Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 July 2001
Cutty Sark to Dover
A multi-option weekend with Saturday meets at 10am, Cutty Sark and 1.30pm Rochester (easy train from London) and Sunday meet at 11am Whitstable Harbour. Most opted to do the whole weekend and find own B&B's in Whitstable.
Saturday 28 July:
Mostly Sustrans route 1. With improvements. Their Garden of England route map is really useful but needs careful study. 65 miles in all. OS Explorer 162 is great for Greenwich to Gravesend.
There were 14 of us at the Cutty Sark at 10am in the best weather so far this summer....and set for hot and dry all weekend. Roger arrived late with a shredded back tyre so I shot off to get a new one for him. We were recovered from the 20 miles round London on the octopus the night before.
There was another puncture as we hit Woolwich...we detoured quickly through the deserted Arsenal site and through the backstreets of Plumstead, Abbey Wood and Thamesmead. This was a really good mixed group of low-maintenance bikers, with six new people. We stopped at Morrisson's supermarket on Erith riverside and stocked up on water. It was wonderfully hot.
Then the big A206 roads over the river Cray and the sadly disappearing marshes to the Dartford bridge, and the first country lane at Stone and the walk-across railway crossing. Another drinks stop in lovely Greenhithe riverside village and the hill up to the main road, Ingress Abbey......Swanscombe....(Botany Marshes below).......then the big hill and the swoop down the narrow ridge between two vast chalk quarries into the outskirts of Gravesend through the silent industrial estate. No time to stop at the Pocahontas memorial. The massive Thames views here always surprise. Tilbury container depot, the 1930's liner terminal across the river, the tiny ferry we sometimes use, the huge ocean-going tugs, Henry 8's double-moated star-shaped Tilbury Fort with its small sister on this side (and Iain Sinclair's unforgettable infibulatory line about the top secret sixteenth-century cannon-shot diagrams that stitch up the Thames like an orifice. Liquid City). The massive power station. The river turns into estuary here and the Port of London Authority HQ buildings and the first and last pub on the Thames, the fascinating foody hidden Crab and Lobster pub, underline that. (Must do the Saxon Shore Way that starts hereabouts sometime).
Then suddenly onto Gravesend prom and beach, very sea-sidey and over the lock gates, through deserted warehouses with WW2 tank-traps and onto the concrete military path through the unknown Shorne Marshes alongside the disused 1824 Thames-Medway canal and the railway. The marshes are now a bird reserve, littered with WW2 buildings and gun ranges. A deserted stretch with lovely pools alongside the path.
Then the Lower Higham and Strood rural bits, we didn't get lost this time....great views of the working riverside and huge ship building sheds.
We got to Rochester at 2pm. Two Tom's and a Hugh joined us.....Mr Topes at the corner of the High Street and the Cathedral Close is an easy going licensed cafe with ok prices and a good range of food. We parked up and moved tables into the sun. An eccentric neighbour took a dislike to the bikes on the lamp-posts and went upstairs to overwater his window boxes so as to dampen our others. He vanished back to his gin. Topes toper. Silliness blossomed. The town-crier arrived and lent Tom his tricornered hat and bell. Meanwhile the Classic FM concert in the nearby castle fiddled away. I like Rochester a lot....castle, lovely cathedral, Dickens, river-crossing, tourists....working riverside.
After a ninety minute stop we went up the hill towards Chatham naval dockyard and St Mary's Island....... the way out of Rochester is tricky to find but logical. Maria's rack bust a couple of welds so we dumped it, and split her load.
The Strand at Gillingham was packed with sunbathers.....the riverside country park stretch has great estuary views and we smeltthe sea for the first time. On through the outskirts of Sittingborne and over the quaint bridge into the back of Faversham dominated by the Shepherd Neame brewery.
