Dorset Rail Trails - A Cycling Perambulation

 

I’ve taken five months off from writing, heeding the advice of (presumably) a distant relative Charles Caleb Colton, whose quote can often be found in diaries, ‘When you’ve nothing to say, say nothing.’

With all the news about artificial intelligence creating books and art it looks like the whole lot of us will be redundant soon. I guess those who are pushing the boundaries of technology have different kinds of minds to those who write, paint, make music, dance, create films, etc., being unable to imagine the satisfaction / catharsis that people get by creating something and (preferably) having it appreciated by others. I always thought that the idea was to get machines doing the tedious jobs so humans could be free to do the interesting stuff, but society seems to be heading in the opposite direction to me. It often feels like those in charge have read Orwell's '1984' and thought 'That sounds cool!'

It seemed like winter was never going to end this year, but thankfully my rucksack is down from the attic and has been in use for a few trips now. The most eventful of these was a few days cycling around Dorset. Having explored the Christchurch / Bournemouth / Poole conurbation thoroughly in the winter, I immediately set off on my bike upon alighting at Poole after a six-hour train journey along the south coast. The cycle path ran northward beside Holes Bay, an inlet from Poole Harbour which is reputedly the world’s second largest natural harbour.

Beyond Upton Country Park, I picked up the track-bed of a former railway line, now known as the Castleman Trailway, and eventually I came to the pleasant little town of Wimborne Minster after a leafy cutting and a short tunnel / long bridge under the road. I was lured by a pub which claimed to be the smallest pub in Dorset. However, the staff revealed that the claim was a little bit speculative and that, should somebody make a claim to the epithet for another alehouse, the word ‘probably’ would be added to the sign.

One particular local expressed his admiration at my notion of wild camping with a minimum of equipment (whereas closer to home, comments are often of the ‘not my idea of fun’ ilk. My response is of course that I wasn't inviting them!). Then off I set along lanes passing thatched cottages until picking up another disused railway route from Spetisbury to Blandford Forum. The old station at Spetisbury is well cared for and I stopped for a rest there, admiring the half-moon in the evening sunshine and marvelling at the fact that twelve people have actually set foot upon it. Bringing my musings back down to earth, the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway ran all the way to Bath and was even used by northern tourists on their way to Bournemouth.

The track-bed disappears as one approaches Blandford Forum, where I camped in a copse in Stour Meadows, a large area of common land. The only evidence of the line here are two arches which were an abutment on one side of the rail bridge over the River Stour. It seems that the pronunciation of ‘Stour’ rhymes with ‘shower’ here, whereas I’ve always maintained that our Kentish river of  the same name rhymes with ‘sewer’ - this is not a comment on the water quality I hasten to add.

Whilst the daytime temperatures touched twenty degrees the nights were unseasonably cold for late May and I had no less than five layers on in my sleeping bag. After a hearty breakfast in a café I was on the rail trail once more, plunging deeper northwest into the Dorset countryside. I stopped to look inside the pretty church at Stourpaine, and the hills on either side of the route were extremely picturesque beyond this, even giving my local ‘Stour Valley’ a run for its money.

At Shillingstone I passed a preserved station, complete with a railway carriage which has been utilised as a seating area for the café, and a replica signal box. I was ushered up the steps and given a demonstration of the levers for the points and signals as well as the system where the train driver is given a metal disc 'token' so that the points and signals at the next signal box cannot be released until the token is handed over and put into the machine. Hence, two trains cannot be charging towards each other on the same stretch of single track. It turns out that there are plans to create a short steam line here, so the working signals will once again serve a purpose beyond educating visitors like myself.

And so to Sturminster Newton and the end of the line. The settlement here was smaller than Blandford or Wimborne and the barman at the White Hart pub explained the difference between real ale and craft ale (craft ale can be served at lower temperatures without compromising its flavour). In spite of this I still ordered half a cider by mistake at one point. When in Dorset…

The remainder of my trip took me back to Poole the way I had come. The variation this time was that I used the signed cycle route along an undulating lane beyond Blandford Forum. Pausing by a hedge I spotted what looked like an upside down naked human form. It was pretty clear that this was a discarded item (presumably by somebody ashamed of its ownership) but I still pinched one of its toes to make sure that I hadn't stumbled across a dead body.

Upon crossing the Stour near Spetisbury, I rode the B-road towards Wareham which was both scenic and increasingly challenging as it went on. Wareham is a pleasant little town and young people were jumping into the river near the bridge that marks the beginning of the Isle of Purbeck. Like our Kentish 'isles' of Thanet, Oxney and Grain the word 'isle' is used loosely here and the imposing hills beyond mean that Purbeck can be seen from a good many miles away. Its stone has been used for building for centuries.

After eschewing the epic Sunday night queue for the chip shop in favour of a Chinese takeaway I headed northward to the woods, which appeared to have a mountain biking circuit in them with banked curves and jumps. I wasn't tempted; I just wanted to sleep. The ground didn’t get as cold as the copse near Blandford had done, which usually seems to be the case in evergreen forests, but a flying critter bit me in the night causing my lip to puff up to resemble something between Mick Jagger and the Elephant Man. This deflated as the next day progressed and hopefully the sunglasses nudged the look towards the ‘rock star’ end of the spectrum as I availed myself of three coffees after the eight-mile ride to Poole the next morning.

With a puffy eyelid to boot, I began the long train journey back to Kent, with a beer break at Eastbourne. I was pleased to see that Blue Moon beer was back on the menu at 'Spoons' and it was served, as it should be, with a slice of orange in the glass. However, three pints savoured in the lengthening sunshine streaming through the window still didn't prepare me for the onslaught of head-wind that I encountered when riding along the coast. My aim of camping one final night near the seaside town of Bexhill was soon abandoned in favour of almost completing my journey back on the next train and camping in a familiar wood around four miles from my home.

If you've enjoyed this traveller's tale, you may be interested to read my books 'Mud, Sweat and Beers' and 'Stair-Rods and Stars.' There's still time to catch these before A.I. steals my bike and my ideas to create a blockbuster written purely by algorithm to maximise sales. I guess the body would have to be dead and the lip would have had to have swollen to disfiguring proportions. Who wants the truth these days, hey?

West Sussex Coast - A Cycling Perambulation

So far 2022 has been shaping up no better than 2020 or 2021, with the TV news increasing your likelihood of driving to the nearest cliff and depressing the accelerator with every bulletin. If it's not narcissistic tyrants making a last-ditch attempt to make a name for themselves using mass brutality it's a constant drip-feed of price rises pushing people into the kind of poverty that just shouldn't exist if the world's sixth biggest economy operated with a modicum of empathy.

As always, sunshine and nature are there to provide a free panacea for all this angst, and I undertook my first cycling trip away during Easter of this year. My very first public article dates from 1994 and it documents a cycling trip through Sussex to raise money for our local Venture Scout unit, of which I was a member at the time. I saw the friend that I went with on TV news discussing COVID research a while back, so he's obviously done well. As for me, I decided to retread some old ground, and it was interesting to revisit some of those places after almost 28 years have passed. - 28 years!? That's insane!

I headed for Brighton with my bike and rucksack on a train that was packed as far as the tourist Mecca of Rye. After that i could breathe freely. Upon alighting, I cruised down to the coast and followed the sea wall cycle path to Hove and the road to Shoreham-by-Sea, which is the longest road in the UK beginning with a two, specifically the A259.

