64km Lonesome gravel riding
Cliffe marshes, Hoo Peninsula
Ride Overview
I love this ride, more than any of the rides listed around London’s boundary. It’s where I come when the city’s buzz becomes too much. The Hoo Peninsula is a magic and remote place and its beauty is enhanced by the fact that it is a mere 35 minutes by train from Central London. It’s an open and empty land, where you can feel the sea on your skin and watch ships and sheep as they move over the salt marshes. The riding is often rough, in keeping with this moody and mysterious place. And for those curious about the history of the place, you’ll pass medieval churches immortalised by Charles Dickens (who lived nearby), old Victorian forts, a torpedo launcher and blast walls from the time when the peninsula was a weapons testing area.
Ride practicalities
Note that OS maps mark two parts of this ride as ‘footpaths’. Whilst this website does not encourage cyclists to break the law, the designation of cyclepaths is problematic in England. The Military Canal path from Gravesend is marked as a footpath, yet not only is cycling permitted, it is encouraged since it is part of the National Cycle Network. The suggested route along the Cliffe Marshes is also marked as a footpath - however it is a wide and little used track behind the seawall. I have encountered RSPB wardens and others who have not challenged me. Ride with respect, shut all gates and should you meet someone, a smile and a greeting should be all you’ll need to proceed without challenge. If there are any issues, please use the comments section below, or email me info@wheremywheelsgo.uk
The alternative is to ride along the road from Cliffe to High Halstow.
START/FINISH: Gravesend DISTANCE: 64km TOTAL ASCENT: 366m TERRAIN AND SURFACES: Often rough grass tracks and fast gravel roads, interspersed with very quiet country lanes. A good ride for a gravel/hybrid bike RECOMMENDED CAFÈS/PUBS: Cliffe; The Six Bells, Gravesend; Marie’s Tea Room NEARBY MAINLINE TRAIN SERVICES: Gravesend PLACES TO VISIT; The wild open marshes of the Hoo, Shornemead fort, Cliffe Fort, Cliffe and Cooling churches. LINKS TO OTHER RIDES: London to Rochester via the Hoo NCN 1 Dover to London
the wind and the terrain make this a ride for a more experienced rider who is used to a variety of surfaces.
Ride Notes
After 35 minutes on a train from St. Pancras, you’re in Gravesend and cycling down one of the loveliest high streets in Southern England. It’s a narrow medieval road lined with a mix of brick and weatherboard buildings, and many independent shops including Marie’s Tea Shop which makes for an excellent fuelling stop. It runs steeply down to Britain’s oldest wrought iron pier where passengers in Victorian times disembarked on their day trips from London.
One of the constants of the ride are the forts which were built to protect London from sea-bourne invasions. The estuary was of great strategic importance - up to 80% of England’s trade passed along the river and the dockyard at Woolwich, the powder magazines at Purfleet and the shipyards at Deptford were all key targets for invaders. Before you’ve completed the second mile, you’ll have passed Henry VIII’s blockhouse and the Victorian New Tavern Fort. The latter is a well preserved estuary fort with many of its guns still in place.
Having crossed the canal basin, you ride past some dilapidated Victorian warehouses. It’s a very atmospheric stretch; messy, with a narrow broken road running between crumbling buildings. The setting seems more a film-set for a Victorian melodrama than a working set of warehouses.
Now that you’re out of town, the riding begins in earnest. The path beside the Thames and Medway Canal is a wonderful stretch of gravel riding. The surface is bumpy enough to make you work, but not so hard as to make you suffer. The canal, which is no longer used as a safe passage for ships linking the Medway and Thames estuaries, is home to much wildlife. There are willow warblers and a host of relatively rare songsters to sing you on your way.
Around kilometre 5.8, there’s a track heading directly to the Thames. It’s another superb gravel trail leading to Shornmead Fort. This, along with New Tavern and Cliffe (which we’ll see later) were designed by General Gordon - he of Khartoum fame - to protect the approach to London. The fort is another of the strange and atmospheric places that fill this ride. The thick walls still remain, the gun ports are heavily sprayed with grafitti of a low artistic grade and the local lads and lasses have created a challenging mtb/bmx course which when ridden on a gravel bike, is even more exciting. The views across the wide, grey river to Coalport Fort on the Essex shore are fabulous.