And suddenly there were the Graveney marshes that lead to Whitstable. We soon got through Seasalter........you don't arrive in Whitstable. You're suddenly there. 8pm. I swam in the warm sea and changed into clean clothes. Smoothy. The place was buzzing with the Oyster Fair in full slide.. The shell-fish and working harbour trade is very evident...the sea and the tourists sit well together. (No sign of the Ghanaian coaster navigator who gave us ice-cold bottles of Dutch lager as we swopped harbourside stories last time, he showed us the surprisingly large single rooms with ensuites the crew had). Wonderful beach-huts. We found the Neptune, now my fave there, beached on its own on the sea-wall, had beers and fish and chips. Gill, Maria and Kate were staying in nearby Tankerton, Roger too, some in Herne Bay.
The fair meant that Whitstable accommodation was sold out according to the tourist office and the websites. But there were several vacancy signs in windows. Hugh and Richard got the train home. A few of us had opted to sleep on the floor of a friend's pubs, so we got there around 10pm. After a couple of beers the doors were locked and a very heavy session started. But not please the night before a glorious ride...Tom took little persuading that we should after all stay at his mums after all.....a quick ride through a grassy field....she didn't flinch when seven of us turned up. I somehow got my own room....Torun, John and Sabine (brave person, Decathlete, her first ride with us) crashed in the lounge. Jim and Colin put up their tent in the garden.
Sunday 29 July
Mostly following the increasing well marked Saxon Shore Way and Viking trail. Sustrans Route 1. All on OS Landranger 179.
Suddenly it was 8am. We showered, thanked Tom's mum and left Tom with his gardening to find good cafe for the full breakfast. Then to the beach by the harbour where all was being set up for another busy day........the big inflatable lifeboat was practice launched....the submersible tractor simply headed into the sea until it was deep enough to float the boat off, it's air intake and exhaust trunked above the waterline . Another swim. Richard, John, Casey and Gabriel arrived from the station and at 11.15am thirteen of us hit the road. There's a goodbye hill out of Whitstable and suddenly its Herne Bay sea-front (at 5 miles). That's not an oil-rig off shore, it's the detached end of the Victorian pier. It's a mini-Blackpool with a few hundred yards of neon and amusement arcades.
Ignore the no-entry sign at the end of the sea-front....there's a couple of miles of carless cliff-foot concrete here that's a lovely ride. It ends with a short steep bit to the cliff top...and a double-back to the small main road.
A classic country-lane leads to Reculver (8 miles)....the twin-towers of the Saxon church are visible for miles. There's a roman fort here too.......the church and graves were moved inland in the 1950s (check) to dodge the cliff erosion. It'll need moving again soon, or abandoning. We used the useful and packed pub for a loo stop and I got back to an inverted bike. My back tyre had started to hiss down. My first flat on one of our rides, I think. Something like superstition made me take over from Roger......I didn't want the hex from his bike. Although Reculver pub and carpark was packed with Sunday lunchers, it was quiet 300 metres on.
Then along the sea wall for 4 miles on the Wantsum Walk over Plumpudding island onto the Isle of Thanet......the marshes very clearly show where the sea was until only 1,000 years ago. Drainage ditches, a fish farm and loads of lagoons here. Minnis Bay (12 miles).
Westgate-on-Sea (14 miles) isn't much more than a good beach, a carpark and a cafe......and the start of miles of concrete undercliff sea-defences that are 10 metres wide and great cycling. The first few hundred yards were colonised by beach-huts and owners who feel they own the path.....lots of cones and no cycling signs of dodgy legality...but we obeyed most.......it was packed for a little....the tide was out for a long way.......great expanses of dead flat chalky rock-pools under the deadwhite cliffs.........so many shades of blue sea and green sea-weed.....wonderful blue sky.
It was very low tide so the sea-vespa nest base at St Minnis Bay was not buzzing. I was pleased.
And then Margate (17 miles)....much smaller than imagined, one big bay packed with day-trippers and donkies and windbreaks and all dominated by the bleakest tower block this side of Dresden......and the faded Dreamland bingo parlour of Last Resort fame. We ziped along the seafront ride in two minutes and back onto the undercliff. Botany Bay.
And then up onto the cliff path at North Foreland of interminable maritime weather forecast fame (20 miles) where a new stretch has been pushed through to save the big detour inland. The 1760 folly castle still impresses.