My comments were quite negative about Shoreham in that 1994 article, possibly due to the abundance of industry to the east of the town, but I can confirm that the town is actually very pleasant, with a bustling riverside town centre and a quaint churchyard nestling just behind it in a way not to dissimilar to the parish church in my home town of Ashford. I rode over the footbridge across the River Adur and then followed the cycle path along the coast, which was initially separated from the 'mainland' by a lagoon.

I described Worthing as having a 'green beach' in 1994, but I can confirm that the colour scheme is quite normal in 2022. The tall building by the promenade at the centre of the town reminded me of the similar building that you can't miss around fifty miles up the coast in St Leonards. It seems that planners seem to have a compulsion to put one of these 'iconic landmarks' in every large seaside town. As I continued westward the roads took me away from the seafront for a while, and more surprising than the tall concrete finger pointing into the sky was spotting the odd thatch-roofed cottage as I rode through the suburbs of these Sussex conurbations, a remnant of days before the towns swallowed up the surrounding countryside no doubt.

I got stopped at a level crossing near Angmering and I was surprised at some of the 'big name' shops in little old Rustington. I then picked up the sea wall for some more (respectful) pedestrian-dodging, heading into Littlehampton, another pleasant town where a river meets the Sussex coast, this time the Arun. A very basic white lighthouse overlooks the sea, which I had of course visited with my father in researching our lighthouse visiting tome, 'England and Wales in a Flash.' I was surprised to find a Wetherspoons pub in Littlehampton so I popped in for the obligatory curry before heading inland to Arundel and using a gravel trail which climbed into woods, where I found a spot to set up camp. The birdsong died down and the moon was bright. It was chilly as the night went on, confirming my long-established view that an early morning low of seven degrees is the very coldest temperature that I will camp in.

It was now Easter Sunday and I saw a deer as I continued westward along the trail, which soon turned south and descended to cross the A27 dual carriageway. I headed back to the coast via pleasant villages and suburbs, eventually resuming a westward course along the sea wall. I'd never been to Bognor Regis before, and the extent of my knowledge was that it is one of around a dozen places in England with the suffix 'regis' indicating 'royal patronage' and that it has long been reputed that George the Fifth's final word was 'Bognor.' The penultimate word was a taboo verb! However, this is something of an urban myth as his final words were in fact the equally pleasant statement of 'God damn you' spoken to a nurse.

I intended to use an independent café for breakfast but Wetherpoons was just too convenient again. I was surprised to see holiday-makers drinking pints of beer at 9am, and in spite of this Bognor was surprisingly quiet. I concluded that those who do their drinking at the other end of the day were not yet out of bed. Continuing westward on lanes, I found that the scenery became flat and very rural, a bit like our local 'Romney Marsh' in Kent. After heading southward down a lengthy dead end by mistake I lost the will to ride to Selsey, so I picked up the path beside Chichester Canal at Hunston, following it all the way to the marina at the end and then all the way back into Chichester, the county town of West Sussex. At 3.8 miles long, the canal is not exactly epic, but it's very pleasant nonetheless.

Oddly, this was my fifth trip to Chichester by bike but the first time I'd properly explored the city, which reminds me of a quiet version of Canterbury. The most striking features in the cathedral (pictured) for me were the Roman mosaic which is at the height of the original ground, so you gaze down upon it through a glass window in the floor, and a 'tomb for two' depicting a ancient couple holding hands which seemed romantic in a tragic way. I also did the 'wall walk' around the city which was almost as impressive at Chester's city wall, with a view of the priory and a motte-and-bailey castle mound, both in a large playing field. I then headed for the Chichester Inn and sat in the courtyard at the back for my first outdoor pint of 2022. Well, it was a bit more than a pint to be honest.

My next plan of action was to follow the old Roman road of Stane Street up onto the South Downs. There is something satisfying about following a dead-straight ancient course which is sometimes A-road, sometimes lane, sometimes bridleway and sometimes footpath. After a long climb through woods I turned around to enjoy the view, with the hills on the Isle of Wight in the distance. I found a spot to camp behind some gorse bushes and there was a nice sunset. The night was unusually silent for wild camping and the morning was again cold, so I packed up and began my ride back to Brighton at 6am.

I had a wander around the striking Catholic cathedral on the hill at Arundel, I found Angmering to be a very quaint village in spite of its suburban location, and I enjoyed a fine English breakfast with added mushrooms in an independent café (hurrah!) in Worthing. The staff were taking the Mick out of a customer who had been on a disastrous date. I'm sure that made him feel wonderful! I followed the A270 into Brighton purely to have a nose at what journeys were like before the town was bypassed. As I passed beneath the plethora of railway lines I spotted some steps leading up to a siding that had been converted into a short walking route called the Brighton Greenway. I followed this to the station but I wasn't ready to go home yet, so I decided to ride to Lewes, the country town of East Sussex.

As you'd expect in a city with Britain's only Green Party MP, the cycle route beside the A270 out of Brighton was very good, but the pub I intended to spend lunch in at Falmer was not open on Mondays so I merely followed the route to Lewes and caught the first of three trains home. Falafel, homous and a can of Coke on Hastings Station was the somewhat modest finale to the mission. If you've enjoyed the write-up, you know where there's plenty more (Stair-Rods & Stars).

Ashford, Kent - Portrait of a Town

[Last updated Dec 2023]

Introduction to the Town

The town of Ashford is centrally located in Kent and twinned with Hopewell in the USA, Fougères in France and Bad Münstereifel in Germany. The latter two have link roads to motorway junctions named after them so perhaps the recently added A2070 link to junction 10A should be named after Hopewell.

In 2005 the town was voted the fourth best place to live in the UK. The cathedral-like parish church of St Mary the Virgin, and indeed the town centre around it, occupies a higher area of land to the west of the River Stour, overlooking the flatter ground which surrounds the town. Ashford is sandwiched between the North Downs, England's second longest hill range, and the Greensand Ridge which is more visible west of Pluckley and east of Aldington.

The church's tower shares the skyline with the Panorama (formerly Charter House), currently Ashford's tallest building, as well as International House, another imposing block located near the railway station. A new block dubbed 'The Ashford Shard' has been granted planning permission. The Great Stour, East Stour and South Stour rivers all join in Ashford to flow through the North Downs to Canterbury and Sandwich. The former H.S. Pledge & Sons mill is Ashford's main river feature. It was later used for the nightclubs Dusty's, Cales & Flatfoot Sam's and finally Liquid & Envy.

The town was originally known as Essetesford and is recorded in the Doomsday Book of 1086.  A residential road in South Ashford uses a variation of this name. The town's cattle market was moved to an out-of-town site in the 1990s and Ashford has many modern buildings, such as the college and the new office block in Station Road. However, a haven of tranquillity can be found around the churchyard where you will also find Ashford Museum. The Gateway Centre which houses the tourist information centre and the library is nearby.

Middle Row offers a quaint pedestrian approach to the High Street, which is completely pedestrianised. It is hard to imagine that the high street was once the main A20 road from London to the Channel ports of Folkestone and Dover. Ashford was bypassed in the late 50s and this was upgraded to motorway in the early 80s. A ringway was constructed around the town centre in the early 70s. This gained a reputation as a racetrack (see the video on YouTube) and has since been broken up into a main thoroughfare for the A292 on the north of the town centre and a series of 'shared space' streets to the south. This was the first scheme of its kind in England and Wales, prompting a humorous comment from TV's Jeremy Clarkson.

