Dungeness: Saturday 7 April
It was a beautiful blue-sky day when I peeked out around 6am......got to London Bridge by about 9.45am...excellent turn out......sixteen of us got on the Ashford train at 10.12 (just under £10 return with a rail card). Seven Greenwich cyclists, one Southwark Cyclist, six off the London Cycling Campaign rides list, and two who’d heard direct from me.
The police sidled up and asked me what we were up to. They didn’t take much convincing that we weren’t off to join the National Front march to liberate Bermondsey, my back yard.
The really grubby beat-up train got to Ashford slowly at 11.30am....it was pouring with rain and very windy. That didn’t help the horrid ring-road way out of Ashford at all. Despite my carefully watching the end of the ride, two people in the middle of the peleton just disappeared and we never saw them again. (Sunday phone calls reveal no alien abduction, simply wrong turning...both safe, sound, sad).
About three miles down the road I realised that the couple I was riding along with at the back were really struggling with the headwind, and I had to say to them that I couldn’t hold up the bunch for them. (Today they thanked me for my frankness and admitted that they were glad to give up. Turns out they found a rustic pub, a big lunch, and enjoyed the Grand National – takes all sorts – and went home happy. Blowing Wind came in third at 16-1).
The weather improved rapidly as we dropped onto Romney Marshes: fields, water, lambs, and please keep off the footpath signs everywhere. I was very disappointed that the only closed churchyard we saw was St Clements at Old Romney.....one of those ineffectual looking straw and disinfectant sleeping vets was right across the road. I will get to see Derek Jarman’s burial place one day.
We got to Dungeness in warm sunshine around 2pm via several small villages. I wanted to go via St Mary’s Bay for a swim but, it was a day of fascinating group dynamics, at the crucial junction had to follow some who’d gone straight on.
It really is one of the strangest landscapes in Britain as the Guardian travel section co-incided that morning, with one of the most isolated communities too.
The new Sustrans waymarkers looked like burnt-out scarecrows.
Down the bumpy concrete road past the nuclear power station, we got to the Britannia pub at 2.30pm for a late lunch. I’ve only been to Dungeness four times and keep confusing the Pilot and the Britannia. I much prefer the former but the other does a good mix of ok food. Most of us had the large cod and chips for £7 and a couple of drinks. Both pubs do food until 5pm.
Then a quick look at the sea by the power station (with its own sewage plant) and the gulls by the hot-water outlets and the miniature Romney Hythe and Dymchurch steam railway complete with drinks carriage and nice woman station master who said yes, we do take bikes, phone first if there’s loads and we’ll put another van on. Then Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage. Pitch black jumbo-beach hut with bright yellow windows and lovely found-object garden.
Disappointed not to see any swallows or swifts but chuffed to spot pair of wheatears in really good colour. Summer visitors too.
On then along the excellent sea road and wall past much more conventional English seaside bungalow sprawl (what genteel isolated poverty behind those net portcullises? It seemed like a good idea when we retired....) to Dymchurch. Where we stopped to look at the low-tide sea a few hundred metres away. And woman with flowers in her hands walks up to me smiling and says “Look....the kids have ruined them again. My son shot himself here but they keep spoiling the flowers...and his wife won’t let me see the children...and she’s pregnant again and him not dead 18 months.......It’s not right”.
I had to do it. We stopped a bit further on and several of us walked to the sea. I ran in, went right under, swam for 30 seconds and got out. So cold.
About 4pm by now so we headed up to Ashford. The marshes are dear flat but Ashford is up what used to be the cliffs and there were a couple of steep ones that came as a shock. I followed the road signs back into town so we got stuck on the dreaded ring road again. We got the 7.30p train. Even grubbier than before and I had to force a jammed loo door to let myself out.
Some of us got out at London Bridge, some of us stayed on until Waterloo East because I was meeting friends in the excellent Windmill in The Cut. Where we stayed until closing time.
A good day.
62 miles not 50 at a gentle 12mph. Beautiful weather most of the day.
Next time best to avoid nasty Ashford and go to Folkstone and head west onto the Marsh, and come back from cute Rye.
And on Sunday my bird-book tells me that they were black-eared wheatears. Twitch. Twitch.
And only 30 did the march. None of them cyclists.
(Stopped over in Richmond last night and did the 18 miles here for an 8.30am in 75 minutes. 14.4mph in solid traffic that only freed up east of Greenwich centre. Pleased. Agenda? Mayor’s Bike Ride).Barry Mason.