The Last Resort Ride
Monday 28 May 2001
23 people. 12 resorts. 50 miles. 1,000 person miles per puncture.
One gloriously long day. 2,000 words.
After a wonderful joyously lovedup memorable Friday night.......................
..................central London Critical Mass two-tribes moment as 400 cyclists blended into a buzzy swarm of 200 roller-bladers on the east side of Trafalgar Square around 8pm, and a much more sedate Sunday helping the MacMillan Cancer Charity Cutty Sark to Woolwich Arsenal sponsorship ride/walk (60 involved — nicely successfully event...overweaponcentric do at Arsenal — excellent new old bit of path though) followed by 10 of us riding on to Erith and the Darenth then back along the river until the remaining four of us wrapped up over early evening beers at the wonderful Wibbly Wobbly.........
.................I was getting worried. It wasn’t simply my paranoia....too many people were talking about doing The Last Resort Ride....and the weather was improving.
Will we all get on the train?
Monday. Got to Victoria about 9.30am after dash home for forgotten map....met 3 en route.....a dozen of us there already. Much uniformed guessing about cheap deals and ignored advice to me not to get Whitstable returns. Several got in the ticket queue armed with railcards and Richard bought the lot as more bikes kept arriving. 20 cheap day returns at £10 odd each after third off. 21 of us got the 10.05am. We filled both guards vans. Ooops. Some people had got their own tickets. Refund due.
Two more got on at Bromley south, just. Bikes in the corridor. The guard could have thrown them off, but didn’t. The train was packed.
First exciting view of the sea was Seasalter, a couple of miles before the train got to Whitstable (1) at 11.15am. Good mixed group of 23. I needed to show people the working seafoody harbour, and at once people were sliming the famous 40p oysters down their throats. I just had to tell novices that they were still alive.
Quiet beach-hutted seaside backroads to Herne Bay (2)..loads of amusement arcades, good sand and the tat we were searching for. Odd structure half a mile offshore turned out to be the end of the long gone Victorian pier. Along the prom and out of town onto the Wantsum Walk......"dead end" someone shouted but we just rode on under the lovely cliffs. A mile later we’d lost 4 people. They’d stayed on the road.
A very new cycle path was busy with bikes from the local caravan parks and we mobiled to meet the errant 4 by St Mary’s church in Reculver (3). Twin medieval church towers visible for miles high on the eroding cliff by the Roman fort....a need to move the church again soon. The 4 were there. With beer.
It was sunny, hazy, warm and the westerly wind was perfectly behind us.
The cliff path dived down onto the Wade marshes and a 3 mile bike path with great marsh lagoons and sea views. This is the silted rivers Wantsum and Stour that was in Roman times a kilometre wide and islanded Thanet.
Minnis Bay (4) had golden sand, loads of sunbathers and a busy carpark.
The concrete path was a cliffsaving 10 metres wide. At Grenham Bay Roger’s back tyre went with a bang. Several seized the chance for a swim. In before the tyre was off. Very clear water, and cold. Couple of minutes was enough. There was a broken spoke too so our best mechanic knitted in one of his lighter ones in. (Swarfega wet ones are useful new cleaner, Halfords).
The path went through the wide sandy bay at Westgate-on-Sea (5) where beach-hut owners had coned off the path as if they owned it. We sailed through.
Tiny St Mildred’s Bay was home to a jet-ski cafe and £1 a minute rental office. Nicely ghettoed is one way of putting it. A dozen of the noisey dangerous smelly antisocial selfish gasguzzling seavespas buzzed about looking for swimmers and other marine creatures to scare off. Dolphins etc can hear them 10 miles away. (ed: pet hate number 23 showing).
The undercliff path detoured up onto the cliff top for a couple of miles and swooped down into suddenly its Margate (6). Wow. Bit like riding into an impoverished Vegas on Sea with dandruff and a comb-over. Much smaller than I’d thought. (Cultural break; a couple of us (shame on the rest) had, natch, seen in empty and apt Barbican Pit flics Paul Pawlikowski’s 2000 bleak film about a Russian woman and her son who fly to Stansted to met a man she’d met in Moscow. The rat had vanished. The pair get sent to Stonehaven with the latest batch of assorted asylum seekers. Stonehaven is actually Margate off-season. There was the horrendously ugly grey concrete 70’s tower block bristling with mobile phone antennas that was the hostel, there was the crumbling wrily-named Dreamland amusement arcade and bingo parlour, there was the phone box that the newcomers queued at for hours to make their hopeless phone calls. Didn’t spot the all batter/no fish chip shop).
Margate beach was packed. It was 2 o’clock. We’d earlier agreed to eat then in Broadstairs. A quick vote showed, I think, that I was the only one not desperate to eat. And now. Half of us shot several hundred yards up the hill out of Margate, the rest sat tight. I shuttled diplomatically. 6 decided Margate was not for them, we’ll meet them in Broadstairs. Back down the hill the mood had changed. We’re not in fairground mood, it’s too horrible here, let’s move on. Good job I didn’t have my uzi with me.
Broadstairs
Thoughts of food seemed to evaporate. Excellent path then lovely leafy lanes took us on, past Fulsam Rock, Walpole Rocks, Palm Bay, Long Nose Spit, Botany Bay, the sparkling chalk arch at White Ness and the pompous Castle Hotel (now flats. I mean apartments) and then the B2052 and white clifftop lighthouse and 30’s private estates of mock-tudor houses and down down into Broadstairs (7) with its cozy cliff-backed bay and harbour. Lovely place in the bright sun. Dickens Bleak House holiday home surveyed all. Crowded as expected but not jammed. It was now 3.45pm. We locked up and agreed to met at 5pm. The end of the harbour caff came up with a seafood platter (to many gritty chewey snaily things) and good chips for £3.20. The sea was wonderful. Warm enough for a swim from the beach round the harbour and ladder for jumping clear of the wall into the biggish waved sea. Then a beer. Some lunched in the seafront pavilion and watched the tea-dance waltzers. Grabba lycra. A couple decided to get their own train home.