And while we are on the subject of roads, in 1914 the London to Folkestone road in Ashford was the first road in Britain (and arguably the world) to be adorned with central white lines. This was possibly in the vicinity of Maidstone Road but this needs verifying. Surely there should be a plaque or something commemorating this?

Also worth visiting are the windmill in a quaint corner of Willesborough, the ornamental fountain in Victoria Park and the World War I tank in St George's Square which had its mechanics removed and replaced with an electricity sub-station in 1929, ensuring its survival as a feature.

Claims to Fame & Development

It has often been rumoured that 'Bond' star Roger Moore once lived in the town. Disappointingly online research reveals that his parents once considered buying a property at the junction of Canterbury Road and Faversham Road but didn't follow through. However, one famous name who did play James Bond in a radio adaptation of 'Moonraker' is Bob Holness who grew up in the town and attended the grammar school. Bob Holness was perhaps most famous in the 1980s as the presenter of the TV quiz, 'Blockbusters.' Ashford itself was the setting for the ITV drama series 'Stolen' in the early 1990s.

The Tour de France passed through Ashford during its British leg in 1994 and again in 2007. Famed author Frederick Forsyth was born in the town. Philosopher Simone Weil and conductor Malcolm Sargent also lived in the town and have roads named after them. The mathematician John Wallis, who tutored Isaac Newton and has been credited with inventing the infinity symbol, was born in Ashford and has a pub and a school in the town named after him. How about some plaques or statues of Ashford's famous residents for tourists?

The town's William Harvey Hospital, named after the physician from Folkestone who discovered the circulation of the blood, is well located near the motorway to provide an A&E service, especially with the rapid expansion of the town to the south which includes Finberry, Park Farm and Chilmington. When considering Ashford's urban population it is important that these parished estates are included, so that businesses and services can assess the full potential of locating in the town. The 2021 census gave an urban population of 83,000.

Development seems to be spreading ever further out to the south whilst fields between the M20 and the Willesborough to Kennington road (much closer to the town centre) remain completely rural. Whilst actual flood plain land should clearly not be built upon, this lop-sided approach to growth seems very peculiar. 

Fun and Festivals

The annual Create music festival in Victoria Park attracts big names, with the Lightning Seeds headlining in 2019. There is also a regular music festival in North Park (near the Stour Centre), and the Farriers Arms beer festival just outside the town in Mersham is well worth a visit too. There is a path that can be walked or cycled to Mersham from Church Road, Sevington to Kingsford Street, using a bridge over the A2070.

Trains & Planes

Ashford International is a railway station with six platforms located between London and the Channel crossings of Dover and Eurotunnel. The station has a domestic entrance to the north and an international entrance to the south, with lines diverging to the following destinations clockwise: 

NE) Canterbury, Ramsgate and Margate. 

E) Folkestone, Dover, Deal and Sandwich. 

SE) Eurostar services to Paris or Brussels via Lille (currently suspended)

S) Rye, Hastings and Eastbourne.

W) Tonbridge, Sevenoaks and London Charing Cross. 

NW) Maidstone and London Victoria. 

NNW) High Speed services to Ebbsfleet, Stratford and London St Pancras.

The villages of Wye, Chilham, Hamstreet and Charing (all within the borough) have reasonably central stations too. Appledore and Pluckley also have stations which are some distance from the villages.

Remarkably a rail halt to serve Park Farm and the estates to the south of the town which has been proposed since the 1990s still hasn't got off the drawing board.

London-Ashford Airport is located at Lydd. A former airport at Lympne was known as Ashford Airport prior to this.

No Direction Home?

The town is well served by main roads, but how far would you have to travel in each direction before there are no signs back? Perversely, signage for Ashford has been reduced in recent years in spite of its rapid expansion as a regional centre. Notifying the various councils and the local MP has so far resulted in no change. Let's go round the compass again...

N) Ashford is signed pretty much as far as you can go, on the A251 from Faversham (13 miles) 

NE) On the A28 the town is confirmed as a destination from Sarre, 22 miles away. Consistent signage starts at Canterbury.

E) The town is not signed beyond Hawkinge / Folkestone on the M20/A20 from the coast (14 miles). The furthest sign for the town on the old A20 used to be near Hougham at around 19 miles. Route confirmation for the town from Dover would improve the situation.

SE) There is signage from Lydd on the B2075 (17 miles)

S) Surprisingly Ashford is not signed beyond the A2070 at Brenzett (11 miles). It has been argued that the town should be signed alongside Folkestone on the A259 from Rye / Hastings especially now that the South Coast trunk route ends at M20 junction 10A.

SW) Signage for the town is pretty good from northern Hastings on the A21/A28 (30 miles)

W) The town was once signed for 31 miles from Royal Tunbridge Wells via the A21 and A262. Although there is a route confirmation near Pembury (29 miles), the town isn't signed at the pivotal A21/A262 junction now.

WNW) There is a route confirmation sign at the start of the M26 (40 miles)

NW) Ashford is not mentioned beyond the route confirmation sign at Wrotham (29 miles) on the M20 from London. The town used to be confirmed as a destination at the start of the M20, 37 miles away.

My own 'Ashford and Shepway Roads Database' blog details other routes around the wider area. And while we're on the subject of signs, the current entry signs on main roads into Ashford could do with moving further out to reflect the current extent of the urban area which has expanded significantly. Some are completely missing almost two years after this being reported to the council and later the local MP (A28 NE, A2070 S and A20 NW).

On Your Bike 

For cyclists, Route 18 heads southwest to Tenterden and Tunbridge Wells via Shadoxhurst, and in the opposite direction it runs northeast to Canterbury via Wye and Chartham. Meanwhile Route 17 heads northwest towards Maidstone and the Medway towns via Charing and uses the Pilgrims Way, an ancient trackway which runs along the bottom of the North Downs. There is also a local route numbered 11 to Lydd via the villages of Appledore and Woodchurch.

Another useful cycle route, which has been suggested to the borough council and the local MP for proper blue-signing, can be followed south from the railway station, past the designer outlet, beside the railway to Park Farm, and passing through the estate to Church Hill, Kingsnorth, where lanes can be picked up to reach Hamstreet via Bond Lane / past Homelands Stadium or via Bliby / Brisley. Another radial route could easily be created via Willesborough, over the A2070 bridge to Sevington Church, Mersham and Brabourne Lees, as well as one from Route 18 at Singleton to Great Chart and along lanes to Daniel's Water, Bethersden, Smarden and Headcorn. Three new links the for cost of a bunch of blue signs!

There are two lakes in the town. Singleton Lake can be found along Route 18 towards Tenterden, and the larger Conningbrook Lake can be found off of Route 18 towards Canterbury. It is possible to ride the unsurfaced path around 2/3 of the lake and use a bridge over the River Stour and a bridleway to reach the lane from Willesborough Lees to Wye (Route 18).

Pub Crawl?