The outskirts of Broadstairs (23 miles) are dominated by a huge private estate of massive 30's houses...and route now goes through there. We swooped down the big hill right onto the very busy harbour. It's a tight bay and harbour with Dicken's Bleak House overlooking all.
It was 2.45pm and time for lunch. We agreed to re-meet at 4pm. We swam again, basked in the sun, loaded up with water and had a beer and fish and chips lunch.
Then into Ramsgate (25 miles), a big ferry port, the road in was lined with big crowds waving flags and throwing coins at us....and waiting for the carnival. We fled. The high cliff path leads quickly on into the countryside. The Vikings/Saxons landed at huge sandy Pegwell Bay (30 miles) in 449 followed by St Augustine and Christianity in 597. Then there's Minster marshes and a huge disused power station, the river Stonar and the massive Pfizer r&d complex and bridge over to lovely Sandwich (34 miles). The route follows the Lydden Valley medieval road to Deal (39 miles). Miles of marshy road leads into cute Deal with its intact low-rise Edwardian sea-front and Walmer Castle and then huge stretches of shingle coast...... reminds of Dungeness in miniature, same soil-less vegetation.
Then through some overhanging woods and the last seaside stretch......and an abrupt right up onto the white cliffs of Dover. A narrow lane climbs steadily forever up past a few houses until the tarmac runs out into a building-less high dry valley called Otty Bottom. St Margaret's at Cliffe (46 miles) has a good pub and garden.......we relaxed there for a while, sensing the end. Then its the big fields on top of the White Cliffs of Dover...the sea and huge cliffs are only metres away, but not visible. In 1910 Bleriot crash landed here after the first flight across the channel...it took only 4 years to turn miracle into weapon and Britain's first warplanes flew from here to bomb German trenches in occupied France, 1914.
Huge Dover Castle dominates the view now, and we rode very fast down through the hanging woods into the town......there are climbs in this bit I'd forgotten.
A couple of us had been toying with the idea of ending the ride at Folkstone rather than Dover......to join up with the start of our Folkstone-Dungeness ride. We left the others at the station (50 miles) and 6 of us headed for the easy stretch to Folkstone. Me, Roger, Richard, John, Sabine and Gabriel. I was torn between keeping the group together and splitting it.....I couldn't resist the extension.
Big lorry roads in Dover until we picked up the bike route again......and big climbs up onto the massive cliffs...great scenery but worrying steeper and further than we'd reckoned. Suddenly a tunnel down through the cliff tempted us in.....it was Samphire Down where the channel tunnel hits land: an new undercliff park built out of billions of ton of tunnel rubble. I wondered whether we could use that to get round to Folkstone. We had to look..... it's amazing down there......the park has been well landscaped and is bedding in well.....looks fairly natural and goes on for ever....it was quiet and darkening and there was no one around but us.....Richard went scouting...no way out except back up. The violated cliffs seemed to be brooding revenge. It was 9pmish. The very big hills were taking their toll...Roger's cranks started to go.....and every horizon was a false one.
But we got to Folkstone station ok (58 miles)............no more trains. As Richard said...we push it, this had to happen sooner or later. First timers Sabine and Gabriel were great and just laughed. A long chat to cabbies revealed no where to dance away the night. We decided to kill time until the first train at 5.01am, Monday morning. We found a Chinese restaurant open and spent too much on ordinary stuff.......then headed for the seafront down a big hill.........and straight into 20 local lagered ones in a nasty running fight. The arriving police advised us to spend the night back up the hill. We found a bandstand. Sabine had a sleeping bag.....the rest of us nothing. We all slept a little and some chatted more than others. It was a longish night but not very cold and we watched the space station slide silently overhead, loads of stars. Pretty undercliff gardens.
We got the 5am fine and dozed then split at London Bridge. I got home at 7.30am or so.....put my head down for a bit...and got to work late at 10am. A busy day. The ride home at 5.30pm was not as easy as usual. Bed at 8pm, slept fine.
Fab weekend. Thanks to all concerned.
Barry Mason