NCN 1 Dover to Canterbury
Luddenham Marshes, Swale District, Kent
Day 1 Dover to Canterbury
Where does England start? Dover?
On the great white wall of England…..the first page…….the start of history…
A. A. Gill (An Angry Island)
To read the previous post click here.
Here we are Daniel Defoe and I, at the start of our travels. He set out on the 3rd April 1722, from London; I, on the 4th September 2020, from Dover, where, on those fabled white cliffs, the England of Shakespeare, Nelson and Brexit, begins. So it was, on a wet and windy September 2020, with cases of Covid-19 again rising after a summer lull, that I made my way to the start of the longest signed trail in the Kingdom - the National Cycle Network Route 1, which begins on the foreshore of Dover.
Journal note on the seafront in Dover
Five men and two women, Jamie Clark, Ian Fleming and Vera Lynn are standing beside a bench with their backs to the grey sea, their grins forged in Corten steel. From out of the grey-brown waves, comes a man whose flesh has been made pink by the sea. He walks unsteadily, wind and wave-blown, up a concrete ramp towards a well-clothed woman who stands with a deep-red towel which flaps in the wind. She winds it around him.
The fifth person is berating me.
‘You lot have no respect’, he shouts from across the busy road. I watch as he crosses towards me, still shouting. There was more respect for people when I was young, you know. Cyclists didn’t cycle on the pavement and go through red lights as you do now’.
His face is lined by poverty and age. He wears baggy grey joggers, and a well stretched T-shirt roofs the rotunda of his belly. One hand holds a can of coke, which he waves as he speaks so little brown splashes of fizz fall onto his bony hand whilst the other clasps a crumpled Sainsbury’s bag which he waves in the air like a flag.
‘Yeah, you lot, always the same. No respect’, he shouts as he crosses, not waiting for the lights to change.
I smile as he walks in jerky steps towards me with frowning face and grim determination.
‘Look at the sign there’, I say, hoping my irritation will be blown by the wind.
‘What does it say?’
He stops to squint at the blue sign beside us, which depicts an adult holding the hand of a child and below them a bicycle. He does not respond. He stares some more and then his grey and angry face
turns back to me.
‘I don’t care what you say, you lot have no respect’.
It’s drizzling, dark and grey. The white cliffs cannot be seen and the castle is under wraps. The sibilant sea is shipless and brown.
The point of Dover is leaving to France, to London - go anywhere but here. They exit, the immigrants, tourists and the lorries through piss-stained tunnels on potholed roads whilst residents and cyclists share the cracked pavements by-passing the dark stained concrete shopping plazas where the only activity is litter eddying in the wind.
WhatsApp message home
I can’t find the start of this ride. Been along the seafront twice.
Just been shouted at by a man waving a coke can. Great start!
Signs for walking ‘The North Downs Way’ and for swimming the ‘Channel Swim’, nothing for NCN 1, the longest way marked path in Britain.
Daniel Defoe on Dover
‘Neither Dover, nor its castle has any thing of note to be said of them, but what is in common with their neighbours; the castle is old, useless, decay'd, and serves for little; but to give the title and honour of government to men of quality, with a salary, and sometimes to those that want one.”
Continuum
I ride out from the town, up a steep hill. Wind and rain jostle me.
Journal Note written by the entrance to Dover castle
Steep hill out of town to castle in mist, drizzle and wind. The woman in the entry kiosk to the castle, dressed in her English Heritage brown uniform, slides open her window and her shoulders drop with a sigh.
‘What do you want?’ she snaps.
‘I’m just passing through and wondered if I might take a photo of the gateway please’.
The curve of the driveway up to the massive castle door and the position of the entrance kiosk are such that any photo would be especially poor from this angle.
‘You can’t come any further than that. Just from where you are’.
‘Why? Is it private?’ I ask.
‘No, but we’re closed”.
‘Even for photos’? I ask.
She slides her glass back to shut. She stares hard at me, her hand resting on the walkie-talkie.
I sense she is dying for me to inch forward so that she can call Security and have me locked up in the deep dark dungeons.
Journal note written outside the White Cliffs Visitor Centre.
The sea is rising above the cliffs in a brown cloud of spray. Wind whips and lashes the shuddering bushes
I breathe salt. The path is lined with gale-sculptured hawthorn bent like arthritic old men. The roads are empty, the visitor’s centre closed. The cafe is open ‘for takeaways only’.