If you've ever wondered how many establishments you'd need to visit to say you had been to every pub in Ashford the general answer would be 'Not as many as a few years ago.' Whilst this is sadly true, let's see how many we can tally up. I've included traditional venues that now include restaurants and hotel facilities as long as they remain venues where customers can merely go for a drink:

Town Centre (13): The County Hotel (Wetherspoons), the Glass House, Valerie's Wine Bar, Itaca's Cocktail Bar, the George, the Old Golden Magpie (Ashford Music Shop site), Durbar (formerly the Auction House), the Phoenix, the Taproom, Matches Sports Bar, Cappadocia (restaurant and jazz bar - formerly Platform Five), Made Inn (at the Coachworks) and the Star.

Willesborough axis (7): The New Fox (formerly the Windmill), the Alfred Arms, the Albion, the William Harvey, the Blacksmith's Arms, Hooden Smokehouse, the French Connection.

Kennington axis (8): The Conningbrook, Stubbs, the Old Mill (formerly the Golden Ball), the Rose, the Pheasant, the Bybrook Tavern (at Holiday Inn), Bybrook Barn (Harvester), the Hare and Hounds.

South Ashford axis (6): the New Chimneys, Singleton Barn, the Fish Inn (formerly the Crusader), the Beaver Inn, the Locomotive and the Riverside.

If we include the contiguous settlements of Kingsnorth and Great Chart and broaden the definition of 'pub / bar' a bit, the tally can be cranked up to 40, with the Queen's Head, the Swan & Dog, Cameo nightclub, the Ashford Club, Frankie & Benny's and Curious Brewery. The New Prince of Wales is now Jay’s Soul Food restaurant.

Currently closed are the John Wallis (formerly the Man of Kent) and the Little Black Dog. This site’s author is unable to establish the current status of the Swan.

Dining, Shopping & Entertainment
As far as dining goes there are many quality restaurants in the town centre including Beunos Aries Nights (Argentinian), Aspendos and Cappadocia (Turkish), Jay's Soul Food (Caribbean) and Amici (Italian). There are numerous Indian, Chinese and Nepalese restaurants in the town centre as well as Pizza Express which also has an outlet at the designer outlet, a twenty-minute stroll away. Other 'outlet outlets' include Wagamama, Five Guys and YO! Sushi. A twenty-minute walk in the opposite direction via Quantock Estate and the Eureka bridge will bring you to Eureka Park (this 'quickest walking route' should surely be signed?). Here you'll find restaurants including Nando's, Frankie & Benny's and Beefeater.

Perhaps the crux of why Ashford is sometimes incorrectly perceived as somewhat lacking is that its restaurants and big stores are dissipated all over the urban area, leaving the town centre increasingly facing an uphill battle, while pedestrians struggle to reach the outlying attractions which have clearly been designed around the car. Perhaps a map in the town centre listing all the stores and their locations around the town would be useful, rather than having visitors think that Ashford doesn't have chains like Argos (branches in Sainsbury's and at Sevington) and M&S (now split into two halves at the designer outlet and the food hall).

The designer outlet attracts shoppers from all over the Southeast and is the largest tented structure in Europe, even eclipsing the O2 arena (formerly the Millennium Dome). Meanwhile the town centre has two shopping centres, these being Park Mall and County Square. Ashford's former John Lewis store has reopened as the Range, but with several big names following Debenhams out of the County Square shopping centre it seems that more needs doing to make the town centre as attractive to big names as out-of-town sites. The loss of Wilko also leaves a large unit empty. The borough council has announced plans to consolidate the town centre by effectively shifting the focus slightly to the south to rejuvenate Bank Street. The jury's out as to whether or not this will prove successful.

For entertainment the town has two cinemas. The larger of these is at Eureka Park and the newer cinema is in Elwick Place. Sensibly, the town centre population is being increased with modern flats along Victoria Way, in Park Street and elsewhere, but is this potential market being used as a lure to businesses? Answers on a postcard!

Ashford also has a modern ten-pin bowling alley, the Stour Centre for sports and swimming, the Julie Rose Stadium and 'Revelation at St Mary's' which stages music concerts and performances at the parish church, with some big names such as Fairport Convention and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Whilst this is a great innovation, residents have routinely expressed a wish for an actual theatre in the town which seems to be an unacknowledged anomaly when Ashford is larger in population than Folkestone, Canterbury and Margate, all of which are well-served theatrically.

Conclusion

This is not the one of the routine 'Ashford bashing' blogs that make local headlines from time to time, but one written by a lifelong resident of the borough who would like to see the town flourish, preferring the slightly tongue in cheek nickname of 'Ash Vegas' to the ubiquitous (and dated) 'Trashford,' which was actually originally used in a headline concerning littering.

The town is likely to be the third largest in Kent (after Maidstone and Gillingham) when the 2021 census data is released. In the 1990s everything from Ashford becoming an economic powerhouse to having its own cable-car system was mooted. Progress has been a long time coming, and now the pieces are again in flux, to paraphrase a former prime minister. A railway museum would also be a huge draw, capitalising on the town's industrial heritage. The town's future sits on a knife-edge. Let's hope our representatives can deliver the goods.

Credits

This page has been put together by Adam Colton, a local author of UK travel and psychological fiction. Please visit the author page on the Amazon website, Smashwords, iBooks, etc. for details of available books. Adam is also one half of the musical duo Adam Colton & Teresa Colton. Check out their songs on YouTube, Spotify, iTunes and other music sites.

This page may omit other aspects of the town which might deserve attention. I am happy to correct any errors and will consider any glaring omissions. For all else, you can always produce your own blog!

School report for Ashford: has potential; just needs more focus.

There is sister-page on this blog about the nearby village of Hamstreet

The Peddars Way and Norfolk - a Cycling Perambulation

It was a drizzly Sunday in late July when I set off from Kent to Thetford in Norfolk where the forecast looked decidedly better. I normally use the train to reach my cycling destinations, but in the interest of social distancing my ancient Ford Focus got its chance to show what it can do!

The scenery was quite interesting as I approached Thetford on the A11, with a 127-foot war memorial column and scattered bits of forest. I parked in a free car park (rare as hen's teeth, as I believe the saying goes) and cycled into the town centre, settling upon a Greene King pub where I had to text a number to sign in. Outside there was a statue of Thomas Paine, known as the Father of the American Revolution, with his quotations etched around the plinth. I generally agreed with all of these, although some patriotic young people passing by loudly expressed an opinion that the statue shouldn't be there. Dad's Army was filmed in Thetford too, doubling as Walmington-on-Sea in spite of being over forty miles from the sea. After Norwich, Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn, Thetford is Norfolk's fourth largest town.

I cycled eastward on a cycle path and then an undulating lane as it got dusky. There was a strong smell of peaches, and I turned left onto the Peddars Way path which follows the route of the ancient Roman road for 46 miles to the North Norfolk coast. It is believed that the Romans merely straightened out a much older trackway that was an extension of the Greater Ridgeway. I set up camp at the edge of a small wood, eating bread, fish and cheese before sleeping.

I was awake as it got light, and once it was clear that I wasn't going to fall asleep again I packed away and tried to pump my bike tyre up, but I couldn't attach the pump, so I had to ride all the way back to Thetford on a flat tyre. After waiting for Halfords to open I learned that there was no mechanic available. I then tried a bike shop in a council estate but it was shuttered up and someone said that it had been that way since lockdown started. In the end I drove to a repair shop in a forest park about six miles away, had a short walk while waiting for the fitting of a new inner tube and then returned to the same car park in Thetford and started again.

