. Some of the walls were high and obviously old, but they had no context. This was definitely a classic ANOB – Area of No Outstanding Beauty. Acquired by corporations, industry and government to exploit natural resources or for strategic functions. Examples include quarries, power stations and military training facilities. Often a scar on the landscape but not always, and some have a rare beauty or are the home of a rare species. Not always inaccessible.

Frankly there was no “rare beauty” about this spot. A sign on one of the fences. A plea to whoever might pass this point but I couldn’t comprehend who that would be? The notice, a laminated flyer on A4 paper, explained that what was in sight were the remains of the Northfleet harbour at Robins Creek. An historic site that the campaigner/s (I’m not entirely sure that more than one person went into the production of this literature) was urging someone undefined to grasp the nettle and restore the harbour and docks, and seize the initiative to create a new residential, boat-based community here before all was lost. The area by the river was called Northfleet Hope. I suspected that there was more hope here than realism in the authors demands. No doubt, at some point in the distant future, there will be possibilities, and when eventually the industry disappears there will be speculators keen to create a new seafaring Shangri-La, but from the evidence on the ground it didn’t appear to be something that was going to happen in mine, or the authors time.

Concluding that there was no prospect of further progress here, I set on up College Road that led to the High Street. A sign to the station. I was sorely tempted but Gravesend was only a couple of miles on and a plan is a plan for a’ that. The High Street soon ran out of housing and shops. To the left now a substantial area dedicated to the extraction of aggregates for, I’m guessing, the purpose of cement manufacture. On the intriguingly named Crete Hall Road and where, just beyond, and near the Red Lion (a pub that seemed to have let the modern world pass it by) a directional sign on a post* indicated that National Bike route 1 led up a path towards the river and would take you along the shore east and west. Something worried me about this sign but obeying orders I proceeded along the track by the east side of the quarry, which was in full swing. On reaching the river it was pretty obvious that the possibility of heading west towards Dartford, as indicated, would be mission impossible, even for Tom Cruise, and that the route east was going to be a challenge at the very least. To be fair though, despite the envelope of industry that surrounded this point, there was a small sandy beach where a blue one person tent was pitched, and from where a set of mysterious footprints led along the sand to a ladder attached to the sea wall.

A number of thoughts. A homeless person perhaps? The evidence was there but if so, it was a risky location to pitch up, particularly when the tide came in. Someone’s fishing tent? Yes, a possibility, but no evidence of fishing equipment, and the set of tracks leading away from the tent lent a degree of intrigue. A migrant worker? The tracks indicating the start of a trek to a point of employment for the day perhaps? A person, hiding away, from authority, seeking a distance. Other possibilities, slightly less savoury perhaps? Maybe best not to speculate too hard, or too long. The photo below shows the scene and it feels to me that someone with a fertile imagination could use this image as the start of a short story or a novel (just putting it out there?). If that happens, and I find someone has – fear not, I won’t sue….well – I might!

Surprisingly it was possible to continue east along The Shore as Northfleet blended into Gravesend. Into Gravesend and onto West Street and the road took me through to the short pier next to the Three Daws pub, a fine white weather-boarded institution that has clearly had a footprint here for centuries.

I hooked up the bike and entered. A generous range of real ales was on display, and despite being very tempted, I took the soft option and went for a coffee. I’m not convinced that I’ve fully entered into the spirit of this venture so apologies to any bike and beer nuts out there – there won’t be any real ale reviews here. Sitting on the generous terrace and looking east down the river, past a bright red pained light ship that was moored next to a small park, it dawned on me that to fill the gap between Gravesend and Herne Bay was going to be more than a single days work. That was cool. The coffee was excellent and soon after I had found the station and was off back to London.

Back at London Bridge, and in theory just a 30 minute ride home, but on exiting the station a storm of stupendous proportions was lashing Tooley Street. The hot day was coming to a traditional London summer day’s end. I stood under the new awning, that along with other major work has transformed the London Bridge station experience, and watched in awe as tons of water lashed this way and that. Like a Hollywood film hundreds of people, dressed more for Rome than London, ran trying to find cover as sheets of rain drenched, and washed the streets and pavements. The few who had thought to bring umbrellas instantly regretted opening them to the elements and watched as they turned themselves inside out. Many simply gave up and trudged on soaked to the bone, but no doubt refreshed. Looking at the handful of brave cyclists trying to make a fist of it, I decided to wait it out. Twenty minutes later and a gap appeared. I took my chances and set off towards the bridge. By the time I was in the city, another band of heavy rain had landed and kept up the pressure for the rest of the journey. Ecstasy.

* Back at base, and with a bit of time on my hands, I pinged off an email to Sustrans about the misleading sign at Northfleet. Within a day there was a reply directing me to Kent County Council, and provided a lot of mind-boggling information on who was responsible for this, that and the other. It didn’t sound too promising. I found the website for Kent County Council and entered details. I wasn’t hopeful. The following morning my mobile rang. Unless I recognise the number, I don’t answer calls to the mobile, so I didn’t. There was a message though. From a man in the Highways Department at Kent County Council. I rang back and spoke to the caller. He knew the spot and said they’d get it sorted.

I probably won’t get the chance to check if it was done, or not, but sometimes you just know from the response you get, and the manner of the person that you are talking to, that some things will get done. Hat’s off to that public servant.  He knew his roads. Someone has to.

Bays, docks and the front line coast 

OS Landranger 179    –    25 miles

Just for the record, this part of my middle-aged mission, to cycle along the entire Kent and Sussex coast (it sounds impressive, but as I mentioned in the opening post, it’s really not), was the only one that didn’t begin with a train trip to the start line. It was also going to be the shortest, and therefore, in theory, the easiest.

The day before I had stretched my legs with the assistance of two very old
friends, and completed the section from Herne Bay on the north coast to Deal on the east. With the exception of one or two brief sections that took me up to the top of low cliffs, it was almost entirely flat. The day had ended at Deal, and in one of the best little pubs in the realm. Except that isn’t quite true. Not entirely the end of the day. 

Without the need to catch a train to the starting destination there was no pressure to get up early on the 2^nd August. And I didn’t. Not because the previous days cycling had taken a lot out of me (it hadn’t), but because after the few pints in the pub, we returned to the house, and in a long-upheld tradition, spent a few more hours entertaining ourselves with the music of our misspent youth through the medium of 45-year-old vinyl and Spotify. With Lizzy and Rory, along with the rest, blasting out our favourite tunes, the red wine flowed and we knew music…yes we knew music (until we were all mashed up and out for the count).

You can’t get away with doing that too often once you reach 60 and despite being hangover free, there was a slightly flat feeling as I said my goodbyes and started out south, past small fishing boats pulled up on the beach, and then past the Tudor fort to the right as you head out of Deal. It was just before 11 am. My earliest start. I had no concerns. Folkestone by around 4 pm, with a few contemplative stops with food and refreshments along the way. No problem.

• 

On a long cycle I rarely manage to drink more than half the water in the plastic bottle. I can’t explain this. I just don’t seem to sweat very much and prefer to supplement fluid loss with a cup of tea or coffee every couple of hours. It’s probably not a very healthy approach but often I don’t even remember I have any water and so just plough on. So, when I broke out in sweat after 5 minutes of slow cycling along the beach bike lane, with the motionless sea to my left and Deal, merging into the town of Walmer, on the right, I figured something wasn’t quite right. It might have been the weather. It had certainly ramped up a few more degrees on the day before, but experience hinted at a lingering shadow from the alcohol consumed the night before. Resting up the bike I posted myself on a bench, took a long swig from the plastic bottle, and then sat and looked out across the Channel for a while. Actually, quite a while. 

It was in truth a good moment. The wide shingle beach, fronted by marginal vegetation clinging to an existence at the south-east end of the country. Bright yellow flowers nearest the path and then various grasses and shrubs – petering out towards the water. The sea beyond sparkled in the mid-morning sun, and on the horizon, to the south, a thin ribbon exposing the continent. The sky above, nothing less than the cote d’azur. 

The time on the bench had helped. Perhaps somewhat sobering; but I couldn’t afford to sit around all day and had recovered some energy and motivation. Past the impressive fortifications of Walmer Castle and a mile or so on the path met a narrow road lined by a row of good sized houses. Eventually a gate. Although the path continued along the shore, the bike had to go inland and shortly to the junction with the main road through Kingsdown. At the junction I looked ahead at an imposing house sporting a flag pole in the front garden which flew a large, perhaps defiant, EU flag. It seemed fitting, albeit soon (maybe) to being an anachronism.

Nearby was a small estate agents window – quite out of place it seemed. I took a nervous glance, but was pleasantly surprised by the prices on display. I continued through the village (two beach side pubs duly noted, but not now thanks), and then along a coastal road that ended at Kingsdown beach backed by low, heavily vegetated chalk cliffs.

Another short stop, taking in the view and general ambience, which was generally pleasing, and then up a fairly steep road with signs of a large campsite to the right (mental note). Beyond the campsite a smaller road to the left which seemed to head back towards the sea. Something registered from guidance that my friend had offered earlier in the day. It was something along the lines of keeping on the Oldstairs Road. But instructions can be ignored, and sometimes should be and The Leas was too tempting. The lane continued up for a while until it reached the golf course, and then upwards still and past a small row of houses which must have had glorious views of the channel. By now, high up above the cliffs and the road started to peter out. Although the Saxon Shore footpath continued south and towards a large landmark of some sort, it was made very clear that cycling is was not permitted. An instruction that I was prepared to obey,  and so I stopped and abandon further exploration. Two men appeared a few yards away, animated and talking ten to the dozen, completely oblivious to my presence as they sought out butterflies that were flitting around the headland, and the men dancing around merrily like characters in a sketch from the “Fast Show.” The view was almost unbelievable. To the north the coast stretched away with Deal and then Ramsgate clear in the distance. To the southeast, and across the channel where numerous ships, ferries and smaller boats weaved towards diverse destinations and beyond Cap Gris-Nez and the sensational sandy beaches that, when the tide is out, run for miles towards Calais.

Years ago, 1998, with a few mates, and a day trip on a ferry to Calais with bikes, two of us set off into the hinterland. A few hours of lanes, hedges, villages, the odd beer and then we headed back in the afternoon after climbing to the chalk summit of Gris-Nez, just to confirm that the Nazi’s did indeed have bigger guns than everyone else. An aside within an aside. I recently heard that in the First World War, the Germans build some land based guns that were so big, much, much bigger than anything on ships, that they could fire a shell, out of earths orbit for f….sake, and up to 80 miles distance!!!!!! Accuracy was a bit of an issue, but by all accounts they shit the pants out of the population of Paris, which had hardly noticed there was a war going on and were so far behind the lines they couldn’t hear any firing…..well errr! Anyway, sorry but I was struck by this, particularly with the thought that had the Germans managed to break through to the coast around Calais and been able to deploy these monsters, they would have been capable of plonking these devastating shells into parts of southeast London – and how that might have changed things?

Back out now to the first aside. After my friend and I had inspected the crumbling concrete batteries at the Big Nose, we descended to the beach and set off back to Calais. The tide was out, the sand hardened as it had dried in the strong sun, and the wind from the west. No peddling required. Up to speed, let go of the handles, arms out wide…..and fly. Totally liberating. Back in Calais, the third and forth amigos, bike-less by choice, sat contentedly and outside the same bar we had left them at the hours before. Ah…but when in France eh?