Return along the same gravel track to the canal - (there is a footpath along the short which is more fun, but I cannot be seen to be promoting it). The track becomes a lonely road, where there are infrequent out of town industries - asbestos solutions, car reconditioning, gravel pits. Yet for all that, it’s an empty place haunted by willows and reeds. Take Gore Green through Cliffe woods to Cooling. It’s worth making a short detour to St. James’s Church at Cooling. Even better, plan to spend the night here.
St James’s Cooling, has been converted into a Champing Church - where you can sleep the night on beds, rather than sleep in pews during the sermon. The door creaks nicely and the walls are lined with thousands of cockle shells. Charles Dickens used the churchyard as the inspiration for the opening chapter of Great Expectations where Pip meets Magwitch the convict. Here, you’ll find the 13 "little stone lozenges each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their [parents'] graves".
From Cooling, there’s a superb track leading down to the former gravel pits known as Cliffe Pools. It’s dramatically desolate and in winter as bleak as anywhere in the land. And that is part of its charm - you are far from the confines of the city, its rules and regulations. Trip Advisor describe Cliffe as, ‘A nature reserve for nature, rather than visitors’. It is all the better for it. You might find the odd burnt out car on the superb gravel roads. There are tens of thousands of birds throughout the year. One of the pools is known as ‘Flamingo Pool’, as ‘Flamingoes have been seen in the Cliffe area on and off for many years (since the mid-70's at least). The flamingoes are not wild, but are either escaped birds from captivity.
From the Pools, there’s a track down to Cliffe Fort, another Estuary fort which is fenced off and beside it, the remains of a Brennan torpedo launcher, which was the world’s first guided missile. It was installed at the end of the 19th century. The wide tracks can be used by the local lads to burn out stolen cars. Their burnt out carcasses add an extra layer of meloncholy to this wild spot.
The cycling along the wide track beneath the sea wall is some of the best in sourthern England. The sky above you is huge, the wind tugs you, your bike bounces happily along. Stop from time to time to climb the bank and watch the surreal cranes at the London Gateway Port unload containers from some of the world’s largest ships. It is the oddest of experiences to be surrounded by wild sea marsh, whilst opposite you is one of the world’s most sophisticated ports. You ride past various bays, where in Victorian times, old wooden warships were docked and converted into prison hulks. A sentence spent on them was akin to a death sentence. Charles Dickens, amongst others, vigorously campaigned against their use and as a result new prisons were built around London including the ‘model’ prisons of Wormwood Scrubs and Wandsworth. On your right are various walls standing incongrously in the salt-marsh fields. These are blast walls, remnants of a weapons and explosive testing area.
After around 10km, you turn off up a farm track towards Swigshole - what a name for a farm! - and after a short road stretch, you turn down Roper’s Green Lane, another gravel track across fields. There are great views from here, although the Grain Power station no longer dominates as it has been knocked down.
At Chattenden, there’s the option of heading towards Upnor for one of Kent’s loveliest pubs, The Tudor Rose. Gunpowder was a key feature of the Hoo Peninsula, it being both stored and made. From 1667, the powder was stored along the banks of the river Medway, but when room ran out in the mid-nineteenth century, a new storage facility was built on the spine of hills over which you now ride. Although the area is decommisioned and parts are being transformed into a nature park, there is still a lot of wire and signs warning of imminent death, should you dare to cross the wire. The riding meanwhile, is superb on crumbling tarmac roads - the sort of surface made for gravel bikes.
As you descend back towards the Thames and Medway Canal, you ride through woods which in spring are full of bluebells. Then it’s back along the canal to Gravesend where this most memorable and unusual ride ends.
Every route on this website has been carefully researched as well as ridden. However situations on the ground can change quickly. If you know of changes to this route, or cafes, pubs and the like which you think other cyclists need to know about, feel free to share your thoughts below.
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