Cliff path ride out of Margate on to Ramsgate (8) and massive ferry harbour under the high cliffs. One of us was now struggling with backache and, slowing the pace too much, gamely offered to Oates it home alone.
Just outside Ramsgate at Pegwell Bay (9) we picked up the new opens 10 June Viking Way Sustrans regional route 15 (Sandwich to Margate) signs for the first time as we moved from chalk cliffs onto the marshes of the Lydden Valley and Sandwich Flats. Smashing route. Really lovely new cycle paths avoided the busy A256 and went through the huge Pfizer plant at Great Stoner. It was a great way into Sandwich (10) by a postcard bridge over the Stour. The Sustrans route took us straight out of town onto the ancient trackway between Deal and Sandwich. I loved this stretch...beautiful shingle banks and lots of Dungeness vegetation....4 dead flat miles along the Saxon Shore Way. The Vikings overwintered here in 851.
Two of our crew had new GPS satellite navigation toys. The mobile phone sized boxes constantly check with orbiting satellites just where they are. Instant display of grid-reference, exact distance travelled since start, and speed. Perfect for pinpointing precisely where you are to within several metres. I wouldn’t want one but they do provide comfort at times. (Tecky train moment from Witham trip....we’re doing 82mph!...where are we? Not sure, only locked onto 2 satelites...it’s ok, got 4 now....had 11 once).
Deal (11) was yet another contrast. A castle. Lots of fishing boats and grease-black winches on the shingley shore and huge selection of Victorian/ Edwardian terraces set back along the lowrise front. Another swimmer. It was 6.45pm. A glorious evening. Pub was mentioned and resisted, no port sank. An apt 5 of us needed to get back so got the 7.05pm train from the adjacent station.
It took no time for the rest of us to agree to go for Dover. Trains home from there every 30 minutes. The gorgeous weather evening was just too good to waste. The new mixed-use path behind the high shingle banks got better and better. Walmer Castle was a surprise.
All of a sudden chalk cliffs sprung up, the path veered steeply inland up Otty Bottom into a classic dry valley with lush rolling hills and not a road or building in sight. Lots of National Trust coastal downland here. Long photo stop near Hog’s Bush at 80 metres. Then leafy chalk path to St Margaret’s at Cliffe.....4 miles from Dover. We didn’t go down to the sea but at about 8pm had a couple of beers in the garden of an ok pub. Chips arrived. Tops went on.
The next 3 B-road miles over downs were stunningly beautiful. A heavy and cold sea-mist came out of nowhere and visibility went down to 30 metres. On our right the setting sun glowed behind the whiteness and a spoke-thin horizontal band of cloud gave it an equator and measured its quick setting. A big misty roadside memorial marked the site of England’s first warplane base. 1914.
The Sustrans route then left the b-road and so did we. A hundred metres on a foot-and-mouth closure notice. Our first. We went back to the road, all downhill now. Suddenly, on the skyline through the mist, emerged the spooky battlements of Dover Castle. The road swooped down fast through lovely ancient woods, we ignored a bikepath option and had a stiff climb up. It was worth it......past the memorial to Bleriot’s first flight across the Channel (1904. Warplanes only 10 years later).....a few hit 35mph on the huge hills down to Dover (12) and still Richard’s recumbent flew by.
Some of us went to the off-licence for water etc. And then to the station.
We’d done a few hundred metres less than 50 miles.
The station was excited. Some charmer, it emerged, had thrown a metal bar off the bridge over the only lines in/out of Dover and so shorted out the local rail electrical system. It was 9.10pm. 50 or so passengers hovered around looking rightly worried. Connex staff started organising taxis and buses. The problem should be solved tonight, but not sure when. Sorry, can’t take bikes in buses etc. We started dismissing thoughts of cycling to far away stations, or sleeping on the beach, or hopping a ferry to France, or bb&bs.
As off-licence supplies and the joke started to look thin a 10.05pm train was announced to cheers all round. There were about 12 of us plus another 8 or so other bikes. We filled the guards van and several seat bays. Not a word of complaint from the train staff. It was a fun and silly journey back to Victoria, a few left at Bromley South. We arrived at about midnight. Some of us headed back to Woolwich and Greenwich, Paul to Harrow, others to Camden and Peckham, west Dulwich.
S: truly excellent route with loads of variety and 12 bank-holiday resorts with loads of stations and ways home, lovely clean sea, wonderful cycle routes and huge amount to see. Great weather, holidays by the sea.
W: with a group that size it’s hard to set a pace for all. For me, a minor problem and source of enjoyable angst. For some, a hard compromise. "I’ve come for a ride not a stand-around". "Can’t we have another swim". Group rides are just that.
O: so many places to return too and spend longer at. The new bikes paths were well used at the resorts and people were obviously being tempted further on them.
T: no time for Brockwell Park lido. Group close to maximum sensible size. (But since when was too many bikes a problem?).
OS Landranger 179 map: covers whole route and more. 1.25 inches to the mile.
Sustrans Garden of England Cycle Route map covers 180 miles from Greenwich (natch) round to Dover then Hastings. Valuable but infuriating. Their route goes Whitstable/Canterbury/Sandwich/Dover and so skips the cost between Whitstable/Margate/Broadstairs/Ramsgate/Sandwich.
Barry Mason