But let’s get this back on track. Where was I? Ah yes, looking across the channel and watching two men leaping around butterfly catching (or hopefully just snapping). Sailing the bike back down the steep hill, past the club house and to the main road, it was a left, and then up a long lane which became a track that then worked up the dry valley of Otty Bottom (sorry, gratuitous and unnecessary I know). Some footpaths led off the track towards the high-cliffs to the south and inland well-tended fields stretched away to the north. After some steady climbing the lane wound into the outskirts of the small town, or large village, of St Margaret’s at Cliffe. I’d only been on the road for just over an hour but it felt like I’d been at it most of the day. Another pleasant place and surely with a hip café or two. Sadly no. A pub that looked a bit too upmarket for the likes of sweaty bikers, and a small shop that provided the standard range of processed meat, pastry products and cold drinks. I settled on some sort of vegetable wrap thing and chocolate milk, and then sat outside in the shade almost immediately regretting my culinary choices, which started to react negatively with whatever was left of the night before’s. That last glass of vin rouge was kicking back. 

Pit stop over I cycled back past the white wood panelled Cliffe pub/hotel and then arrived at a green with benches which, due to the elevation and perfect weather conditions, presented a view across the Channel that probably couldn’t be beaten. I needed to make a decision now. Head on towards Dover, or, in the spirit of the challenge, head downhill to the beach and bay. Still not equipped with a map, and relying on the technology in my palm, I opted to go to the bay in the hope that there was a route out that would edge the journey further west. As the bike tipped forward down the hill, I almost immediately regretted the decision. The road was steep, winding and went on much further than the phone map suggested. Half way down there was a sign to some tea rooms and gardens. I made a mental note, and with some significant hindsight should have aborted the further decent and followed the sign there and then. I say in hindsight because the following hour turned into a bit of what felt to be an unnecessary struggle, and also a puzzle that having now looked closely at maps and through Google-maps, could have been to some degree avoided. A better and more rewarding route does appear to exist but shucks, how was I to know at the time?

I continued the freewheel decent to the bay. Emerging from the tree lined road and directly in front was the beach and sea with car parks left and right. Beyond these, significant chalk cliffs rose impressively. It’s midweek but nevertheless pretty busy. And why shouldn’t it be? A very interesting and picturesque location that maybe not too many people know about. And maybe just as well given that the lane leading down from the village is narrow and winding, and I am guessing that on a hot bank holiday (okay, I know such things rarely happen, not least because the establishment only permits one throughout the whole summer, which is thrown in at the back end of August – so you can work out the odds) the late afternoon exodus is the stuff of local traffic alerts legend.

The man-made interventions here are a bit rubbish to be honest. Extensive concrete car-parks, a nondescript pub cum restaurant and a couple of other random buildings. But the heavily tree lined backdrop and the rising white cliffs to the north and south of the bay more than make up for this. Along with more glorious views across the channel to France, the stream of boats heading to and from Dover just along the coast, evidence of a partly sandy beach, and I wished I could have lingered here a while longer. Shame but further progress was necessary.

There was nothing about the climb back up to the village that I was especially looking forward to. It was getting too hot, but more importantly I already knew now that the road was steep, winding, narrow and overhung by a claustrophobic tree canopy. I can reasonably happily plod the peddles for half an hour or more up a steady climb on a desolate moorland hill, but something about the short heaves up chalk land cliffs or Down land scarps leaves me a bit cold. All that said, there was little option, unless I was prepared to walk (and I wasn’t), so the wheels slowly turned again.

Reaching the turn in the road with the sign post to the Pines Garden Tea Room, I reconsidered the options. Carry on up to the top on the road, or take a risk and see if there was a route through the woods further west? In the end I wasn’t convinced that taking the garden option was going to be a good use of my time and the decision to continue on the road was made. Along, and then a sharp and steep curve to the left, and thirty seconds later I was in slow and hot and smelly pursuit of the municipal dust cart. I guess that if all it was collecting was dust the vehicle wouldn’t have been an issue, but those days are long gone, and so with the stench of several tons of modern household waste oozing from the rear, and with no real prospect of being able to find the necessary speed to put on a burst and overtake, I was resigned to the rest of the slog being just about as hideous as it could be. And of course, it was, although very near the top the truck stopped to collect a bins worth and I did make it past, a frustrating 50 yards before the summit.

On towards the village, now wondering how far I needed to go before reaching a road that would get me back on track towards Dover, and low and behold, a road to the left. As good as it looked there was a nagging doubt. If it hadn’t been for a man standing outside the door to a flat beyond, and smoking a cigarette, I would have listened to the doubt. Instead I took a punt.

“Excuse me,” I called across the greensward, “is there a way down here that will get me to Dover?” 

The man gazed back at me, perhaps perplexed but more probably indifferent. After some seconds it was the indifferent response that I benefited from. “Yer,” he just about managed to utter, before taking another lug and turning away. Gee thanks!

As unconvinced as I remained, the man had given his verdict and who was I to reject the generosity of local peoples knowledge. The road seemed fine at first, albeit heavily fortified by speed bumps, vehicle restrictions, and a slew of the sort of signs I’d seen before that exclaimed privacy and something along the lines of “you’re not welcome” without actually saying it. I’d learned from previous experience that, as a rule, these sorts of warnings can be ignored, particularly if you are riding a stealthy bike. I carried on, encountering another refuse truck doing its business, but not representing such a hazard now.

As the housing petered out after a few hundred yards, the road deteriorated dramatically. The surface was more ruts than asphalt and some close concentration was needed. Along this track a couple of information boards directed trippers towards the cliffs and the remains of what seemed to be heavy duty World War Two artillery emplacements. With a bit more time, and maybe a little less heat, I might have taken  time out to investigate further, but I didn’t, and a short while later had reached the effective end of the lane. A large and locked metal gate was a big clue that I was running out of options, but a footpath, lined by hawthorn and trees, led south, and determined not to give up so easily, I ploughed on. Eventually, and after a few calf and ankle scrapes with aggressive brambles and nettles, I broke free from the path and onto another track. Beyond was the site of the South Foreland lighthouse (not to be confused with the South Foreland Low lighthouse, which with some later research, I now realise I could have seen too, had I been brave enough to take the Pines Tea House route, which would also have got me to this spot – but such a minor detail).

I approached the garden and spent a few minutes sitting on the grass looking out to sea, and trying to understand what the phone map was trying to tell me. A track led along the back of the site which was managed by the National Trust, but it wasn’t clear to me that this offered a further opportunity to continue west. In hindsight I genuinely don’t understand how I managed to get this so wrong. At home I checked on Google and without any shadow of a doubt the track would have been the right thing to do, but on the ground something, either physical, or subconscious, prevented me from progress. Defeated I reluctantly plunged back down the footpath, along the rutted road, over the numerous speed bumps, and past the door of the man, who in my head, had sold me a pup. He had gone. Maybe for the best. 

Soon afterwards I was on Upper Road, tracking the coast and riding more confidently west and towards Dover. Fields to the left with corn or wheat, or maybe something else, and Down land to the right. After a mile or so a small memorial by a gate at the side of the road explained that the field beyond was the site of a First World War airfield. Other than the two small granite plinths either side of the gate, there is very little evidence that Swingate Airfield ever existed. Some modern aerials suggested that there might still be some military usage but trying to imagine hundreds of Sopwith Camels landing and then taking off again towards a hideous debacle across the sea is now impossible.

Although the road tracked gently upwards at this point, beyond, the great tower of Dover castle emerged on the skyline. I felt now that I was making some useful progress and time was back on my side.

Over the brow of the hill and then a long downward, and very welcome, stretch that swept left and right and with magnificent views of the Roman/Norman edifice, and then with a turn to the left, the great harbour with boats and ships ready for ferry action. It was all looking good. At a sharp right hand turn a road to a car park and some signage. I stopped and took in the information that told me this was the White Cliffs, another National Trust managed bit of land. There was a paved path that tipped over the top,  heading down and aimed directly towards the port but at an angle that would have impressed an Olympic ski-jumper. I don’t recall anything in particular that prevented cycling down this path, but I had a fairly good idea what the capability of my brakes were, and that didn’t include testing them on this natural big-dipper, as tempting a shortcut as it might have been.

Passing up the opportunity to keep to my principles, which as a reminder requires sticking as closely to the coast as possible, I passed on the chance to kill myself on the downhill path and continued the road decent. This was all very enjoyable but I was mindful that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, even if it’s not clear when that opposite reaction will happen. As long as I was going downhill it didn’t matter much, but at some point I knew there would be a backlash. But not yet. Upper Road continued over the A2 and then through woods which then give way to open views of the town and the bastions of the grand castle to the left. More downhill and the ancient walls and ramparts whizzed by and in no time at all I’m in the heart of what is arguably the most important, controversial, divisive, culturally significant town in the country at this time.

Dover (my Dictionary of place names tells me that it comes from the Celtic – Welsh – word for water), but that it relates to the river Dour, not the sea (and apologies here too for the Portilloism), is a place that has been passed through by more of us than perhaps any other place in the country, with maybe the exception of London and Stonehenge. Day trips, booze cruises, short, and maybe longer escapes tout directions, school trips, people looking for evidence of the past, van’s and lorries with nations trade, soldiers sent to save the day, people following in the footsteps of soldiers who saved the day but never returned, cyclists off to raise money for charity in the French style, workers off to find new opportunities beyond the grey, and even trains being carried to Dunkirk until not so long ago. Maybe I’m overplaying this card. Cycling through the town centre, and onward in a general direction that would hopefully get me out again as quickly as I got in, Dover could be any number of towns with similar functions though, with Ramsgate in mind, there are perhaps less than there used to be. Despite it’s current, and historic importance (you just need to have a quick glance up to the castle to understand this), Dover has a bad reputation. In every sense it is defined by its geography and topology. The imposing cliffs and harbour, which Dover is best known for, fronts up a relatively small town that snakes north with its various neighbourhoods squeezing east and west up steep dry chalk valleys. A quick look at an ordinance survey map shows the intensity of contours crammed into a handful of square miles, restricting the residential and transport links into the valleys, and where the hills flatten out above, the institutions of state that have claimed the high ground over 2000 plus years. I know Dover a bit. I’ve “used” it like so many others, to get to Calais and beyond. In Calais as a schoolboy on a let’s go mad coach trip, a group of us, straying too far from the centre, were confronted by some port boys on the prowl for lost mutton. It was the first time any of us had seen a flick knife, not in a shop window, but being pointed at us by a lad (who in a display of exotic caricature was actually wearing a dark blue and white horizontally stripped top), in a manner that suggested we legged it out of their particular postcode tout suite. And, with the anti-English abuse still ringing in our ears, we did. On the boat back, at the end of the day, the responsible teacher, a veteran of these continental escapades, commanded all the boys onto the top deck and then to present baguettes. Duly presented, Dad’s Army style, they were examined, and where found imperfect, broken open and the cleverly inserted flick knifes purchased by the more adventurous, confiscated and then thrown over the side. Somehow this intervention, despised by the lads involved, would mean that another bloodless year would be sustained in our part of south-east London but nothing more was said. How much weapon-based paraphernalia must lie on the sea bed of the Channel at this particular point?

I’ve also taken children to the castle. Albeit almost certainly over two decades ago, and with details now lost forever. A better family day anywhere else would be hard to imagine (Alton Towers excepted). As castle experiences go, I’ll put it out there that Dover stands at the top of the pile.

