Along the coast to Dover

The National Cycle Network is a series of safe, traffic-free paths and quiet on-road cycling and walking routes that connect to every major town and city.

The Network passes within a mile of half of all UK homes and now stretches over 14,000 miles across the length and breadth of the UK. Almost 5 million people use the National Cycle Network, and despite its name, the Network isn't just for cyclists, it’s also popular with walkers, joggers, wheelchair users and horse riders too.

This is from the Sustrans website - which is not the easiest site to use when you are just trying to follow a particular route. Also the network has big holes where bits don't join up just yet. Anyway, the route out from Sandwich was really easy. Out across the sand dunes on private roads to the proper seaside.

What a difference it makes when the sun is shining. 

The beaches along this bit of the coast are all gravel. These photos are taken near Deal. What came next was a BIG long hill up to the top of the White Cliffs of Dover. Then more hills to get to the campsite at Hawthorne Farm. Where I paid 15 pounds to put my tent up in a spot so close to the railway line that I thought my feet were going to run over by a train during the night. 

Still more hills in the morning before the final whoosh down into Dover, past the castle.  

Only 22 miles to France

 Who are they behind my seat where I'm watching a swimmer in training for the cross-channel epic? No, not the Queen and James Bond. She's Vera Lynn, famous for "There'll be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover", and he is Ian Flemming, who lived and wrote just up on those cliffs at St Margaret's. The bus into Dover was the Number 008.

The whole of the seafront of Dover was blasted to bits in WWII.
Not by bombs, but by shells, launched from the shores of France.

 From where I took a train - backwards - to Canterbury for the day.