Two employees inside ignore me, one boy, one girl. I tap on the window and they turn to see me, then resume their chat and laugh with each other. Eventually. After what seems a long time.
The woman rises. She is garbed in the dark green uniform of the National Trust. Unsmiling, she slides open the glass which barriers her from pesky customers like me -
‘Yes?’
‘Good morning. A coffee please. I’d like a coffee’.
‘You can’t bring your bike here. It’s got to be parked over there.’
She jerks a thumb to ‘over there’, where there are bike stands beside the toilets.
She slides the window shut and returns to her seat. I see her eyes roll in my direction as she mocks me with her colleague.
Like a meek schoolboy I park the bike in the correct place and return to the window. She rises after finishing what she wants to say to her colleague and shuffles slowly towards the window, her smile eroding with each step and pulls back the glass.
‘Yes?’ she shouts above the wind.
‘One macchiato please.’
‘Is that an ex-presso’?
‘Er, no a macchiato please’.
‘With milk or without’?
‘Err,…? What’s the difference?
‘Well one has milk and the other hasn’t’.
The coffee, when it comes, is weak, the colour of the sea and the large cup is filled. The wind removes the plastic top before I reach the picnic table and blows it far into England.
A dunnock makes a dash across the windy wastes for another bush, wings tucked, head jabbed forward. The gorse stands yellow, firm and still in the gale.
The sea is empty of ships.
Four ferries are tied up in the docks.
There is a queue of lorries waiting to board.
WhatsApp home
Stopped for coffee after 4 miles. Windy and cold.
Notices beside the road near Walmer
‘The golf club was founded in 1909.’
‘There is a speed limit of 20 mph which also ‘applies to cyclists.’
‘This road is private’
‘Cyclists must reduce their speed when approaching pedestrians.’
‘The dress code for members; ‘Shirt, with collar, tucked in, golf shoes and tailored shorts and socks, or golf trousers. No trainers, jeans, rugby/football shirts, track suits or T-shirts. The use of mobile phones is not permitted in the clubhouse and is only permitted in emergency on the course.
The Secretary.’
Journal note written on a bench at Walmer Beach
On the wide, double-laned path - one for pedestrians, the other for cyclists - which runs along the top of the shingle beach, a couple walked determinedly towards me. I cycled slowly towards them, enjoying the wind, caught up in my little reveries.
They were older than me.
He was not going to move off this track.
The man ordered me off his path;
’You’ve got your own path over there’, he shouted.
‘I had not seen the sign’, I said.
‘Sorry’, I added.
He glowered and grabbed his wife’s hand. They shuffled off.
I moved off onto the empty lane which for as far as I can see has no indication that it is a cycle path.
Benches queue up along this path in good and tidy order like soldiers on parade and on, each a memorial.
The one I’m on reads, ‘In loving memory of Alan Hayes, much loved son, brother, uncle, nephew and friend’.
(He was 46 when he died).
Journal Note and Defoe on the Downs
The English Channel is the busiest shipping channel in the world, yet not a ship can I see. The sea off Deal is known as the Downs, ‘The place is famous as a road for shipping, so well known all over the trading world by the name of the Downs, where almost all ships which arrive from foreign parts for London, (………..) generally stop. Sometimes though, ‘ships are driven from their anchors, and often run on shore……in great distress; this is particularly when the wind blows hard at S.E. or E. by N…… and terrible havoc has been made in the Downs at such times’.
Even in our times, cross-Channel Ferries often shelter from stormy weather in these waters. To me, the subtleties of the waters are lost on me and the whole expanse before me is turbulent, whipped into a froth by the wind and empty of all vessels.
Journal Note at a Coffee stop in Deal
The wind is dying now, cycling flat and easy, dodging dogs and do-gooders, with their ready opinions which they share readily about cyclists
on a shared path beside the sea.
The Romans saw this coast, where, in Caesar’s words, ‘the sky is obscured by continual rain and cloud’, but that did not stop him landing on 26th August 55 BC, with 12,000 troops, somewhere near here - so a noticeboard says.
I imagine the old man who’d told me off (he’s old enough to have been there, I think) standing on this spot, waving his stick, you can’t land here, that’s the landing place there!’
What a place to land - the sea kicking the half-beached boats as the legionnaires disembark on near-impossible-to-walk-on stones, preparing to fight the nearly naked line of Britons shouting and banging the back of their shields with the hilts of their swords.
Defoe on the Romans landing up the coast from here.