And more recently, and because I happen to know someone who has some links, I’ve been to watch Dover Athletic. The stadium, known as the Grabble, sits a mile or so to the north-west of the centre and half way up a chalk slope. It’s neither up nor down, but on both occasions my only memory is of bitter winds sweeping across the ground from one direction to another, sending clouds of litter swirling around the stadium and into the stands, with our Kirsty belting out “Days” atmospherically on the halftime tannoy system. As grounds go, and shaped by the pressing topography, it’s as vulnerable as you can probably get to the coastal elements. A bit like the town as a whole, there is no escaping the exposure.

There’s so much to consider. So many questions about nationalism, internationalism, history, the present and the future that could be considered. A nation now split over issues that this small town, with its large port, seems to represent. Imponderables that may never be resolved. But this isn’t the time and place, and my aim was, on this occasion at least, and perhaps guiltily, to escape as quickly as possible.

A few streets on, and because it couldn’t be avoided, I crossed the A20 and then started tracking it on a bike path inserted between the asphalt artery, and the walls and fences protecting and securing the harbour and docks. It was stinking hot. The traffic, endless lorries included, was belching out toxic vapours and throwing up the dust of industry. No place to hang around but it seemed to take too long to get somewhere less offensive. I’m not moralising here. It happens to be an economic necessity and I’ve driven this road a few times myself, but until we come up with a better way to move people and goods around, or heaven forbid, reduce our consumption needs, being on foot or peddle here is somewhere not to be on foot or peddle for too long.

Eventually there was a roundabout and a sign directing cyclists away from the A20 and up a hill. The South Military then leads to the Old Folkestone Road which then heads west and gently up through the Aycliffe area, a modest sized estate that lies under the higher ramparts of the Citadel, which I am assuming is less well known than the Castle, perhaps because it’s been a prison and Immigration Removal Centre when its military uses became defunct. At the top of the estate, before the Old Folkestone Road peters out (who knows when it stopped being the new Folkestone Road and made redundant), another cycle sign directs me up a path and then across a footbridge that spans the A20 below. The road is scythed deep into the chalk. No tacked. Want a railway between Folkestone and Dover? No problem – when they reached this spot in the 19^th century they dug a tunnel a couple of hundred feet below where I now stood. Want a railway to go between Folkestone to Calais? Cool – they dug another much longer tunnel in the 20^th. You wanna road from Dover to all points west? Ah…that’s a problem. Let’s just cut a monumental scar through the Downs. The folks at Aycliffe? Never mind, it’s just another Council estate. Cheap and nasty, nice and sleazy. Take a minute here. Look back to the town and the sea. Look at the road and how it bends up the hill and towards the rest of the UK. Look at the geography here. It is unique. It’s also a bit scary. A bit overwhelming. Very claustrophobic, maybe even inhumane.

But not perhaps as inhuman as the bike path that lay ahead. Leaving the bridge I could see what appeared to be the next stage of the route, heading west and very much up the edges of the fields above the A20 and to the top of the headland beyond. The first short stage was tolerable, and before very long I was back on a short stretch of highway called Samphire Road, which was also accessed from the duel carriageway. At the end, if you were a motorised vehicle, you could re-access the A20 to your right, but for the more adventurous, to the left, the road tipped down into a tunnel that a notice informed led to Samphire Hoe Country Park. I was very tempted, but havering on the pragmatic side of calamity, and sensing that any easy decent would be countered some short time later by an appalling ascent, I gave it a tilt. The delights of the Hoe would have to wait for another opportunity, if it ever arose. I proceeded through some sort of anti-stolen moped barrier, which had the added covering of brambles, and started what was to become an attritional, and what felt like a very vertical climb up the hill on National bike route 2 (see map and white 2 in red box).

It’s quite hard to describe how bloody horrible this part of the route was. The path, to be fair, was asphalt. Given that the ground was bone dry this should have meant that despite the obscene gradient, a slow push in the lowest gear and sooner or later you’d get there. Instead, very quickly, and most annoyingly at the steepest points, the tarmac in many places had either disappeared completely, so you were now on dry earth, or worse, just partly destroyed enough that if the tyres caught the edge, instant injury might follow. Just partly destroyed ought to have been better than dry earth, but instead, largely because it was a haphazard mishmash of loose gravel, ruts, earth, cow pats, dry earth imprints of cows hooves, grass tufts and random stones, trying to peddle and at the same time trying not to fall off the bike, became a proficiency test of the most diabolical.

So, this was what I had encountered on National route 2. A completely unnecessary near-death experience in the midday sun. I eventually reached a flatter section and a gate to a field that I threw the bike up to and then propped myself against. I was exhausted. As I leaned heavily on the metal gate and gazed across the field towards the cliff edge, I was already composing an email in my head to go to the top of the topper most person in charge of bike lane maintenance. “Dear Sir/Madam, I recently had the the displeasure (and I use the word carefully, but without reservation) of flogging a proverbial dead horse up what is disgracefully and hilariously called National Bike Route 2. In the course of the…..etc etc. Yours in a humph El Colmado 57 “

Having thrown back a solid slug of water, and contemplating the next and final stage, I became aware of a familiar noise somewhere behind. A combination of crunching, panting and wheezing. Looking over my shoulder there was a fellow cyclist, panniers bulging, legs pumping and slowly climbing up the notional path and towards my position. Surprised at being joined by another human-being at this lonely spot I nevertheless summoned up the courage to say good-day as he brought his bike to a well-earned rest. A brief conversation started, me cursing the state of repair of the bike path, and he, rather dismissively I felt, saying it was nothing. I detected an accent, but in truth it could have been Geordie or another regional accent as far I could tell. A minute or so later, and a woman appeared on another bike, emerging from around the same hedge we had. Further “hello’s” and revelation that they were French (her English being better than his), at which point I started to apologise profusely for the catastrophic state of our National bike route 2. I felt, incorrectly of course, that I carried the nations shame for the state of disrepair on my shoulders. If I had had the strength I’d have probably sunk to my knees and prayed for forgiveness, but generously they seemed to shrug the ordeal off, bade their farewells and headed off, probably muttering worryingly about the English fool on the hill. C’est la vie. At least we had enjoyed the grand view back towards Dover and the Channel, and had made a slight acquaintance. I sent a text to my Folkestone contact to give a rough ETA, conscious that I was surprisingly behind on time. Figuring that it would be a bit weird to set off at the same time as the French couple, I stayed a few more minutes, and once fully recovered, started on what I knew was the last leg.

The path continued uphill but the gradient was less severe and consequently less arduous. On this stretch, set back from the cliffs by maybe 100-200 meters of Down land, I became aware of the distance climbed and the height of the land above the sea. Structures that could have been agricultural, but more likely military in nature, were evident and on one significant earth feature, covered in a layer of thick grasses, I spied the intrepid French couple having a nose around the sites. If they hadn’t been there, I would have probably stopped for a few minutes to do the same, but again it might have been a bit weird (in my head you understand – not necessarily in anyone else’s) and so carried on west.

One other unexplained feature on this stretch was what appeared to be an art installation. I can’t now remember what it was but I stopped for a minute and tiptoed across brambles to get a better understanding – which the reader will gather must have had no impact on me at all. In addition, and over the next few hundred meters, spanking new metal gates had been erected, seemingly randomly, at points along the path, and without any indication that they would be linked by any sort of fencing at some future point in time. I think there might have been three or four of these and the reason for their existence, other than they might also have been unexplained art installations, remained a mystery. Along with the fatigue, dehydration and possible onset of sunstroke, I began to think I was losing my mind and the understanding of everything I was encountering. I resolved to press on whilst I still had some marbles left.

Finally, on cresting the high cliffs above Dover, the vista suddenly opened up ahead and without any ambiguity, Folkestone and its harbour, lay three or four miles down route 2. What was beyond, and due to the exceptionally clear conditions, was the sweep of coast west and south, past Hythe, up to the softly outlined shapes of Dungeness nuclear power station, and then further on towards the cliffs beyond Rye that hide any view of Hastings. Something to the left called the “Sound Mirror”* was observable but what it was (art installation maybe) remained another mystery.

At the top of another less intimidating rise, was what I assumed to be a concrete Second World War gun emplacement that offered a brief relief from the mid-afternoon sun, and a chance to take in the view over the harbour and beyond. Unusually, it wasn’t full of the sort of detritus normally associated with similar recent remains i.e. empty cider bottles, candles, lager cans, used spliffs, needles, fag ends, rags, burnt out bedding and condoms (to name but a few depending on local variants). Quite a pleasant place in truth but not time to rest a weary head. After five minutes it was time to head on, and not long afterwards I was on a track, and then a road close to the edge of the cliff. Just as the road started to wind inland, a left turn and then on the small Old Dover Road, which I guessed at some point would have met with the Old Folkestone Road at Aycliffe before nature reclaimed major parts of it at the Dover end (sorry, you’ll need to pull the bones out of that).

Apart from the glug of water at the gate where the French couple appeared, I hadn’t had a refreshment break since the average shop experience at St Margaret’s, and if a pit-stop was to show up I decided that I’d take it before dropping into Folkestone. And moments later, oh joy, a sign to the imaginatively named Clifftop Café. No brainer. I was shagged, and consequently just too not bothered to go through the pannier to find the padlock, and more annoyingly the keys to the lock, so instead wheeled and bounced the bike down some narrow steps, holding back to allow people with dogs coming past the other way, and eventually to the café and terraces with the great views. There was only one thing on my mind and after a short wait whilst a huge plate of chips, fish and peas was being dished up for a family, I got my hands on an excessively priced cold coke and a packet of cheese and onion crisps and then retired to a bench and table outside.

The moment was a bit like one of those masterpiece Guinness adverts of some years ago (sadly probably decades now). Particularly the classic surfer ad where “he waits.” I waited, about two seconds to be precise, and then flicked open the tins lid and emptied half the can down my throat Popeye style. And then……I waited.

And, at the very moment I opened the packet of crisps, with the thirst quenched and in urgent need of a saturated salt in-take attack, coming at a trot down the steps from the car-park above, and smiling widely, my friends, the French! “Hello again. May we join you?” asked the woman.

“Mais oui, mais, oui,” of course they could and with a little bit of the Del Boy Franglais, a hangover from CSE French and various Calais day-trips and other French foray debacles, I welcomed them to my table, the others of course being very full, and seemingly lacking in fellow cyclists.

Once they had secured their overpriced refreshments, and we had established that my Comprehensive school French was, by a factor of at least 100, worse than their English, we got to comparing notes. Mine was nothing to shout about, but they told me that they were from a mountainous part of France, near Switzerland, where the weather wasn’t always too great in summer, and they had flown over with their bikes and gear on the Sunday just gone (in a plane of course). Arriving at Gatwick they were greeted by the full-on traditional English summer, and then cycled from the airport, in the heart of Sussex, all the way to what they described as “north” London, but was in fact Wimbledon (an insignificant detail in truth). In a summer when our collective memories will only recall wall to wall sun and temperatures in the high 20’s and above all the way from May until September, we will forget Sunday, July the 29^th. As we sat, melting in 30 plus degrees, I interrupted their narrative and asked if that was the day it rained?

“Oh yes, it did rain!” explained the man, with a jaunty laugh. “And it was very very cold too!” chortled the woman.

