Cycling by Train

Feeling a bit weary, I jumped on the train in Dover to visit Canterbury. I loved taking my bike on the British trains.

A few stations lack lifts, incredible as that is given the footfall. I am glad I'm not in a wheelchair. For me it means unloading the bike and carrying first panniers and then bike up and down stairs, which is seriously hard work. Not to mention stressful, given that at every station there are these regular announcements "Please do not leave luggage unattended. Any unattended luggage will be removed without warning and may be destroyed." See me run up and down those stairs...

But to get the bike into the carriage is just a small step and someone usually offers to help lift it up.

In France, it was more like three steps up to board, and my calves were black and blue with bruises from Betty-wrestling.

On the smaller UK regional trains, bikes can be taken into any carriage. Sometimes there is a designated space with restraints and fold-down seats, but often I'd just have to stand with it in the entry way, to balance the bike and make sure that people could get around it to get on and off. Sometimes there would be several bikes, requiring a bit of discussion about who would be getting off next and delicate manovouring to not block the exit.

Trains and cycles go together well and every station has cycle parking, although there are also signs warning that theft is common.


I got locked into a carriage at one point. The train divided at some station down the track and I'm sure the destinations board on the platform had said I needed to be in the last four carriages to get to where I was going. We stopped somewhere - nothing unusual in that, I was reading a book, and because there wasn't anyone else in the carriage I'd wedged the bike in behind the seat. Then there was an announcement to say this train had terminated and everyone should leave now. But I couldn't reach the button to open the doors without moving the bike. Too late, nothing happened. . I tried the door at the end of the carriage and that was locked too. No one in sight on the platform. No response from the microphone that was supposed to contact the driver. I tried the emergency button and not even that was working.  My four carriages had disconnected and the train had continued without me.  I did a mental inventory of what food I had with me - tea bags and a jar of vegemite, how long could I survive on that? Just as I was trying to work out who on earth I might phone, a conductor came through and released me. He said he was past his knock-off time but he always liked to walk through the train before he clocked off.  Thank goodness!

Not bad going, that this was the worst thing that happened to me in two weeks of cycling and camping.

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.

Rolling Right Along

After the seedy drabness of the seaside towns of Broadstairs and Ramsgate, it is with pleasure that I roll over a lifting bridge over the River Stour and under the arch of an ancient toll-gate that still has a sign saying how much the tolls are. This is Sandwich, one of the five Cinque Ports, towns formed on the basis of sea trade and fishing, now mostly separated from the sea, ports long ago silted up.

Even back in the Middle Ages there was a toll to be paid to cross this bridge, and that continued right up until 1977.

Something happened as I crossed the bridge that snapped me out of the bad mood of the past couple of days. The footpath is very narrow and the traffic lane is one way, controlled by lights. I stopped to take a photo, leaning the bike on the rail. A man with a dog walking behind me snarled at me. "That's a terrible place to stop". I responded, something along the lines of it being a lovely view, the sun just emerging from early fog, lighting the river and half-timbered buildings on the other side of the arch. I'm thinking how charming it would be if this was your regular way to town. I'm thinking, this is the prettiest place I have seen in days. My comment just gave this man room to launch vitriol over his shoulder as he walked on, and this is what he said; My dog has just had surgery, and he shouldn't be walking on the road. Man and dog had had to take maybe two steps off the kerb to get past the bike and there was no traffic in sight. It made me laugh. And it made me realise that a bad mood means you focus what's wrong and forget to see what's good, and I decided on the spot to only notice the nice things. Be positive. It is such a sorry waste of energy to be otherwise.  

Along the Stour, taken from the bridge

Lots of medieval buildings 

I visited the Salutation Gardens. Salutation House and the outline of the garden were designed by Sir Edward Lutyens in 1910. 

The home is a posh hotel and so out-of-bounds for the likes of me, but at the ticket office they were happy to let me visit the gardens for a small amount of money. I made myself a pot of tea in the appropriately-named potting shed, and sat in the shade enjoying the smell of cut dahlias that I remember from childhood. The gardners were doing last minute tidying up for the annual Dahlia Festival that weekend, so it was I got a sneak preview. 

This seemed to be the New Zealand 'room'

I love visiting gardens, it's up there next to hanging out in coffee shops. I even love dahlias.

National Cycle Route One - Garden of England

Damp Sunday morning. Leaving London is fairly straightforward. I pick up National Cycle Route 1 at Greenwich and ride on through endless ugly suburbia and light industry until Rochester, where there is a castle and a cathedral and a pedestrianised high street packed with pubs and cafes which is good because it's lunchtime.