Beyond the point where I'd camped, the Peddars Way became an 'official' cycling route, with the occasional deviation where the Roman route no longer exists or is merely designated 'footpath.' There are clear signs to deter cyclists from using the footpath sections which is fair enough – clarity reduces the temptation to try one's luck! The terrain took me through forests, along wide farm tracks clearly made for large agricultural machinery and along lanes which occasionally subsumed the Roman course.

Contrary to popular opinion I can confirm that Norfolk is not flat. There were some significant climbs, but whereas in Kent these are often short and sharp, in Norfolk they tend to be long and gentle without the reward of a spectacular view at the top, which isn't to say that the countryside wasn't very pleasant. In addition one has to plan a bit. In more populated counties one gets used to finding a shop or pub within three or four miles, but well-endowed villages can be much greater distances apart where the population is spread more thinly. I also noticed that on the main roads mileages to significant towns are often in the thirties whereas in Kent you'll rarely see a distance above the teens.

With all this in mind, I decided to detour to the town of Swaffham and refuel with a couple of Guinnesses outside the Red Lion (the most popular pub name in the UK). An elderly woman from Dereham chatted as she passed me, and although it was only 4pm, I tucked into lasagne, chips and salad in a café, again not knowing how far the next facilities might be.

Back on the Peddars Way, I soon came to the village of Castle Acre where I wandered around the outside of the impressive ruined priory. Three young ladies were trying to record a promotional video of some kind by a stone archway which was once a gateway to the village. I waited until they messed up a take to wander in and take the obligatory photo on my phone (of the arch, not the young ladies!). As the village name suggests, there was also a castle here.

After a second night's camping I continued all the way to Holme-next-the-Sea. There were a lot of fields filled with 'pig huts' and I stopped to look at a Bronze Age burial mound or barrow along this section. Later I passed through ground owned by 'Sandringham' and the hills became more bumpy. The final miles of the cycling route were on lanes, with a fairly challenging climb before Ringstead, where I bought some pills for my headache which I think was merely muscle strain from the wild camping.

After briefly resting on a bench at Holme, where I decided to avoid running the gauntlet of flying golf balls to get to the sea, I rode to the resort of Hunstanton, one of the only places on the east coast of England where the sun sets over the sea, due to its location on The Wash. I stopped to photograph the classic view of the lighthouse through the stone arch, just as I did with my father in 2001 when we were visiting all the mainland lighthouses for our book project, 'England and Wales in a Flash.' A board informed me that St Edmund allegedly landed here and after his reign he was used for archery practice and brutally killed, with a wolf reputedly guarding his head afterwards. I continued into the bustling town centre and found a café where I had a full breakfast with black pudding. Although the town has the feel of an upbeat 'Margate' or 'Hastings,' its population is surprisingly under five thousand.

I continued southward via Heacham and Snettisham, managing to avoid actually riding on the A149 which had a huge queue going the other way, towards Hunstanton and the beach no doubt. So much for social distancing. I passed milestones with the distance to King's Lynn counting down from '10' to '8,' which was where I turned off and found a nice pub beer garden, meriting a stop. This was just as well as a glance at my 'map app' revealed that I was going the wrong way.

The road wound its way up towards Sandringham, with a regal looking avenue where the forest was kept beyond neat lawn-like verges - an approach fit for a queen! My next port of call was the small town of Fakenham, and I didn't pass a single building for about five miles on one particular lane, which ran through a valley with strips of evergreen forest on the gentle slopes. I paused for a rest near a bridleway section and a lady in a car asked if I was alright. People are nice here, you see!

Eventually I got to Fakenham, sussing out the suitability of a heath-like area for camping before heading for the town centre, resorting to Wetherspoons as I fancied a curry, thus breaking my embargo on the chain. Reading their magazine, it seemed that Tim Martin's comments about furlough were widely misreported and that he merely said that he wouldn't blame his staff if they got jobs in supermarkets, so perhaps my stance on Wetherspoons was too hasty anyway. Whilst fake news abounds online, it is worrying when reputable media sources prefer to go for whatever makes a good story than sticking to the facts. With my conscience clear, I was pleased to see that Fakenham itself had a good social distancing system where arrows ensure that the observant always walk on the left pavement.

The rest of my trip involved taking in Dereham, which is the capital of the Breckland district of Norfolk, and Watton, where I found the locals particularly friendly, although when I moved to a quieter part of the pub I did overhear a woman in tears being told to 'get a grip' by her friend. I hope their girls' night out was salvaged.

Often foxes can be heard barking incessantly in the night when wild camping, but the area around Thetford is also rife with military activity. I got used to the planes and helicopters, but one night it sounded as though machine guns were repeatedly being fired. My horror-writer friend from Norwich also came out to meet me one day, relishing a photo opportunity with a statue of Captain Mainwaring in Thetford, racing up the steps to the top of the castle mound and possibly relishing the cider even more.

On the sixth night of camping I hung a tarpaulin from branches and camped beneath it as showers were forecast. This cemented my decision to make the following day the finale. During this, I rode along the Harling Drove, a ten-mile route through the forest north of Thetford, which uses sandy tracks (difficult for cycling) and the occasional lane. I added this to the collection of ancient droves that I've cycled, specifically the Shaftesbury Drove and one on the Isle of Wight. This was the first day of compulsory mask-wearing and I searched in vain for a shop selling postcards of Norfolk in Thetford before driving home. The merit of trying to skimp on a bit of money by using the Blackwall Tunnel instead of the QE2 Bridge was questionable as I encountered a two-mile queue, but I can confirm that the 'improved' section of the M20 around West Malling is much better than it used to be during rush hour.

If you've enjoyed this write-up there are many more in 'Stair-Rods and Stars - a Cycling Perambulation.' You can also feel good by helping independent authors in the cut-throat world of publishing!

The North Kent Coast and Bedgebury Forest - a Cycling Perambulation

As the lockdown rules have changed a bit and we can now drive to different locations for exercise (in England), I've enjoyed several pleasant rides in different parts of Kent.

It was on the hottest day of the year so far when I drove to the town of Faversham, which proudly houses one of only a handful of copies of the Magna Carta. I parked on a loop of road that crosses the dual carriageway Thanet Way to the east of the town. I then got my bike out of the boot and rode via the village of Graveney to Seasalter. I remember being taken here as a teenager when my grandfather was doing some maintenance work on a chalet. I was off school for three weeks with chicken pox so my grandparents took me there for a day out, mostly to relieve the boredom I think. You could view this 'boredom relief' as a practice run for six months on furlough 32 years later, although once 'sensible' camping is permitted and pubs are tentatively open I can see more options!

When I came into the suburbs of Whitstable, a town famed for its oysters, I tried to get to the sea by crossing a bridge, but the track was a dead end one side and private the other, so I continued along the road. When I reached the quayside with all its seafood stalls I enjoyed not a pint of whelks but a cup of tea while sitting on a wooden construction. It was busy but people were still being sensible about social distancing, unlike the crazed scenes on the TV that day from Bournemouth and Camber on the south coast. Perhaps city dwellers desperate for sea air with a somewhat lax approach to coronavirus just haven't heard of Whitstable!

I continued along the sea wall to Herne Bay, passing a point where a spit of sand runs out to sea and people were walking back and forth along it, a little like the characters in a painting by MC Escher. There was also a sandbank marooned in the water along this section. Getting stranded on there with the tide coming in would take social isolation to another level. Further on the remnants of the end of an old pier can be seen at Herne Bay. The wind farm, which can be seen out in the estuary / sea, was the world's largest from April 2013 until September 2018. Looking back to the west you can see the Isle of Sheppey, England's second largest island after Wight.