My jaw dropped at this revelation. Yes, I agreed to both, it had been a dreadful day. I knew this not just because I could recall being housebound by both the enormous quantity of rain that fell all day, and that it was bitterly cold too, but mainly because my two old friends back in Deal had spent that day on the London One Hundred charity cycle. Arguably the biggest cycling event of the year (when “the Tour” doesn’t touch our shores), it had been a catastrophic disaster for all involved and when I’d mentioned it to them the previous day, and before alcohol dulled the senses, I almost instantly regretted it. Three days after the event, it was clear that my friends had still been suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. Not only had they cycled the whole 100 miles, without crashing like so many others, but picking up punctures and freezing almost to death, they then got lost in London after the finish and added a further 17 miles before arriving at the house they were staying in for the night. A truly hideous experience that if it had been war survivors would have been mentioned in dispatches.

“Oh my God!” I said to the French couple. “I am so sorry, it was the most horrible day. Honestly, it’s been a great summer here.”

They laughed off the experience (maybe they too were suffering a sort of PTSD but in a more continental way to my friends). Moving the conversation on, as I thought best, they explained that they had spent the previous days cycling and camping through Kent and were now heading on down the south coast to see how far they could get in the next few days. Tonight, they intended to camp in Folkestone, though I wondered to myself where that might be. But they seemed to know better, and being such a jolly pair I didn’t want to interject any unnecessary spanners.

Conversation flowed. Clearly, we could have nattered and laughed on for some time more, but I had a deadline on a meal. I stood to go, and as we were saying goodbyes, and for no reason I can think of, I asked matter of factually, if they’d had any punctures?

“Oh yes,” the man said, laughing again. “Two!”

“Ah!” I said.

“Both on the journey to London from Gatwick,” chuckled the woman.

There was nothing for me to say. Of course they’d had had two punctures (not a bad hit rate), and of course both would have been in the worst weather Britain could throw at them this summer. I joined in the laughter (because what else was there to do?), and as I turned towards my bike looked around casually at the twenty or so other people sitting on the terraces and saw that most were looking at us and chuckling along too! It seemed we had become the centre of attention, and hey, why not? Essentially life’s just a gas. 

Not much further to go now, and continuing west on the Old Dover Road until it met with the New Dover Road (still keeping up?), and almost immediately signs directing to the south, and a Battle of Britain Memorial. One of the great things about not over-planning is that stuff like this simply jumps out at you from nowhere and honestly, how could I not pop in for a few minutes at least.

A small, well designed building housed, what I guessed, was a museum but which would have to wait another day, and beyond a large swathe of closely cropped grass heading out towards the cliffs. At its centre a small memorial with three paths leading out and designed in the shape of a propeller. A propeller, funnily enough, in exactly the same shape as those at the noses of the Spitfire and Hurricane parked in perpetuity nearby, their fighting duties well and truly over but still looking a million dollars.

Onward and up Dover Hill (anyone would think you were in Dover, not Folkestone) to a roundabout, and then downhill in the direction of the port. A basic principle went out of the window at this stage when an opportunity to get coast side again presented to the left, but I was a bit behind time now and to be frank, of all the south coast settlements on my mission, Folkestone is probably the one I know best, following a move to the town by extended family members a couple of decades earlier, and before the completion of the M20.

Under the railway and left, the road snaked round right and then followed the old dock railway line, sadly no longer in use now that the ferries, and the like, sailed away for good many years ago. At the end of the intriguingly named Tram Road, a left under the disused railway bridge and it’s the old town with its pubs, pretty little houses and the wooden shacks a remnant of a fishing industry.

There was nothing more to see here. The purist in me, which had been beaten out of me on the climb up the bike route leaving Dover, would have carried on a bit up the coast road to the golf course with an impressive whitewashed Martello tower at its heart. But the purist spirit was lacking and instead I headed up the Old (and I have to say, pretty jaded) High Street and on to my tea and dinner, before catching one of the Javelin trains back to St Pancras. I can’t remember which super-fast athlete was doing this leg of the journey (it would have been an irony if it had been Chris Hoy), but, and this is important to know, it completed the seventy odd miles twice as quickly as the one the day before when “Mo Farah” had had the indignity of limping from station to station along the north Kent coast like a narrow-gauge Welsh slate train on it’s way up the mountain for the first shift of the day. The disparity in service between London, and respectively the north and south of Kent, is staggering. There are good reasons no doubt, but whilst it is entirely appropriate to give the Javelin the title of the UK’s fastest train for the southern journey, it’s almost certainly a breach of the Trades Description Act if applied to the north.

I didn’t send the email to complain about the cycle route out of Dover. Not at the time at any rate. It’s now early December and whilst writing this up, and hit by a sense of shame at my negligence, I managed to navigate through Dover Councils web-site and left a question asking if they could tell me who has responsibility to maintain the route. Just waiting….

* For the record, and because I have a tendency to hindsight after the transcript, the Sound Mirror that I had dismissed as an art installation, and had passed without further investigation was, in sharp contrast, a device installed sometime between 1916 and 1930 to detect incoming air-raids on coastal towns. There is very little on the web about this and other similar installations, but an interesting link which explains more is below. Check out the 200-foot acoustic mirror or “listening ear” at:

Denge sound mirrors

That’s all this time folks. More on Route 2 another day!

(It’s more about the train than the bike)

OS Landranger – 179

34 miles

There’s about 15 minutes before the train leaves St Pancras International station. The night before I had purchased a dirt cheap, on-line ticket, that would take me one way to Herne Bay. When I logged on and started searching for journey options, the last thing I expected was to be repeatedly bumped by some of the stations I’d assumed would come up with the goods, like London Bridge and Victoria. Instead, and by dint of persistence, I was directed to St Pancras as the main option. Surprised to say the least, but nevertheless quite pleased because St Pancras is the nearest London mainline terminal to my home, I secured the purchase but remained sceptical that there would be a train to convey me in the morning.

And so there I was, with plenty of time, at a very familiar location, but without a clue which platform I was supposed to be at. My first mistake was to go to the Thames Link platform gates. Scanning the screen there was no indication that any of the trains over the coming half hour were going to be going anywhere remotely close to the north Kent coast. Under any other circumstances I wouldn’t have been that bothered and would have adapted to the situation by giving up the ghost and going home. Today however, was different. At around 2pm I was due to meet with two old friends at Margate. They were going to join me to complete the ride ending at Deal, and where they lived. And of course, just because I always seem to want to over complicate things, I’d calculated that I could start the day at Herne Bay and pootle along the north Kent coast as an added extra to what could be considered my ill-judged coastal mission. To be confronted by the absence of any means of conveyance to Herne Bay, or indeed Margate, was now cause for panic and irritation. I double checked the ticket which I’d liberated from the machine in the concourse and even without my essential glasses I could see that St Pancras was indeed the departure terminal. Five minutes later and after extensive roaming of the concourse and another digital board showed that a train did indeed exist but on the high-level platform.

If you haven’t been to St Pancras station since the 1970’s or 1980’s it’s undergone something of an image change. Back in the late 70’s I lived in Leicester, and arguably studied at the University. A few times each year I’d take the train from London to Leicester, either on my own, or with other comrades in learning from London and the South. Even through rose tinted glasses it’s hard to comprehend how, in the years when the old world was rapidly slipping away for ever, what a complete dump St Pancras was.

When I eventually managed to get the lift to the new upper level, and still with some time to spare, I came across a small pictorial exhibition installed to celebrate the stations 150-year history. Although by the 1970’s the old and extensive coal yards which collected, and then fed the homes and industry of the city, were gone, and the remaining land lay dormant for decades until the erection of the new British Library, the hulk of the old station, threatened with extinction, still echoed to the sound of clapped out diesels and stank of discharged fuel, piss and the smoke from a hundred cigarettes. Millions of red bricks were hidden behind layers of black soot and the only colour on display was the rust that clung to the massive iron structure, and the statutory yellow warning markings on the front of the handful of engines that serviced the half empty platforms where grey and mystified “customers” moved like zombies through the smog. And they say nostalgia is dead?

   “…the majestic St Pancras rose..”

At the end of each academic term (you’ll need to use your imagination here), everyone would head off north, south, east and west to home towns where infrastructures were rapidly crumbling and the established consensuses were breaking down. For the London crew, and unless a precious lift in an unsafe mini Cooper or banged out old Hillman Imp was on offer, invariably involved a long and featureless train journey through the midlands rain to St Pancras. If the buffet was open you were duty bound to drink a couple of tins of antiseptic lager or bitter to steal yourself against the reality of a few challenging weeks back home. Arriving at St Pancras, if you were with someone and still putting off the moment when the underground would suck you further to your temporary doom, a last Grotney’s beer and a damp pork pie in the station bar was mandatory.

What can I say about the old bar at St Pancras station? It existed, if that’s an adequate description, at the front of the station and between the platforms and the busy Euston Road that lay beyond. If you have in your head an image of what a “bar” looks like now, can I just say that at every level it is not anything like the reality of the old St Pancras bar. Not a single redeeming feature. In a station that was built to a grand, almost imperial design, every possible effort had been put into the bar to minimalise detail, impose conformity and Formica, and beat the living daylights out of the travellers will to live. To accurately date the last time the floors would have been cleaned would have required the skills of a forensic scientist.

If, after the beer, fags and crisps, you still had some unaccountable desire to continue on your mission, stepping out onto the Euston Road to get to the Underground was like an assault on your very being.

Some years ago I stood on the pavement at the junction of Euston Road and Pancras Road, that runs up between St Pancras International and Kings Cross station. It was sometime during a school holiday and crowds of people were pouring out of the stations and underground. A family emerged from the bowels of St Pancras. A little boy, maybe 6 or 7 years old, looked up and across the Euston Road towards the artistically painted bulk of a Victorian bank building on the south side and as his jaw dropped shouted “Wowwwwwwww!” His slightly older sister, who was holding his hand to prevent him being swept away, looked down, and in an almost faultless Jenny Agutter voice simply says “Yes. It’s London!” She too was in awe. The innocence and genuine disbelief of the moment made me chuckle but my own memory of the same experience back in the 1970’s held no sense of innocence. A few months away in the provinces was always enough to soften the edges, and weaken the spine enough to receive what felt like a metaphorical kick in the groin when stepping out of the station into the thronging mass of “old” London.

“The first train to Herne Bay? Let’s see. Ah yes……it leaves in 32 years sir! The bar’s by the main entrance if you’re thinking of waiting.”

As I stood looking at a grainy black and white picture of the old shell, with a Peak class locomotive in the foreground, and one of the “Age of the Train” 125’s beyond, and with the memories of the petrol stained platforms pouring back, I tried to equate what the station (International of course) had metamorphosed into now. In truth there was nothing much to ruminate on other than to bless and thank the planners, designers and visionaries who somehow saw beyond the stagnation, and over several decades (visible to me most days at the time), pulled out all the stops and created this new masterpiece.

1^st August 2018, and a couple of generations on from the gloom, and I am through the automatic barriers and heading for the carriage where they allow you to place the bike outside the toilet. It happens to be the first carriage on the Javelin, which is advertised as the fasted train in the UK. I don’t know how many of these there are in service but in that fine railway tradition, each has its own identity, and the theme chosen to name them are contemporary top UK athletes. On this occasion it’s Mo Farah who’s going to whisk me to Herne Bay. Note to self – when back email the operator and see if they’ll agree to paint the faces of the athletes on the front of the engines.

Though I’d arrived with plenty of time and, I thought, in advance of the usual scrum, I had badly misjudged the position. Not unlike the start of a sprint race, hoards of people, many pushing lightweight prams, were dashing from the barriers and heading for any empty seating still available.

Reader: can’t you just get onto the bloody bike trip?