That's Rochester's cathedral. The rain is holding off - just. On past the Chatham Dockyards originally founded by Henry VIII. The bike path eventually leaves traffic, roundabouts and footpaths behind and follows a concrete path by the Medway, where the Sunday dog walkers are out in force, clogging up the way. Every dog seems to be called Bella and none of them are on the leash. Slow going.





Even slower when I finally leave even the Sunday strollers behind, following a route that weaves through orchards and lanes and down farm driveways and along the levees across marshland. Lots of gravel and pot holes.

It's a bone-shaker of an afternoon that get greyer and goes on forever and doesn't seem to be getting anywhere. There was meant to be a camping site somewhere near Upchurch but with no mobile signal to pull down google maps, I missed it completely. Late in the day with even darker clouds gathering in and rain not far off, I follow a Footpath sign into a field of apple trees and put the tent up behind a hedge. All night I can hear planes coming in, one every few minutes, and not far away there is a trainline, and below all that the constant drone of traffic on the M2. Otherwise this is rural bliss. It rains softly most of a night marked only by the intermittent thud of an apple falling.

Day Two is more of National Cycle Route 1, from near Faversham to St-Nicholas-at-Wade. Big highlight of the day is Whitstable.  Once again I hit town at a good time for lunch. I had oysters very much in mind, but at 6 pounds for half a dozen? A quid per oyster - actually a cheese sandwich looks quite appetising right now.

Morning drizzle eventually dried up but there is no sign of sun. Out at sea, wind turbines; and in between,  fields of strawberries, corn, apple and pear trees, and acres of solar panels. The roar of traffic is ever present though the route cleverly crosses busy roads via footbridges or crossings where there a green bike sign pops up beside the Green Man. But I'm unimpressed with the route so far. It is very rough in places and not designed for a fully loaded road bike. I have only seen a couple of other cyclists. Signs are fairly frequent but easy to miss and I have to backtrack more than once. I have nettle stings on my legs and bruises from hauling the bike through narrow gates and over raised barriers that must be to keep motorbikes off the route. But there are plenty of opportunities to feast on blackberries. Lesson - don't pick the ones low down. Probably pissed on by one of the Bellas.

Next day it's my birthday and I'm starting to feel like an OAP - if only I actually got a pension. By getting up soon after dawn I avoid paying for last night's campground and arrive in Minster too early for coffee. In a churchyard opposite the Benedictine Abbey I get out my primus and I have just enough gas left to make porridge and almost-hot cup of tea. When I bought the milk, the Indian man in the convenience store warned me to 'watch out for the speeding school mums in the lanes'. The lanes have only room for one car and I have to pull over and stop when a vehicle comes up behind me. But there isn't much traffic and mostly I can fly along, just need to keep a sharp eye out for potholes.

Ramsgate in time for a slap-up brunch in a cafe full of flowers picked from the chef's allotment. Flowers in jam jars hung up on the walls, flowers in tins on the tables. That's the high point of Ramsgate. Waiting for outside is a flat tyre, my first, so I head off pushing the bike a good mile uphill hoping to find a cycle shop but what google takes me to turns out to be a sleazy back-street second-hand bike parts yard. I'm sure you have to have at least 6 tattoos to qualify for entry to that place.

Undaunted I go around the corner and dig out the puncture repair kit and wait for someone to stop and offer help, which no one does. Step Two - read the instructions carefully. I locate and remove an embedded sliver of glass in the tyre. Lever out the tube, wait patiently for the glue to dry as instructed (in French). When I get everything back up the right way again and apply the pump, it seems to be OK, but a couple of miles later it's flat again. Off I go on a very round-about route through the over-populated conurbation that is the Isle of Thanet, not longer an isle at all, just endless suburbs and eventually a bike shop which is not what I hoped for at all but a branch of the giant chain store, Halfords, where a wee lad replaces the tube in a flash for nine quid. I got to see quite a bit more of Kent on that side trip and didn't much like what I saw. Off to Broadstairs to pick up the cycle path again. The sun is trying to shine and the sea is actually tinged with blue and I pull up at a very pleasant garden bar (minus garden as such, but there are hanging baskets filled with flowers and it looks out to sea). Things are definitely looking up. Or maybe that is the effect of the ale.

Anyway, it's a balmy evening when I arrive into a tidy little campsite on the outskirts of Ramsgate and am warmly welcomed by a lovely couple who saw me cycling by the Medway two days ago and are celebrating their first night in a brand new camper van.

Somewhere across the Gardens of Kent I came across a church called St Mary the Virgin, with this stone nearby. The sign says it had to be removed from the church for being unholy.