“….and coming on shore, with a good body of troops beat back the Britains on shore, and (Caesar) fortified his camp, just at the entrance of the creek, where the town now stands. All of which may be true, for ought anyone knows, but is not to be proved.”
Journal Note
There are castles everywhere on this coast Romans, Saxons, Normans, Tudors, Georgian, WWII all squat, and hunkered down against the wind.
Nowadays they play the tourist card. But the pandemic has laid siege to them they are all closed until further notice.
Defoe on the Channel castles.
“small works, of no strength by land and not much use by sea”.
Fisher’s News (Read online whilst waiting for the coffee) explains that the Deal Luggers of ash and elm are beached ‘thanks to Europe.’
‘There’s no more fish to catch, ‘thanks to Europe.’
‘Big factory ships were to blame.’
‘it will be nice to get our waters back now that we are out of the EU’.
The last commercial lugger finished operating in the late 1970s.
Continuum
I ride on in calming wind, the five miles to Sandwich. The way is flat, passing over sheep-nibbled marshes whose dykes and ditches glint silver in the strengthening sun. The road follows the old coast before the sea retreated and the marshes were drained.
Defoe on Sandwich
‘Sandwich is the next town, lying in the bottom of a bay at the mouth of the river Stour, an old, decayed, poor, miserable town, and sends two members of Parliament. I have said all that I think can be worth anybody’s reading of the town of Sandwich.’
Journal note written in Sandwich
Walmer, Deal and Sandwich are frontline towns which play the Heritage theme with cafes named ‘Smugglers Beer and Music Cafe’ and ‘The George and Dragon’ pub. Boards and posters advertise, Historic Walking trails, River Tours, Heritage Centres and English Teas.
Tidy narrow streets are filled with the petrol fumes of the tourist cars trying to find a place to park. A white van driver misreads a No Entry sign and is trying to reverse down a narrow one way street lined with houses of the Medieval Times.
A row of cars blast it with their horns.
Continuum
I ride into the drained and reclaimed land towards Richborough Castle, an old Roman fort-port.
Journal Note at Richborough Castle
The Channel’s now miles away and a flinty field takes its place. A flock of lesser black-backed gulls and terns circle above the old Wantsum channel
now reed-filled through which the Roman boats arrived with their marbles and beasts, with their new ideas and words - the Dover of its day.
The fort-port’s flint-glinting walls crumble across the field from the empty car park and can be seen close-up;
only with a booking
made on-line
and after
£7.60 has been paid
only
with a card.
Richborough Fort
Journal note made when resting by a gate somewhere on the flat marshes of Kent.
Restless clumps of willow and poplar fidget in the breeze under a blue summer sky, empty roads, more flinty-track than tar zig-zag round the edges of harvested fields tracing old dykes and drains.
The world’s busy with things and seems to have forgotten the very notion of stillness clouds sail, birds fly, bees drag their pollen heavy sacks.
Nothing’s still - except for me - the only one who shouldn’t be.
WhatsApp message
There’s a lot of history on this road - castles, forts and Roman things. Progress is slow as I have to stop and look at them all.
Journal note somewhere in Kent.
I’ve stopped again as I’ve never seen so many apples. Row after row of luminous red and crimson fruit bulging off branches. I failed, like Adam, the temptation test. They are Red Devils. Heavy croppers, sweet, crisp and delicious. Don’t keep. Need to be eaten straight away. I might be some time because they are all in perfect ripeness.
WhatsApp Message
Run out of historical distractions and now onto apples. In a field near Canterbury, eating my way through Red Devils. (Photo sent of apples.)
Defoe on the country around Canterbury.
“…the great wealth of Canterbury is from the surprising increase of the hop-grounds all round the place…. I am assured that there are at this time near six thousand acres of ground so planted……”
There was not a single hop-field on my route to Canterbury.
Journal note written at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Fordwich - England’s tiniest town.
The church is redundant. Religion has moved on. It’s in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. Outside, in the carefully mown graveyard, there are the requisite shady trees, titling headstones, and a winding path leading to the whitewashed porch. The country churchyard sound track is in full avian voice. Inside, the pews are laid out with blankets, and in the chancel is a table on which a kettle and some tea bags stand, with an invitation to rest and drink. The note invites the traveller to make a cup of tea and use the fresh milk in the fridge. I do, and leave some coins in a jar. I refill my water bottles from a water dispenser before I leave. Another hand-written note says the church is locked at six, but a stay inside is possible if booked in advance.
Continuum.
To read the next section of the route, click here
To ride the route, click here