Errrrr…hold your horses. These are important details. I managed to get the bike on the carriage before being overwhelmed by humanity and duly strapped in the bike. One of the features of the WC, come bike carriage, is that it also trebles up as the carriage for wheelchairs and people with prams. Small children were shepherded on, and at least two made an immediate wild-eyed dash to the toilet, curious to find out how the door opened and closed and in the process releasing noxious fumes every couple of minutes until the point where the custodian had managed to insert the pram with the younger child/ren between the other prams cramming the isles and reasserted some control. Under less stressed conditions this carriage arrangement is entirely practical, given the close location to the WC but, as the train eventually started to pull out of the station, the reality of the situation was beginning to hit home. A squeeze was already underway by the time the fasted train in the UK headed north and then snaked to the east and onto Stratford International (which of course was anything other than international until a handful of years ago). Although I had a drop-down seat, the fresh wave of humanity clambering on at Stratford, and including a middle-aged woman with her bike, more pushchairs and more kids than in an average school playground, it was coming under intense pressure to be surrendered. I gave it up. A conversation started up with the biker woman during which we concluded that it was indeed the school holidays, that it was a lovely day, and that we were on the first train after the rush hour with the super knocked down family fares. Concluding also that a serious misjudgement by ourselves must have occurred.

At Ebbsfleet (International of course), with the train now across the river and in Kent, the doors opened. No-one got out. Many more got in, including heroically a group of women with their children, buckets and spades and one pushing a double buggy with two very young children who instantly started screaming. As the bodies piled on in, and complex internal manoeuvres of other buggies, wheelchairs and bikes took place, the realisation of how hideous the next hour on what was obviously the slowest Javelin in Kent, sank in. The biker woman was now squeezed towards the end of the toilet zone and she’d given up on the idea of making it to her meeting in Margate on time. I had now been edged round to the door, the bike no longer attainable even if I had felt the need to rummage in the pannier for nothing in particular. What was blindingly obvious to all was that the previous night we had all been on-line and found the bargain bucket, first after the rush hour, only two remaining, tickets to paradise. For most, paradise would be Margate but at this moment it seemed to be a long way off. No doubt thoughts of the return journey, when the kids would be stuffed with toffee apples, exhausted after endless running, splashing and falling over, still high on throwing coins into flashing machines and then screaming for their beds, would be nudging into the worried heads of the mothers (just saying – there were no dad’s) and older children who knew the score from previous indulgence.

After Ebbsfleet any sense that this was the fastest train in the UK quickly fell away as it  stopped at nearly all the stations lining up along the route. Each time more humans bundled on and more internal reorganisations took place. Access to the toilet was now almost impossible. At one point a young teenager, with a walking disability, did make a successful attempt, but not after having to squeeze, climb and push through the sea of people, wheels (of all sorts) and dirty looks that had become the on-board assault course. Almost certainly nothing like this was happening in first class, wherever that was, but strikingly two men, with clip boards and an obvious association with the train operator, stood with the crowd and observed all of the carnage unfolding as we crawled on through Kent, and then over the Medway and further east. Perhaps there was nothing they could practically do, or it wasn’t in their JD, but it felt deeply uncomfortable that they made no attempt throughout to intervene, even if it had only been to help the people most in need to get to and from the toilet by the use of some helpful or calming words. They never came, and to my shame I later regretted not saying anything to them.

With a few stations to go before Herne Bay (and if at any point you see the words “Herne Hill” instead, excuse me for the error but I’m south London at heart and can sometimes get me words muddled like), I get a text about nothing in particular from a good friend who was also on a train but going from Ashford to Hastings. I reply:

“Currently on train to Herne Bay sitting outside toilet. Very unsettling.”

Shortly after a reply comes through to explain that the Ashford to Hastings train is entirely civilised and they are enjoying the fine views of Romney Marsh and hoped I would survive. I replied:

“This one is hell on earth and no space to swing a bike chain though am now quite tempted.”

There’s a reply with a smiley emoji which I interpret in a number of ways – all probably incorrectly.  I send one last text a bit later.

“I won’t text again but actually this is awful and probably breaching all health and safety.”

And that last point is important. Trains in the UK are of course inherently safe but accidents do happen. The number of people on this train, with a very high number of children, including toddlers, was excessive. Add in the mobility paraphernalia (which of course included my bike with all it’s pointy metal bits) and then a crash or derailment, at any speed, and the consequences would be obvious. If I thought that this particular train was bad, others have told me about their own hideous experiences on other lines and on much longer journeys this summer. You then have to wonder at what point the train operator and the companies that sell the tickets, whether they are slashed down affairs or not, look at the on-line traffic and say, enough! Full. No more space. It may end up being a disappointment to some, but at least it would be clear and understood. Why should trains be any different from buses and planes? Presumably you’re not allowed to cram standing passengers on the top deck of a bus for a reason, and the same for planes (not the standing on the upper desk of course). It is actually possible to run more trains. It’s not easy, and how it’s coordinated is an art form, but it can be done. Although you can, of course it may not be as profitable. But if there’s demand, and without any doubt on this hot and sunny first day in August, with the school holidays still fresh, there clearly was, maybe some advanced planning and a bit of imagination could have eased the chaos. Just some random thoughts – probably impossible.

At Herne Bay, and with the improbable task of getting both me and the bike off “Mo Farah,” (who, let’s face it had just had a dismal run) achieved, I silently thanked no god in particular that I would not be joining the herd back to London later in the day. Inhaling deeply and checking all was okay with the bike, I left the station and headed off, skirting a park to the left and then down to the seafront.

 Herne Bay station and escape from the network

Now late morning, I had nearly three hours to complete the route from the truncated pier at Herne Bay to Margate Station, where two old south London friends, now living the life in Deal (and with at least one of their off-spring living ironically in Herne Hill), would, if they made it, be waiting for me. The previous day I’d communicated my intentions for the day to another friend. He replied “Herne Bay, Christ you won’t linger there.”

And he was right, I didn’t, but putting those negative vibes aside there was nothing offensive about Herne Bay. Its long promenade held some appeal and heading east there were some good quality Georgian and Victorian buildings which culminated in a pleasant looking white panelled pub called the Ship Inn, which seemed to mark the end of the sea front. A wide concrete road continued along the beach for about a mile. The beach, a mixture of shingle, sand and numerous groynes. A perfect day and an almost motionless sea (I think it’s safe to say that by Herne Bay you are beyond the Thames estuary and into North Sea waters). Every so often a commotion on the surface some yards out would indicate marine activity. On the road and on the beach, there was much less activity with only a small number of people straying this far from the chip shops and cafes. Pleasant indeed but no seals!

 SPQR and all that

Low sandy cliffs ahead ended the prospect of further wheeled progress along the front, and so up a winding road and west through a residential area with bungalows and modest housing. Then east again along Bishopstone Lane and a gentle gradient down through a wide grassed area leading to the edge of the cliffs before the dominant feature of  Reculver church towers rose ahead. It had been three hours at least since a warm refreshment so before making further hay I decided to stop and have a coffee and light bite at the modern, wood framed visitor’s centre café. There didn’t appear to be any kind of fixed community living here. A large static caravan site reaching inland suggested a place for weekend breaks and longer stays for retirees but that was about it. I ordered a coffee and a cheese and onion crepe (sausage rolls don’t seem to be on offer which is always a bit of a disappointment on a bike ride at around this time of day). The coffee arrived first and was surprisingly good but annoyingly gone by the time the main event materialised.  The immediate concern from my perspective was that for some, perhaps parochial reason, chef had decided to garnish the savoury delight with a chocolate drizzle. I’m confused and put off by this touch, but a tad more disappointed by what a bland affair it is. Bland or not it was instantly attracting the interests of others, because within seconds of the first bite I was busily beating off a constant stream of wasps that honed in from the car-park in an attack formation not unlike Zero’s at Guadalcanal in ’42. With this new threat, and conscious that I had previously been stung by curious wasps that zone under the table and seem to get some kind of kick from seeking a landing site on ones thighs when wearing shorts, I was anxious to get on with the task at hand. Now, forced to eat quickly and in the hurry, I make a rookie error and napalmed the roof of my mouth, which had the knock-on effect of nullifying what little taste the dish already held. The crap crepe is gone in a minute and then so am I. Riding on, and simultaneously caressing the scorched tissue that lines the pallet with my tongue, I’m soon at the ruins of Reculver.

What’s left of the Roman fort, which was built early in the conquest and would have had a commanding position standing on, albeit, relatively low cliffs, is limited. In fact, what is left is probably just the area that is flat and grassed and which is now covered in impressive mole hills. Indeed, about half of the flat area, where legionnaires would once have lingered, has long been washed into the sea. What stands above ground is the remains of a large church constructed in the 12^th Century, with two dominant towers. At some point it came with a significant spire too, but like the Roman fort, efforts to sustain a congregation and religious footprint were surrendered a couple of centuries back when the cliffs eventually, and inevitably, crept too close. You could, of course, conclude by this that all good things come to an end eventually. That’s one possible way to look at it, though for the sake of balance there is of course an alternative take on these outcomes. For better or worse, coastal dynamics have shaped human behaviour here, which for both the Romans and the Ecclesiastical has been something of a terminal retreat.

 Commanding the heights – Reculver

Within a short distance I’m back on a coastal walled path with fields and marshes to the right and the sea, beach and it’s associated groynes to the left. It’s more than a path and the concrete makes for easy going. The land to the south is, in historical terms, relatively new. To the east is the Isle of Thanet, and the Roman soldiers at Reculver would have observed a very different landscape to the one now. Thanet then was an island and with a wide channel between it and the mainland. Now there is a board that explains how the present landscape emerged when the channel started to silt up over the centuries that followed the Roman withdrawal, and at its centre is the River Wantsum.

The word “wantsum” for me, and no doubt many of my generation, comes with some historical baggage. As a teenager growing up in south London, at some point around 1970 or 1971, I lost interest in hanging around with the local hooligans, who at the time happened to be skinheads, and started to grow my hair. This was as much a result of a shift in musical taste as it was because the main skinhead thought it was a good laugh to throw lit “bangers” at me and other weaker cult members. An act of undying loyalty to the head “skin” rested in the victim being stupid enough to laugh off the incident and even suggest that it would be funny to have another firework thrown at them. Sadly, I lacked the same gumption and required feelings of loyalty. After one banger was flicked casually over the main skins shoulder and bounced off my head, before igniting a foot or so away, I was prompted to make some sort of pathetic excuse about needing to go home and then spent the next few weeks desperately trying to avoid the marauding band of morons. At that time unfortunately, like ants stretching out their foraging tentacles in all directions, there were skinheads every-bleeding-where, and on the hunt for any stray and elusive Greasers. It was only a matter of time before someone, always backed up by a large group of similar minded, would sniff you out, normally in an alley, or on exposed waste ground, and utter the words of no adequate response. “Oi mush, you want some c…?” It never mattered much whether you did or didn’t “want sum” but somehow I managed to avoid any major thumping’s through my teenage years, although of course many didn’t. There’s no explanation for this, but as I headed towards the Thanet towns, and past the trickle of water that’s now left of the great river, I thanked my luck stars that the merry moon stompers of south-east London seemed to have bigger fish than me to fry in the early 70’s.

At the end of the alluvial plain, the new underlying structure makes its first appearance above land. The dominant bedrock of much of the southern coast is chalk. At Minnis Bay, the first of a series of broadly similar small resorts that track the north coast, low white cliffs rise past the beach and a large man-made tidal pool, where exuberant children dangle lines with weights on into the water and then squeal with utter delight if they are lucky enough to pluck a crab.