Reclaim the Streets

The marked cycle paths in South London often follow quiet residential streets with little traffic, and it strikes me that there is potential to reclaim these acres of tarmac and use them for vegetable gardens, trees, resting and playing spaces. By blocking off every second or third street and setting up a timed permit system for access for deliveries and loading, we could have green corridors across the city. Winding down the middle of these people-centred spaces, one-lane shared bike/pedestrian ways with in-ground solar-powered lighting. Dedicated multistory and underground parking facilities would use space more efficiently and provide 24hr video security. People would get more exercise and more opportunity to meet neighbours and the streets would be quieter and safer. With increased foot traffic would come more opportunities for pop-up businesses.

Lambeth Council is already providing secure bike parking, like these that I see everywhere. London is doing such a good job of creating infrastructure for cycling but it could go so much further.

Google tells us I'm not the first person to come up with ideas about reclaiming the streets. There was a whole movement in London in the 90s, and it actually started in Brixton which is where I was when I started thinking about it. That movement has been swept up into the wider anti-capitalist activities.

I'm thinking more along environmental AND high-tech lines. When Uber morphs into a transport system with something like google cars, for example. And car sharing schemes. Actually now I think about it, aren't there already streets like this in Collingwood and Fitzroy in Melbourne? Montpellier has some great lessons in how livable a pedestrian-zoned conurbation can be.

Self-history

Look what I found.

One Lonely Planet, one Rough Guide. I was vacuuming at Jeremy's when I spotted these (I'd hate for anyone to think that I poked around in their things while house sitting - I don't. Except for bookshelves). Ah, I thought when I spotted these, just what I need. I have been looking in every charity shop I pass for guidebooks.

Hey, that's my name in the front, and it's in my own handwriting. Those are my highlights and notes scribbled in margins. It takes me a moment to register - these are mine, from when I was here in 2001-2. No wonder I fell upon them so eagerly. Now I dig into memory and remember that Jeremy had lent me stuff when I moved in to Miss Pope's - a portable TV, a couple of Pat's watercolour paintings. I must have included these books when I was returning what had been borrowed.

Packing up - ah, I do it all the time. It is almost exactly two years since I left Rotorua with no more than a suitcase. Then too I gave away what could be palmed off and took loads to local charity shops. I do have some things in storage on the Gold Coast (thanks Neil and Di). Of what I packed into that suitcase, very little is still with me now. Phone, laptop, toilet bag, a couple of merinos, a pair of gloves - that's about it. Now here are these books, artifacts from a life even more deeply rooted in the past. Strangely affirming. Traces of continuity in a peripatetic life. I live happily in the short term, but it is comforting and reassuring to have evidence of coherence, of some greater design running through the years and developing over time to shape the person I am today.

And now I'm picking up where I left off 15 years ago, doing things I wanted to do then but didn't get around to. The Leighton House Museum, Brixton markets, Chelsea Physic Garden, Tate Britain, Dulwich Picture Gallery. It is enormously satisfying for all sorts of reasons. The guidebooks might be dated, but they are still useful and I'm a bit thrilled that they have turned up in my life again and that I have this opportunity to fulfil those older wishes.

Dulwich

It's a short ride to Dulwich from Herne Hill and so a good choice for a rare blue-sky day in London. I am in my element setting off to go somewhere I have never been before with no idea what to expect. The buzz I get from this is probably to blame for me being unable to settle in one place for long. Its like an addiction I have.

My destination, the Dulwich Gallery, is easy to find but the sign saying Dulwich Village tempts me with promises of cafes, and the reality does not fail to satisfy. This is my sort of place, a tiny shopping street with lots of trees and not much traffic and some interesting little shops including a branch of Gail's Artisan Bakery, which I discovered near Clapham yesterday.

About Gail's, there are some recipes on their website, and they have a book out that looks great too. Check out some of the breads available, all made with sourdough starters.

Here's a nice place for sale in the area - is that a misprint, or are there meant to be that many zeros? In a suburb that doesn't even seem to have a mobile signal?



Back to the gallery. Nearby is one of the oldest buildings in Dulwich, the original Dulwich College for Boys.

I give the Dulwich Picture Gallery 3 out of 5. They promote their app which is meant to provide information about individual works. They say you can point your camera at any painting and the app will recognise it. I tried 3 times to download the app and it timed out each time. I asked at the ticket office was their WiFi network working, and the staff said they didn't know. Not good enough.

I got my lefts and rights mixed up again and rode up to Crystal Palace when I really wanted to go to the Horniman Museum.

School holidays, what was I thinking? The Horniman when I got there was unbelievably noisy and also smelly and hot. Turns out I wasn't in any mood to look at natural history. I guess I just tick off that one. Though I was very impressed by a taxidermy box of 112 hummingbirds. So tiny and so iridescent. And the conservatory is a lovely building - apparently Horniman ordered it from a catalogue from a Glasgow company.

There are views of the city from the gardens.

Cycling is such a pleasant way to explore and to feed my addiction.