I sat down by Herne Bay's current pier and then headed inland, using a shop in Sea Street to buy some lunch before riding along Bullockstone Road, which climbed through trees. I then took a dead end lane into West Blean Wood and sat down in the shade near a gate to have my lunch. It was very hot by now, but I hoped the largely wooded route I intended to take back to the car would provide some shade.

I rode the track known as New Road which was dead straight as it headed west. I saw a slow worm at the side of a lane at one point. I still think they look more like snakes than legless lizards! Eventually I picked up the Crab and Winkle Way and headed south. This is an off-road cycle route from Whitstable to Canterbury which was named after one of the UK's first railway lines, opening in 1830 and operating until 1953. The cycle route makes only minimal use of the former track bed but is very pleasant. I came out onto the A290 near the University of Kent and mused about whether or not my own life would have been better, worse or just different if I had gone to uni at some point. I guess I would have had more money by now, but would I have had the time to pursue the things I enjoy as much, such as biking, camping and writing my books? The jury's out.

The philosophising came to an end as I turned down a road to Rough Common and picked up the next track into the woods on the northwest side of Canterbury, another 'New Road.' This trail ran for several miles and eventually curved down to meet a lane. I turned left and felt the full force of the heat as I climbed a shadeless hill. On the next lane, there was a glorious view before the inevitable descent. I rode back to the car via Staplestreet and at one point I thought a stone was rolling down the road, but the sound was produced by either my tyre sticking to the tarmac or the tarmac sticking to my tyre.

Personally I quite like the heat, which makes it rather ironic that I am perhaps one of the most vociferous worriers about global warming you will meet. I get the impression that I am in a minority on both counts. "Eco-worrier and proud!" I hasten to add that usually I use public transport to reach my riding locations but this isn't advised at the moment due to that confounded virus.

Another ride I did as we near the end of the lockdown was a loop around Bedgebury Forest. This is a lovely area of public woodland, which has two cycling circuits of eight miles in length (I don't do kilometres - much!). If you enjoy unusual acoustic songs 'Lady of Bedgebury' recounts the tragic tale of a murdered woman's body which was found in the forest and never identified (YouTube, Spotify, etc.).

The green 'family circuit' is fairly gentle and there is a red route for mountain bikers. I chose the latter, and the banked curves and humps along the furiously winding loop were tremendous fun. There are also a few rocky sections which my suspensionless bike isn't really up to, and just for adrenaline addicts there is a 'black route' with jumps that would appeal to stuntmen. I skipped this section!

Passing out of the forest I climbed towards the A21 on the B2079 and turned left to the village of Flimwell, managing to avoid actually riding on this frenetic road when a pavement appeared – certainly safer and not causing any inconvenience in a rural location like this. I relished the opportunity to have a cup of tea outside a café cum farm shop, this being my first outdoor beverage of 2020, and after this I headed to the edge of the large village of Hawkhurst and returned to my car via Slip Mill Lane and a short byway which presented me with a gruelling climb as a finisher, before a pleasant drive back to 'Ash Vegas,' which is how residents with a sense of irony often refer to the expanding Kentish town of Ashford.

Ashford (Kent) to Deal and Dover - a Cycling Perambulation

Spring is coming but winter wasn't really so bad. February presented us with the hottest winter temperature ever recorded in the UK. Whilst this was very pleasant, it worried me a little because I do wonder what extremes of weather we are unleashing for our descendants. Well, not mine as I don't have any, but you get the point!

Whilst any weather incident is just a single event at a single location, folk on both sides of the climate change debate (perhaps including me) often claim it as evidence for their view. The best way to get an objective view must surely be to be to consult the scientists, and I would recommend a book called 'Our Future Earth' (which was written by a geologist called Curt Stager) for anybody seriously interested in the subject and what is most likely to happen in both the short term and the long term. Personally I think we will pass the often talked about 'point of no return' (if we haven't done so already). After all, when you look at the chaos surrounding one country leaving the EU it is hard to imagine the whole world even agreeing on the science (Mr Trump, anyone?), let alone putting something concrete into action for seven billion people.

By the way, that's a US billion by the way. I heard that our good old British twelve-nought billion was signed out of use by the government in 1974, and as Michael Caine used to say 'Not a lot of people know that!' Hey, let's start a political party and get our Great British numbers back. Anyone else up for the nine-nought milliard, the fifteen-nought billiard and the eighteen-nought trillion? If you're a wealthy city stockbroker I imagine you'd dearly love a game of billiards, but you'll have to settle with playing 'milliards' for now!

Well, I'm actually here to talk about a bike ride. Observing a strong westerly March wind, I decided to let it blow me eastward from Ashford in Kent and see where I ended up, so I set off on along the suburban Hythe Road and cut down past the Hooden on the Hill pub to take the lanes to the village of Wye, passing the old sign in the photograph. At one point I had to lift my bike over a fallen tree which a man was in the process of cutting up with a chainsaw. These winds were serious!

I surprised myself by riding all the way up onto the North Downs past the crown chalk carving which looks out over the Stour Valley. Some walkers cheered me on half way up the climb, and as I came along the top of the ridge by the Devil's Kneading Trough restaurant the side-wind almost blew me onto the grass verge a few times. I continued on through Hastingleigh and walked up a steep hill towards the hamlet of Elmsted, by which time I was deep in the rolling green hills. I turned left and descended into a valley, climbing Dean Hill and continued out to Stone Street, the Roman Road that runs from Lympne to Canterbury.

Beyond this was the village of Stelling Minnis with its many little greens on either side of the road. A 'minnis' in an area of common pasture land, and Stelling Minnis's is one of the last manorial commons in Kent, according to Wikipedia. I then took the lane towards Bridge which descends into an empty valley through the hills and eventually passes a former home of James Bond author, Ian Fleming. However, I turned off a few miles before this and climbed eastward towards Barham. At the top, I was surprised to get a glimpse of the port of Ramsgate around twenty miles away before the lane descended through woodland and then climbed a very steep hill back onto the plateau. The sign said that the gradient was 23%.

Soon I descended to Barham village and the climb past the church and cemetery wasn't so harsh. I crossed the A2 dual carriageway and headed for Snowdown, which lived up to its name as a harsh hailstorm came on and I pedalled like mad to get to the station for shelter. Upon realising that catching the next train involved a two-hour wait I concluded that it would take less time to wait for the sun to return and I continued to Nonington which is really quite picturesque with its thatched roofs.

I had to cut through a copse to get around another fallen tree and the lane eastward was surprisingly hilly but without the dramatic scenery I'd become used to. I was impressed at how well shielded the noise from the A256 was as I approached it, but I had to revise my views about the road's 'great design' when I had to sprint across each carriageway lifting my bike over the central crash barrier to reach the country lane on the other side.

There was a long straight on the next lane and I turned right to head into Northbourne. By now I'd lost my hat and this profoundly annoyed me. I seem to lose a woolly hat every winter, and as I had held onto mine well into March it felt like I'd fallen at the last hurdle. Quelling the annoyance, my idea was to head into the seaside town of Deal via Great Mongeham and catch the train home, but it was a rail replacement bus which means 'no bikes allowed.'