The good news is, that whereas in other places where the chalk presents a major barrier to coastal progress, here at least it appeared possible to continue along the concrete path at just above sea level. Rounding the Minnis Bay headland, which in truth is Birchington-on-Sea, the cliffs loom above, though they are hardly imposing at about 50ft high. That said they do make an interesting sight as they curve in and out in tight little recessions, as if crimped in the time of giants. Whether this is a result of natural processes or human intervention it’s not clear, but either way they have more recently been tamed by man to prevent gravity pulling large chunks down on the heads of others. As the route continues towards Epple Bay the hulks of some old concrete structures, seemingly nailed to the cliffs, jut out. Military, residential, pleasure? Maybe none, or all of these. All are long since abandoned, but what purpose they may have served in their day is lost.

At this level I don’t see much of the townships beyond, but where they do appear all look much like the other and crowd round the several bays that mark this section. Epple Bay follows Minnis, then Westgate and finally St Mildred’s. At Westgate, I get told off by a woman enforcing etiquette. She’s quite right. I have strayed into a “cyclists dismount” zone without noticing any warning signs. I apologise and dismount immediately but she isn’t impressed. Just another cyclist wanker I’m sure she’s thinking. I could tell her that I’ve dismounted and pushed the bike through the three previous zones since Minnis Bay, but why should she care?

All are entirely pleasant locations with low rise housing leading away from the cliff tops (I had to come up at one point, I think just before Epple Bay), with extensive grassed areas and tree lined roads that head off into the hinterland. Each bay offers reasonable beaches and each are heaving with day-trippers, and I guess locals, enjoying the incredible weather. So, what’s not to like? Well, in fact not a lot, but I need to keep the sun in focus, and all these places face directly north. So, it’s okay now, but through November to February the sun is barely going to touch the horizon to the south, never mind kiss the beaches.

Call me a fussy old sod, but yeah, as they say, I want sun!

I’ve managed to keep a track on time and rounding a headland at Westgate, ahead is Margate, defined by its iconic solitary concrete tower block. I say iconic, but I’m guessing that there are many other descriptive words that could be used to define it.

The tower acts as a focal point, a bit like an ancient lay line, but without the ancient. I continue on the coast until just before the town centre.

I think, from the best of my memory, that I have only visited Margate twice before, though there may have been a third time. If there was the details have been deleted.

The first time was in the mid 1980’s when my then partner and I took her young nephew on the train and enjoyed a long day in the sun doing the sort of things you do. I liked it, and I liked the sandy bay when the tide was out as the sun began to set. Some years later, in the early 1990’s perhaps, another visit with at least one of my own children and extended family. Bemboms amusement park was the highlight, especially the ancient roller-coaster, though the puke inducing pirate ship ride, that I’d hoped would do the full 360 degrees up and over number, instead only rocked the victims back and forward to the heights of nausea and was enough to end the fun for me at least.

Now I think about it there must have been another time, and I think it probably was a day trip but on my own. Sometime after Benboms had closed I’m guessing. I remember how depressed Margate had become. A familiar process that was going on at many other UK resorts at that time. Most had taken a severe pounding during the 1980’s and 90’s. For every surviving chip shop and amusement arcade there was one or more empty or boarded up property with “For Sale” signs outside. Somehow, most of these resorts, and seemingly that includes Margate, have made something of a comeback, or maybe, as with Margate, some sort of reinvention (Tate that). Whatever the final tally is, and the historians have had a chance to do the maths and work out the pros and cons, an endearing memory of that time when venturing to UK coastal towns during those complex decades, was the flag of the EU flying proudly, or showing on the development notices and infrastructure schemes. I wonder what that meant in real terms? I doubt we’ll ever know. As I put on a sprint and headed up towards the station I couldn’t see any joyous outpourings of logo love for the EU now, but the tower block, which may or may not have been inhabited, bore a massive message that someone had managed to plaster on the windows of the 10^th floor. A simple, unambiguous message. “B******s to Brexit.”

 The tide was in at Margate but the message was clear

I’m a few minutes early for the rendezvous but my biking friends were already in situ, refreshed and raring to head off home to Deal. I’m somewhat less enthusiastic for this quick getaway, largely because I am a lesser being to my friends, who not only enjoy their cycling, but are beyond the concept of it just being a way of life. I grab an Italian lemonade and pour it down my neck. We have a good catch up natter and within 15 minutes we’re on the road and dropping back down to the seafront. Disappointingly, the tide is in.

  Café to café – Thanet

Onto Margate’s promenade and past a modern, some might suggest brutalist, building that looks like it has an industrial purpose, perhaps linked to the processing of fish. “That’s the Tate gallery,” my friends enlighten. Gosh! No time to gawp. We crack on with more crenellated chalk cliffs to our right before heading up to the top and along higher paths that begin to bear to the south-east, and with views of the English Channel opening up.

Botany Bay hove’s into view as we round a headland with an undateable flint fort of some sort in a field to our right. The cliffs are higher here and the bay itself is obscured by a chalk bastion that has been separated from the mainland and which bristles with evidence of some old industry or, more probably wartime defences. Beyond, on the next headland, and above the bay that can’t be seen, another sort of fort dominates the skyline. We close in on this rapidly as we are forced to leave the coastal path and take to a road. Passing the structure it reveals itself as an imposing Victorian pile behind high walls, with no sign to give its purpose away and so we scoot on towards, and then into, the outskirts of Broadstairs.

  First line of defence – Botany Bay

Now, whilst I had no preconceived notions of what I might discover on this second venture into the unknown, I already had some idea that whatever the north Kent coast was going to throw up, it was unlikely to grab me by the throat and say “You must live here!” And in reality that proved to be the case. All the bay towns between Minnis and Margate were, as I have said, pleasant enough, but all had the feel of day-trip destinations. Obviously a lot of people lived in and around but I didn’t feel any sense of connection. But Broadstairs? To the best of my knowledge I didn’t recall having been there but I did have some vague notion of a historical heritage. Almost certainly Dickensian.

We stuck with the road until well into the suburbs and then took a short road back to the seafront. I was keen to take some of this in but being in a three-person mini-peloton seemed to up the ante a tad, and by now we’re cracking on. I’m the least fit. In their local hands I’m bringing up the rear, following their each and every turn as we then head back into the centre of town, past a bevy of what looked like interesting pubs, and then through to the High Street. It’s possible that we passed some shops that on another day might have sparked my curiosity, but if we did they were but subliminal snapshots that time may or may not splice into my subconscious in an unguarded moment.

At the time it mattered not, but with some hindsight (this will be a reoccurring theme by the way), and following a recent visit to Tate Britain, which seems to be littered with paintings of the Kent coast, I now realise that I may have missed a trick here and if time and resources allow, a return trip maybe on the cards.

  Broadstairs High Street and hanging on to the peloton by a thread.

We continued through narrow streets and then navigated back to a road running along the cliffs with the sea now firmly to the east. A wide path separated us, across manicured grass, from the road and an eclectic range of houses with expensive sea views. The pattern continued for quite a while, and then without any particular warning, we had moved from Broadstairs into the northern suburbs of Ramsgate.

I know for certain that I have only ever been to Ramsgate once. A very long time ago, when my hair still attempted to show some interest in life, and when some bright spark at work thought it would be a good idea to drag the entire office on a long weekender to Brussels. I’ll spare you the details, and my own blushes, but the first night required a stay over in a hotel in Ramsgate before a morning boat to Dunkirk and then a dash to Brussels with just enough time to sample too much beer and then back to Blighty the next day. It was only now, as we cycled into the town, along a road that looked down onto the large harbour complex, that this life episode re-emerged into the present. A memory that most certainly would have been consigned to the “empty bin” of my mind. Anyway, as I say, I won’t elaborate, but a bit of this and that, and out popped a sort of relationship that lasted, perhaps ironically, until around the same year that the Sally Line ferries between Ramsgate and Dunkirk also severed ties.

No time though for nostalgia, but just enough time to stop in at Gerry’s Coffee House, located in a small modern square behind shops on York Street. With a lot of seafront options open to us this felt like an unlikely and unpromising spot to have the afternoon break, but my friends assured me it was for the best. And to their credit they were spot on. For one thing we were in the shade, and having been exposed since mid-morning that was no bad thing. And secondly, the staff in the café were a so solid crew. Witty, knowledgeable and it seemed just genuinely pleased to have our company. The coffee was top notch too. I almost feel a little smiley coming on at the memory 😊.

I’d like to say at this point that I was keen to crack on, but in reality, I could have easily put my feet up and called it a day. If I had been on my own I probably would have, despite the fact that, including the five miles to St Pancras in the morning, I had only covered around 30 miles so far. There was another 10 or so to go. But that would have been a dishonourable ending. In truth it wasn’t an option at all and 20 minutes after sitting down we were off again, past the extensive harbour complex which in turn gives way to a small beach, and then back up along the cliffs where again large houses, mainly detached, are set back beyond wide greensward’s. Soon we have to turn inland and through a small park which pitches you out into Pegwell. The road continues inland so there’s little sign of the coast here, but what we can’t see from the bikes is what the map will tell you is Pegwell Bay.

I mentioned earlier that I recently took a couple of hours out and visited Tate Britain, primarily to track down two pictures, “Our English Coast (Stray Sheep)” by William Holman Hunt, and “The Fighting Temeraire” by Turner (another posting, if it ever gets written). I nearly missed the Holman Hunt because it was crammed in amongst too many others in the biggest gallery in the building, and I missed the “The Fighting Temeraire” completely, because, despite the fact that Tate Britain seems to have nearly all Turners paintings, the last time they had this one was for a few months in 1987. Too bad, but what I also came across was a picture unknown to me by William Dyce called “Pegwell Bay, Kent – a Recollection of October 5th 1858.” I took a photo of it and here it is.

 Pegwell Pay approx. 1858

Now, that’s a less than shabby looking place don’t you agree? Fashions will have changed but that’s a spot for a morning and evening constitutional at the very least. Except, when I was looking at this picture in the gallery I was struggling to place it in any context to what I had seen on the trip. Then again, because the route had taken us away from the coast at this point, why should I have ever seen it? So, and just to satisfy my curiosity, I resorted to Google maps. And, low and behold, it seems that someone has been very busy with a bucket, spade and bulldozer!

 Landfill ahoy

Sorry, I appreciate that this is a minor and possibly irritating diversion, but this was quite a shock to me when I saw the aerial view, and although it probably makes for an interesting and no doubt diverse ecology, I think the town Council ought to have a little think about its identity and maybe re-brand as Pegwell-on-Landfill. The bay is long gone, along with the failed attempts as a tourist resort to rival Ramsgate, which unfortunately led to the initial land reclamation. And that is a shame because there is emerging evidence that the bay was the site of both the first, and then second, Roman invasions. I don’t know what old JC would make of it now, but hey, he don’t live around here no more. Oh….and just to add, the first Anglo-Saxon landings may have happened here too? That’s a lot of history to cover up but what the heck, we have to get rid of our rubbish somehow. Don’t we?

At the top of the Google image above you can see the track that took us further inland and eventually back on the coastal road above what’s left of the old hover port (I can hardly believe I’ve just used those words).