Disorientated, I was tempted to pop into the Sir Norman Wisdom, a Wetherspoons pub named in honour of Deal's most famous resident (although Carry On comedian Charles Hawtrey also lived there), but I eschewed this option and pounded my way along the A258 to Dover instead. This ride was nothing short of gruelling, being nearly all uphill and against the wind with a constant flow of traffic. When I reached Dover I cruised down the steep hill past the castle and headed for the Wetherspoons pub there instead.

I must admit I have become quite a fan of Tim Martin's chain over the years, as you pretty much know what to expect when finding yourself in a town you don't really know, and real ale drinkers seem to make up a considerable part of the target market which has got to be good! The chain is actually named after one of Mr Martin's old teachers who said that he'd never amount to anything. Bringing things full cycle (excuse the pun) the only thing that may cause rancour with some customers is Mr Martin's somewhat outspoken views on that old chestnut, Brexit (he is an impassioned 'no deal outtie'). To be honest I've developed Brexit fever which means turning Jeremy Vine's daily debate off the radio and switching to Classic FM.

All there was left to do for me on my ride was to wander up the High Street and catch the fast train back home. If you want to know what a post-M&S High Street looks like, head for Dover – it's probably coming to a town near you next. High town centre rates? We're all in the same boat. And it's sinking!

Ad break: If you've enjoyed this narrative, there are plenty more in my book 'Stair-Rods and Stars' which documents ten cycling trips in Southern England and can be bought on Amazon (digital format too). Some of my older books can even be downloaded for free.

Norwich & Marriott's Way - a Cycling Perambulation

My first cycling trip away this year took place in June, when I decided to explore the disused railway lines of Norfolk. The £58 price of a return to Norwich from Kent surprised me, especially as I'd saved no small sum by breaking the ticketed journey in half at Manningtree in order to use a railcard. Oh, the arcane ways of the railways! When I reached Stratford domestic station an announcement incessantly repeated 'Would Inspector Sans please go to the operations room immediately.' There were some emergency announcements too which they then announced were only a test and that there was no need to evacuate. This made me wonder if the incessantly repeated sentence was merely a coded warning to staff of a potential 'real life' emergency, made nonsensical so as not to panic the passengers.

I changed trains at Colchester and unusually a girl asked if I wanted a burger heated up. I've never tried a cold one, but if this is a delicacy in Essex, so be it! I was impressed upon my arrival in Norwich, as the stately station building seemed like a mini version of Lime Street Station in Liverpool. I headed up towards the castle mound, which was quite an incline for the relatively flat county of Norfolk, eventually getting my bearings to pick up the Marriott's Way Heritage Trail, a 26-mile loop named after the chief engineer of the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway, William Marriott. Apparently M&GN was nicknamed 'muddle and go nowhere' by passengers.

My route passed over the River Wensum on a footbridge and there was a short footpath section through the former railway station at Hellesdon. The scenery was much more diverse than I'd expected, having previously found the western part of Norfolk to be flatter than your average pancake.

At the village of Drayton, Station Road was signed as private, so I took a V-shaped course via the village centre which was very pretty. Initially Marriott's Way continued via a wooded cutting. The bridge over the dual carriageway A1270 marked the half way point to Reepham (pronounced 'reefam') according to the sign. It was then very wooded, with a parallel lane to the right. I stopped for a rest and a guy in a van nearby had a woman's voice on loudspeaker; it was very loud indeed and I wondered if the caller realised she was being broadcast. In this age of data protection perhaps the driver had a duty to inform her!

Beyond was a long wooded descent. There was a detour near Attlebridge where a station is now private. The route still seemed rural when passing industry and an old man gave me a good old fashioned 'how do?' at one point. I soon came to Whitwell and Reepham Station where there is half a mile of restored line. I got a Guinness at the bar and sat on a bench while a group of motorcyclists met up. There is much for the rail enthusiast here. The trail beyond to Reepham itself via the big loop of Themelthorpe had a rougher surface and I read somewhere that this bend that linked two different lines was once the sharpest on the UK network.

I detoured into Reepham, which had a quaint village centre, to use the shop. I then consumed three quarters of a pork pie and an iced coffee drink in the churchyard which once contained three churches. Two remain and appear joined together.

I took a back-street back up to Marriott's Way and then rode the last six miles to Aylsham via Cawston. Aylsham has a very nice market square, and naturally I called into a pub to write up these notes. World Cup football was on TV and a band were setting up and winding wires around a young lady who seemed to be getting in their way. With 'Knocking on Heaven's Door' as a sound-check, my attention was diverted from Ronaldo and chums, although most folk resolutely kept their eyes on the ball.

Upon leaving I walked through the churchyard and got a spring roll in a Chinese restaurant. I then biked to a wood to the south of the town via a suburban cycle way and across a field on a footpath. It was a very comfortable place to camp and I had a brief territorial wander before getting into the sleeping bag.

I awoke at 5.30am. Natural light seems to restore me to a lark's sleeping pattern from the annoyingly impractical owl's hours that I usually gravitate towards. I got up at about 6.30 and rode back to Aylsham town centre, picking up the Bure Valley path which runs beside a narrow gauge railway. This reminded me of the Romney Hythe & Dymchurch railway in Kent, and path and rails share the track bed amenably, unlike the two pigeons that were fighting furiously on a bank. I was unable to intervene in an 'Oi, you two, cut it out!' kind of way as the rails were between me and warring birds. As it leaves the town, the line goes through the only railway tunnel in Norfolk. The path goes over the top.

This path was narrower than yesterday's trail and rougher. There had been a light shower while I was in the sleeping bag, but now it came on quite strong. I headed for the top of a cutting and set my tarpaulin up, preparing for the worst, but it soon eased and I was on my way again.

The route presented me with a long slow climb via Coltishall to Hoveton & Wroxham Station. The main line joins just before the station and there is a book shop on the platform of the narrow gauge station. I found my way to the centre of Hoveton which was awash with tourists and headed for a pub to consume the obligatory breakfast in a conservatory, looking out towards the Broad. After a visit to the tourist info centre, I decided to head for the small village of Spixworth. Crossing the Broad via a bridge, I was then in Wroxham and I had to use the pedestrian crossing to disrupt the endless flow of cars in order to get across the main road onto Church Lane. Eventually, I found myself on a track which became quite bleak and open. Once back on lanes, I phoned my friend Simon Crow, a very nice chap who writes exceedingly gruesome horror novels; he lives in Norwich. I waited for his arrival on a bench in Spixworth, just a few miles north of the city. His fiancée, drove us to a pub about a mile up the road which looked more rustic than the nearest alehouse. The conversation couldn't have been too excruciating as I was kindly given a lift back too!

Reunited with my bike, I continued west along the lanes via Horsham St Faith and Horsford, where I picked up Dog Lane, which turned into another bridleway and became quite rutted through an evergreen forest. It then detoured south to the dual carriageway A1270 and I rode the parallel path. I eventually branched off northward into another wood on a byway. There was a steep climb which I walked up; I wasn't expecting to be relegated to Shanks' pony at all in Norfolk, but this climb was of the 'no messing' variety. The path then continued next to a fenced off compound and went across the middle of a field, more like a footpath than a byway by now, but legal to ride I hasten to add.

I used the lane to get to Attlebridge, but was devastated to find nothing there as I was tired and thirsty. I'm not sure why I am always so surprised to find this! In desperation, I pounded along the main road to the next village - Lenwade. The garage shop was just closing, but just as I thought my ride was descending into farce or starvation, I found a pub a bit further up the road. I had a pint of lemonade and a Cromer crab with salad and warm bread. The landlord was lively and welcoming and the gents' loos were outside (very 'retro').

I then rode down to the common, but it wasn't common enough as the gates were locked, so I headed up a lane back to Marriott's Way and turned east in search of a place to camp. After a few miles I decided to camp at the top of a cutting. As I settled down, I heard a noise which I was a bit worried could be a tree creaking as a large trunk had fallen nearby.

I was back in 'owl mode' as I snoozed until 8.45 the next day, when I packed up and headed east on the cycle way. When I got to Drayton I headed for a café. It was very busy so it took a quite a long time to get each of my two pots of tea, but they gave me extra items with my breakfast which was delicious with black pudding and scrambled egg. Sorry vegans.

I then rode the remaining miles to Norwich, riding a bit of the river path from the end of the trail and chaining my bike up by the bus stops near the cathedral. A young man was going ballistic on his phone at some poor unfortunate soul – not the best intro to the city for me! Eventually I met up with Simon again and he explained to me that there seem to be more 'characters' in Norwich on Sundays than the rest of the week, before showing me the market square where I think I can remember buying a book on interpreting dreams when I was thirteen. Thirty years later they still make little sense but I view them more like free entertainment.

After a visit to a café which seemed church-like inside, we walked up to the castle on top of its mound and had a brief look at the two main shopping centres before gravitating towards a Wetherspoons pub. My father is something of an enthusiast of these pubs; I have yet to come near to his tally but usually relish visiting a branch of the chain that he's yet to discover. Our final place to visit was the cathedral with the grave of Edith Cavell outside. Edith was a British nurse who saved lives on both sides during World War I but was sentenced to death by firing squad for helping 200 Allied prisoners escape from German-occupied Belgium. Not quite on a level with crossing borders to flee a country, my journey home was nevertheless epic, starting at 5pm, with me finally walking through the door of my home just before midnight. This was largely due to some high jinks involving throwing things onto the electric cables. High jinks; low IQ. I had a notion of wanting to visit Colchester, but I didn't mean sitting for two hours on the station in the hope that a train might eventually come along. The café stayed open late to accommodate the masses and consequently saved my sanity. Well, the can of Guinness did at least!

If you enjoy reading the write ups of these trips, there are plenty more to read about in my book, 'Stair Rods and Stars.' The digital editions of most my books are now free, so why not have a look on Kindle, iBooks, etc. and go 'the full cycle?'

The Brampton Valley Way & Northamptonshire - a Cycling Perambulation

I've got another cycling narrative for you, and this time we're off to exotic Northampton. Having undertaken this trip in mid-September, the weekend in question seemed like the last chance to undertake a short camping adventure in 2017.

I alighted from my train in England's second biggest town without 'city' status after Reading, although locals will still tell you that the epithet 'largest' belongs to Northampton. Heading north along suburban roads, I spied a corner shop. However, with none of those 'animal fat' fivers and tenners in my pocket, my options were a 50p charge for using a card or a cash machine that charged £1.85. Considering I only wanted a can of soft drink, I ditched my own advice to support the little man and headed for Asda instead. The shame!

I then took a path behind some houses and industrial units out to a road, bridged the railway and picked up the Brampton Valley Way, -an old track-bed I'd cycled this time last year and wanted to revisit. According to Wikipedia, the railway line closed relatively late in 1981 – I guess we can't blame Dr. Beeching for this one.

There are lots of little viaducts over fields on the route and a couple of miles where the path runs beside a preserved section of the line. The scenery of gentle rolling hills is 'pleasant in an unspectacular way,' to apply William Cobbett's quotation about my own local area in Kent to a different county. However, I soon had to shelter beneath my tarpaulin on a bank during a shower. My blind optimism about the weather had failed me. After the weekend I would know once and for all whether to trust the forecast and if a high of 14 degrees and a low of 7 degrees is tolerable for my basic kind of camping.

Although I'd ridden through them last year, the two tunnels of 400m+ were still a bit scary, with no lighting as you head towards that distant arch of light at the other end. However both paled into insignificance compared to the pitch-black Netherton Tunnel on the Birmingham Canal network which I cycled last year – at 1.7 miles, this really got the pulse racing. I did pass one other cyclist as I rode through, so perhaps I'm not the only one who relishes a ride where you see absolutely nothing!

While I was telling you about that, we've passed into Leicestershire and arrived at Market Harborough (roughly twenty miles north from my starting point), I headed for Wetherspoons. I enjoyed this pub much more at 5pm, than last year when I got there mid-evening and found it to be packed to capacity. I sat in a booth, charged my phone, dried my tarpaulin and wrote up my notes on the journey so far. As time progressed the voices around me got louder and the language grew more colourful. Time to go!

I picked up a lane eastward which was like a switchback ride with all its undulations. The views were pleasant as dusk fell, and I rode a brief semi-circle through the small town of Desborough. Now heading south, the next town I reached was Rothwell, where I got a delicious kebab and some supplies in a shop. A woman was having an argument with herself as I ate sitting on a wall. I suppose it's one way to make sure you always win in a debate! The town was certainly lively for a place of its size and I had a wander around the square, pausing outside the church to listen to a brass band inside.

It was dark as I rode the lane towards Kettering (north side). After passing a huge industrial building that reflected the streetlights around it, looking like a streak of sunset in the sky from a distance, I took a gravel path which curved into the woods, and found a place to camp. I was a little worried as the cold ground was sapping my heat by 10pm and the temperature was to drop another four degrees. Wearing my coat in the sleeping bag solved this, although the drips from the trees weren't particularly welcome.

The following day I got up at about 7.45 and rode into Kettering. There was a handy cycle path by the road nearly all the way to the centre, which on an Sunday morning was as silent as one of those tunnels. Lacking imagination, I headed for McDonalds for breakfast. Beyond, my ride presented me with a long climb up from crossing the River Ise to the little town of Barton Latimer.

My route back to Northampton mostly consisted of one long, relatively flat lane, which would put many Kent B-roads to shame in its directness. The ride to Little Harrowden and past Sywell Airfield was stunningly quiet apart from the odd passing cyclist, but once I hit the edge of Northampton this all changed. The five-mile, gradually descending suburban road to the centre reminded me of the A5 going into London.

Sadly, my reliance on big chains continued as I headed for another Wetherspoons for lunch. This one was called The Cordwainer (which means shoemaker) and I sat upstairs and tucked into an avocado bagel and salad. An old man had joked about being a gentleman for not pushing in front of me at the bar. Obviously the requirements for being a gentleman these days are less stringent than of yore! The lack of a queuing system is a common problem with these large pubs (I've walked out my local branch before). The bar steward usually asks 'Who's next?' and about a dozen people reply. The largest one then invariably gets served first.

There were no such problems in Northampton on a Sunday lunchtime, and after a couple of pints I merrily wended my way to the station and put the lid on my camping trips for 2017. There are plenty more to read about in my book, 'Stair Rods and Stars.' The digital editions of most my books are now free, so if you've enjoyed this narrative, why not have a look on Kindle, iBooks, etc. and go 'the full cycle?'