There’s no time to stop now as the last leg seems to turn into a sprint to the finish line at Deal. But Sandwich still has to be achieved and sadly there’s no coastal route here. The Sandwich road runs alongside the estuary of the River Stour (which, along with what would become the Wantsum, once formed the old sea route that separated Thanet from the mainland). Soon we are on a main road at Port Richborough which is heavily industrialised. Signposted are directions to the Roman fort of Richborough, which along with the fort at Reculver, would have controlled the southern and northern entrances to the now lost channel. At least there is a bike lane here, so some progress then. A left at a junction and we head through a modern industrial estate. Firstly some sort of dump site but then it’s high-tech, high value buildings and high as a kite chemicals. It’s called Discovery Park. There’s not much sign of a park but you can sense it’s cutting edge stuff. My friend said it reminded him of a Quatermass landscape and I could sense the abstract notion.

Soon afterwards and we’ve crossed the Stour, leaving the Isle of Thanet behind and with the old Sandwich town wall and north gate in front. Quite a contrast to what we’ve just survived at Discovery Park. I have another friend (I know, how can this be you mutter?), who would like to relocate here. He’s told me that there’s at least nine public houses (two still with bar billiard tables), a tandoori restaurant, a cricket pitch and of course the river. Yes, well, all very nice, but where’s the blinking sea? It must have been here once because why would the town be here in the first place?

But there’s no time to investigate Sandwich further. I’ll come back another time perhaps, but for now it’s onward, down the river a short way and then along country lanes and paths that flank the famous golf course. It’s possible that there’s a coastal path we may have missed but I’m being guided by professionals and time is getting on. Nevertheless I can’t help feeling a sense of mission incomplete. Oh well, it’s all just lost Ballocks at this stage anyway.

At Sandwich Bay, with it’s handful of small houses, we are near the front again but the narrow road takes us back inland and with another golf course to our left. We’re nearly there but my energy levels are running low, despite the fact I know it’s almost over. The imaginatively named Golf Road is the back door to Deal, and after the first few houses we turn left with the sea opening up in front, and we’re now steaming along the flat beach road. It’s a beautiful evening and the French coast is carbon sharp on the horizon. Deal is different. The long strand of housing and small shops that develop as we get closer to the pier range widely in date and style. Georgian, Edwardian (but not too much) and appropriate modern. There’s nothing not to like here. It’s a place that anyone in their right mind would want to be. It is as they say “the business,” and as we group up to smash the last few yards I feel like Geraint Thomas being dragged towards the winning line by his faithful domestiques.

It’s done.

After a very quick and delightful shower that washed away the layers of sweat accrued during the long day, and then after an energising fried meal, we marched with resolute purpose to the Just Reproach (where you’ll be ejected, and even possibly arrested, for even just handling your mobile phone) for a few pints of some of the best bitter you’ll ever drink. The memory of the dreadful train journey to Herne Bay, just a few hours earlier, was extinguished. It could have been a lifetime ago. Indeed, it probably was.

The first trip

 OS Landrangers 197 and 198

30 miles

11:45 Victoria Station and I’m setting off to Littlehampton with the bike propped up in the space next to the only toilet on the train. It’s a feature of most modern trains that the bike spaces are located immediately adjacent to the toilets with the automatic sliding doors that very few people, including me, understand how to use. I’m sitting on one of the three drop down seats adjacent to the WC which is emitting a faint whiff of urine and trying to remember what the purpose of the journey is. Something about having a cycle from Littlehampton to Brighton and keeping as close to the coast as possible was one, but the other…?

It’s later than I’d expected due to chronic traffic around Westminster and I have missed the target train so I’m not going to be heading out on the ride till at least 1pm, but hey, there’s no rush. It’s past mid-summer but the days are still long and today is hot, though not as staggeringly hot as recent weeks, and because the days are long I don’t care much about when I’ll eventually get to Brighton.

Approaching Brighton from the north, the train snakes to the right, half a mile or so before the main station, and sets off to the west and through the various communities hemmed between the south Downs and the coast. I won’t list them but one or two (such as the almost rural French style white buildings at Portslade) have interesting looking stations, though little else that captures the imagination. This is largely because the railway tends to pass the back ends of the towns rather than the potentially more interesting coastal sides to the south.

Eventually the train winds round to the left in a big arc that is bound by the river Arun on the right (with Arundel a couple of miles to the north) and a pretty meadow leading up to a new and relatively attractive housing estate on the left. A small group of people are in one of the fields flying model planes and some cows munch away in the next. The train pulls into the terminus at Littlehampton and within a minute or so I’m by the side of the river and cycling south to the front and past the various blocks of flats that have sprung up over the last twenty or so years and which have a certain appeal. Then I remember. Is this somewhere I could live? Well, it’s a good start, but what else is out there, to the east? Let’s see…

Quayside Littlehampton 

At the front, where the groynes begin, and then march east in an almost unbroken sequence to the Thames estuary, I pause, buy a cup of tea and take in the view. It’s a weekday and just before most of the schools have broken up but it’s still busy and a refreshingly diverse mix of people and ages are strolling along and fending off gulls when chips and ice-creams are over exposed. The beach even has evidence of sand. It’s not the sort of pebble desert that other places on the south-coast can be. A small fun fair near the entrance to the river and a few cafés and knickknack shops on the front and a large greensward behind with the town set back to the north. It’s alright. It’s alright but is it really going to be the answer? I’m thinking maybe not.

   

 Littlehampton to the Rustington Belt 

On the bike and heading out of town along the front it’s a sparse view. Not unpleasant but not saying very much to me and the shingle increasingly dominating the beaches. Before you realise it, because why should you, you’re in, or at, Rustington. A slight inland detour but shortly back to the front and cycling along a path across a wide strip of grass with housing to the left and low dunes hugging the beach to the right. I reach a small car park, where beyond there is a gap in the dunes and low scrub leading to the beach. I dismount, curious to see what the beach looks like at this point. Standing aimlessly, and dithering over whether to lock up the bike (a simple but tedious task that I try and avoid at all costs, not least because the key will inevitably be in a pocket of a light jacket that has become entangled in the spare tyre and stuffed tightly into the pannier), or just hoick it up the dusty path, a voice calls out from behind me. I turn and see a very healthy-looking woman, probably in her early 60’s and clearly just off the beach. “I’m leaving now if you’d like to lock your up bike here?” It’s a kind and unexpected gesture but I mumble something to the effect that it’s “okay” and “thanks.” But I’m nevertheless troubled by something and as she’s turning away I ask her rather randomly whether it’s possible to continue cycling along the coastal path and if so, for how long?

The woman is totally engaged on this matter. What was troubling me, nagging at my confidence, was that although the phone map seemed to show a continuous path to the east, some of the signage I’d noticed along this stretch seemed to indicate (let’s be clear – “warned” is a better term) that this was somehow private land and that whoever owned it was giving us mere mortals reluctant permission to tread upon their hallowed turf and tarmac. It wasn’t clear what sort of penalty may apply, but I had a feeling that down the line I was, at the very least, going to get a jolly good telling off from someone in tweed.

“Oh yes you can,” she confirmed. “All the way through but they don’t like it of course.” Hmm! I quizzed her on the specifics. “The people in the posh houses further on into the estate. Just ignore them. I do.” Given that she herself struck me as being quite posh I wasn’t entirely sure what “posh” meant in her eyes but she was genuinely helpful and likeable.

The houses had increasingly become larger and more imposing and it was dawning on me that the whole area was some sort of private estate, almost certainly having emerged over the years on the land of a previous country estate. Land that may have been annexed by the Normans, a priory, or after Henry burned down the monasteries and farmed out the fields to his mates (HLG). Now in the hands of the proletariat?

I thanked her and started to push the bike further up the track. “Oh, and by the way,” she added as she liberated her bike from some metal railings, “don’t be intimidated by the warning signs. Just keep going.” I thanked her again, but she once more emphasised, as if it were a message more appropriate for Jason and his Argonauts, not to be put off by the signs and barrier gates.

After a quick look at the beach, with its prettily painted huts and pleasant pebbles (it was evident by the few but dazzlingly healthy older people who were sunbathing between the dunes that this probably was quite an exclusive spot), I cycled on along the grassy path with the sirens message ringing in my head. Determined, and with renewed confidence, I was going to plough on. I was not going to turn back.

 Pleasant groynes and pebbles at Rustington

I turned back about a mile further on. I’d passed through an area where there were low trees and shrubs hiding the beach from view on one side and a long, high redbrick wall that looked quite ancient on the other. I figured this wall had maybe once been a feature of the country estate. Behind it, rising higher and higher as the route progressed, projected the upper stories of houses that stood in their own extensive grounds. Some of them would not have been out of place on The Bishops Avenue in Hampstead. I was now feeling uncomfortable and a bit out of place. At the eastern end there was a gate that looked a bit of a challenge and a couple of older women with large dogs who had the bearing of uninhibited “shouters” about them (the women, not the dogs). Despite the clear message from my mentor back at the beach huts, I bottled the barrier and slowly retraced my wheels to a gap in the walled fortifications and a path leading towards a road within the estate.

 No Parasan

I proceeded up the path, trying desperately to appear invisible and snatching glimpses to the left and right trying to identify any prying CCTV. I reached the road and within a few minutes was back at the barrier, but on the other side. The path had clearly run out on the beach at this point but a bit further back up the lane there was road leading to another part of the estate with a barrier gate. “Don’t be intimidated by the warning signs. Just keep going,” danced around in my mind. I was not going to be intimidated and as the peddles started to turn again and the bike set off towards the half-opened gate my eyes alighted on a white sign with black writing and red symbols. “Private Road – No Entry – No Public Right of Way.” In other words – bugger off! Why didn’t it just say that?

What a wimp. Maybe some sort of inferiority complex was creeping in, but whatever it was it was enough to send me further inland and eventually through some streets that led me back to the beach at Angmering. A nice spot with a café but no further progress was going to be possible along the beach so back inland and along a road called the South Strand and then it all went a bit wrong.

I can’t recall exactly which streets I took after this, and may well have missed a more coastal opportunity, but what with the intimidating signage, the useless visuals that the phone map was giving me and a rattled self-belief, I began winding further inland. At one point I followed a track to a field and then across the field on a footpath, which at the end gave two options, both of which appeared to lead nowhere of obvious use, and so turned back and then onto more roads that were not only taking me north and away from the coast, but to my horror back west.

This was still the private estate, judging by the endless warning signs and gated roads, but whereas some of the properties by the sea were big, now I was entering the world of enormous. Not all, by any means, but quite a few which were on a scale that I wasn’t quite sure I was equipped to understand. Not Virginia Water or Runnymede of course, but certainly higher up the aspirational scale. Architecturally many of the buildings reached back to the 1930’s. Large, and no doubt built for the local captains of industry and commerce in a world before television, where space alone and a transistor radio allowed a necessary detachment from the nearby community hubs. But there was something else going on here now. Those 1930’s homes, the sort you can find in the suburbs of all towns and cities…well some of them were now going through a transformation, a contemporary make-over. You can see this process almost everywhere now. It’s a process that is largely under the radar. Unlike the huge new apartments going up in the cities, or the new estates emerging on the fringes that strike you immediately as tangible signs of change, what’s happening to the houses in these 1920’s and 30’s enclaves is a slow metamorphosis that most of us won’t even know has happened. It’s piecemeal. Someone dies, or just moves on, and the home that’s been in the family, maybe for several generations, passes to a new clan. The new clans, it seems, have more dosh than the last lot. They don’t hold the same historical associations. Now they look at the buildings and the sites (or garden for the more traditional amongst us) and reappraise the possibilities. Maybe that 1970’s extensions looking a bit jaded, or just too damn small. No problem, it can be doubled in size.  Actually, those City bonuses coming through in the Autumn?

Hey, why tinker? Why not just knock it down and start again? New visions, new scales, new heights, new wiring (maybe not even required), new burners and enough hardscape to take the weight of several new and vintage motors. John….we’re not just dancing here, we’re creating new nirvana’s that are literally burying the jaded old Shangri-la’s.

I don’t know how long this process is going to take? Maybe decades, but I am sure that if the money still flows, and if we could revisit these places in a hundred years from now, the only 20’s or 30’s buildings still in these districts will be solitary mock Tudor affairs, set in a well-manicured public space gardens, with a café in the last 1970’s extension that still keeps out the rain, and open to the public Wednesday’s to Sunday’s. Possibly listed too. Archaeologists who come along a thousand years from now and start sifting through the remains (assuming current predictions – by then located about a mile out to sea and covered in silt) will no doubt conclude that there was an early 20^th century middle to high status culture that built with brick, wood and Bakelite, but which in the 21^st century, and through some economic wizardry that magicked money out of nowhere, was replaced by an uber status class, that with the new magic wealth and the power of more advanced technology, kicked the rustic, and possibly dowdy, quite literally into the long-grass (that also coincidentally disappeared around the same time under a lava flow of tarmac and concrete drives). I don’t know who, or what sort of people live (or maybe don’t) in these splendid isolation’s but something doesn’t feel quite right. The phrase “An Englishman’s home is his Castle,” is slightly tongue in cheek I suspect, though clearly many people do take it seriously regardless of the size or location of the home in question. And who am I to judge? Here though they seemed to be taking it literally, though the new emerging style is possibly more 21^st Century Chateau, or maybe chic Russian mafia bunker, than the traditional Norman or Tudor model.

Well, whatever this social commentary may or may not imply or mean (and I will try and stay clear of it unless seriously provoked), I didn’t have to worry about it. As I headed further west and north I knew for certain that even if I was tempted (and I wasn’t), the means and wherewithal were seriously lacking.

  Nothing of obvious note

After some meandering west, and then north, I cross the railway at Angmering, then along a slightly nasty section of the A259 (a road that will feature again), and then south again to Goring-on-Sea and I think missing out Ferring – although I could be wrong on this. One way or other I was now back on the coastal road heading east with the gentle prevailing wind. Before long Worthing emerges. Time to take a coffee break. I don’t know Worthing, or if I do it doesn’t register on this occasion. There’s a pier and a few standard seafront things which provide chips and ice-cream but nothing really stands out. I’m a bit disappointed but just before the town peters out there’s a café that looks a bit different. The Coast Café des Artistes stands alone, but also stands out. On a broiling day sitting outside and looking out to sea, you appreciate that with a little bit of thought, a bit of panache perhaps, and a bit of clever design, the quality of life can genuinely be enhanced (if you can recover from the slightly manic scrum when placing your order at the till).

 Water features – Lancing to Portslade

Refreshed and onward. Brighton is visible now but there’s still some way to go. A good bike lane on the front, between the sea and the A259 gets you to Lancing in quick time. One thing the Coast Café des Artistes that hadn’t provided was a decent wodge of grease, bread and tomato sauce that I felt my body needed to continue the journey. Fortunately, at Lancing, I fell across an open window in an old building advertising a comprehensive range of lard-based products. In competition, and in what seemed to be a revamped pavilion of some sort, was what looked like a very fancy restaurant but I couldn’t be lured (time, money stuff). Not exactly fast food, but eventually my number was called and the huge sausage roll arrived and then disappeared in seconds. Looking directly out to the horizon the new industry of the sea stands in regimented lines and stretches for what looks like miles. I’d passed a point a short while earlier where the power generated by the wind farm is channelled to the land. As I ate I counted the structures. It was hazy but I settled on a final figure of 127 slim symbols of hope. Sadly very few seemed to be turning. Maybe, like Staines, the town could look at a re-branding exercise. Maybe a change of name to reflect the new. How about Lancing-at-Windfarms? It was time to stop daydreaming and for this Don Quixote to get back on the bike and cycle down the last section. Sadly, there would be no modern-day Sancho Panza to keep me grounded, and remind me I’m only mortal too.

And so, shortly after the cholesterol bomb, and at a point almost equidistant between Lancing and the outskirts of Shoreham-by-Sea, an unexpected feature begins to appear on the landward side of the sea wall. A long, but not very wide expanse of what seemed to be shallow water with reed beds and sandy dunes to the south, and lined on the north by a string of modest looking homes, each with the back garden abutting the water and many with small boats either resting on the lawns or tied to stakes set into the mud or sand below. This was so unusual I stop to take in the vista, the bird life, and even read what is quite a lengthy information board that explains that the feature is a shallow saline lagoon formed by sediments deposited by the River Adur. I could go on but figure that if the reader hasn’t already fallen asleep, or has skipped onto another site, or even both, then any additional trivia about the saline lagoon could be the proverbial straw or reed, but just for the record it’s called The Widewater, which if it isn’t already, ought to be the title of a Paul Weller song.

Oh my God, it was suddenly 4:35 and although Brighton looked in touching distance I had a memory of cycling some of the next bit a few years back and knew that there were still some good miles to go before I’d get some Brighton Rock. Pounding on, and eventually I’m tackling the almost straight Old Fort Road. A largely residential area with a wide range of types, styles and sizes, there’s almost something of a Florida Keys feel to the place. Houses are evenly spaced, as if this was a highly planned location, and those to the coastal side of the road will have exceptional sea views. At one point, through some marginal vegetation, there is a path between the houses that leads to the beach. There’s another information board, next to a bus stop, and where someone has dumped an old tyre. It tells you what you might be able to see. All pretty standard stuff though I don’t recognise, or even believe, that there can be such a thing as a Wall Lizard, until some days later, in the spirit of investigation, I looked it up and find that indeed there is a European Wall Lizard and that some have established roots in the south of England. As a voracious lizard watcher (always on the “what I must see?” list when abroad or just messing around on a common), this is big news, and indeed they are bigger than our indigenous specie. Sadly there wasn’t time to hang around and meet a few of the guys so it was back to Old Fort Road and east again to the tip of this landmass where err….an old fort stood! Shoreham Redoubt no less. There will be one or two more Redoubts en-route around the coast, and as alluring as the word is, there wasn’t going to be enough time to stop and inspect.

And so, after inadvertently cycling into the Adur Sailing Club, and the consequential dirty looks received, I turned tail and now found myself cycling along the river side through Sussex Wharf, and once again heading west. Properties here were new, and being new and shore-side, inevitably four or five storey apartments, each with a balcony and a view of the Adur and Shoreham to the north. Quite pleasant as these sorts of developments go and just a little bit of me wondered about the possibility. What looked like a relatively new footbridge took me over the river, with views to the east and west, and into Shoreham. A busy town which looks like it may have a “scene” of some sort, it’s river front high street is more old than new. On the surface it has some appeal but with the shingle beach out of sight and beyond the houses on the spit to the south it misses the coastal feel I’m thinking about.

 The last leg (s)

Onward on the A259 (you can’t escape it here) and to the right, on the eastern side of the River Adur drain is the industrial area, based around quays, warehouses and boat yards, and where a few cargo ships are lurking. Some are being loaded with the products of the hinterland, which in this area, and a lot of others along the south coast, is sand and gravel. Timber is also piled high in places and some of the boat yards look like they may be operational. Climbing out of Shoreham and then into Portslade, where the predominant housing type seems to be almost entirely Council, the road is covered in a thin veneer of cement dust and when looking more closely, the same material colonises walls, lampposts, roofs, footpaths and even the verges where grass improbably sprouts. It’s not that bad in truth but it does mark out that the area is industrial and still active.

Shortly the road drops down and starts transitioning between Portslade and Hove where there is a sharp contrast between the working harbour and the Western lawns and boating ponds.

There’s not a lot to say about Brighton and Hove beach that most people don’t know already. It’s monumental. With the largely Victorian and Edwardian backdrop the shingle piles up in terraces from the point where the shifting land plunges into the sea. Like a Bronze Age hill fort, a bastion. I lock up the bike about a mile short of the east pier, trudge across the shingle and finding a spot that looks relatively flat and less intimidating than other parts. I put down the pannier, and a thin tartan travel rug designed for such occasions, and then lay down hoping for forty winks. Twenty minutes later I’ve given up the fight. Comfort is an impossibility here. There’s a comedian from Croydon called Alistair Williams who tells a neat joke about Brighton beach. A French family arrive from London on the train. On the walk down, they buy buckets and spades. When they eventually reach the front, the son, who has in his excitement run on ahead, turns to his dad aghast and says “papa ou est la plage?” He then follows up with a family from Manchester in the same position. A very different response and possibly funnier.

 No rest till the pier.

It’s a brutal beach. I cycle the last mile or so along the super bike route that flanks the road and the wide greens which divide the front from the town and before heading home drop down to the beach just before the pier. Cafes, bars and restaurants. It’s still early but already buzzing. There’s a stall selling seafood and I buy a cola and a punnet of prawns. I find a table a few yards from my bike and put down the punnet and drink. I sit down but immediately decide to bring the bike closer (this is Brighton, not Rustington). As I walk towards the bike a moment of intense panic sets in and instinctively turning around a gull has already landed on the table. I run back shouting and waving my hands and (probably embarrassingly so) making sufficient impact to discourage the bird on its mission. Now, clutching the prawns, I return to the bike and manoeuvre it back to the table. I’m now back in charge of the situation, despite the continued interest of the gull and its mates. And relax. The cola is cold and hits the spot. The prawns are good too and top up body salt. Reflecting on the day I considered what I’d learned. Littlehampton appealed. Several plus factors and a sense of diversity, although being so far west could create some unintended fractures with family and friends. Worthing was quickly discounted. Despite the arty café it appeared to lack cultural dynamism. The various features that made up Lancing to Portslade, with the hub at Shoreham, held some appeal but maybe not enough, and the sea at Shoreham was too far from the town. And Brighton and Hove? Well without doubt it’s unique and bubbles with life. The Jam played their last Beat Surrender here so many years ago and despite this, the Lanes, the youth, the playfulness and diversity of the town, in many ways being a little Camden on the coast, is precisely what I want to avoid. There’s a lot more to see and maybe the place for me is further east?

Winding up the day I peddle up to the East Pier and then through the Lanes and back to the station. On the way I’m passed by hundreds of people, dressed casually and heading for the beach after work or maybe college. And why not. What a great way to end a long hot day if you’ve been slogging all through it. Twenty years or so ago I visited my brother for a couple of days when he was young and starting out in the working world and living in a squat in Brighton. After an interesting weekend, and with a day off from work for me on the Monday, I put off returning to London and went to the beach instead. It was a late September, or maybe even an early October day, but the weather was still holding out. I paid for a deck chair and soon started dropping off. As the sun warmed through, and with the sound of sea churning shingle, I slowly forgot my own worries and considered that if at exactly that moment I didn’t wake up again it would have been precisely the most perfect way to go. It wasn’t in any sense a negative thought.

At the station I’d missed the 5:15 by some margin, but why should I care? More annoyingly I managed to miss a later London train mainly because of the perplexing array of ticket options at the machine. When I eventually worked out that it was going to be cheaper to buy a day return (it was now past 7pm), than a single ticket, the train was leaving, but hey I’d saved a few quid and if I did get to London, and suddenly had a burning desire to spend the night back in Brighton, I could take in a West End show and then train back afterwards to find a “soft spot” on the beach and with a view of the stars. But then again, such a thing, as I already knew, probably didn’t exist.