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?

A Tale of Five English Pubs

Once upon a time, in deepest, darkest Kent, there were five 'Style and Winch' pubs all built to the same design in the first half of the twentieth century. One of these was known as The World's Wonder. It used to be one of a handful of 'locals' that I use but sadly bit the dust in September 2014.

Avoiding the inevitable invective against Government policy and taxation of the working man's place of refuge, I am just going to tell you that this former pub is located in the village of Warehorne, which is located near the larger village of Hamstreet, which is located near the town on Ashford which is located around 55 miles southeast of that big place called London.

I recently achieved something I'd planned to do for years, and this was to visit all four of the Wonder's 'twin pubs.' I remember discussing with the landlord the notion of completing this challenge by bike in a single day a few years ago. Sadly I only visited one of these by bike in the end.

The most southerly of these pubs is The Ship at Lade (pictured), tucked away in a back-street just off of the road along the Southeastern Kent coast between the seaside villages of Greatstone to Lydd-on-Sea - basically almost France, were it not for the water in between. This pub has been redundant for many years, and I took a mosey up there some years ago for the obligatory photo that I have since lost.

In November last year I set out to visit a pub of the lesser-spotted 'open' variety. I caught the train up to Swanley and set off on my bike along what must surely be the longest station access road in Kent! I followed the B-road to Dartford via Hextable. The scenery between the built-up areas reminded me of East Kent, consisting of expansive open fields.

I found my way to the centre of Dartford via a signed detour for bikes. Having been to Liverpool, the home of The Beatles, many times, I was profoundly disappointed by the former hometown of Mick Jagger. I could find no reference to either Jagger or the Rolling Stones in the town centre. I had expected a statue of Mr Jagger complete with pouting lips somewhere in the town and I thought at least one enterprising individual would have opened an alehouse called 'Jagger's Bar' and adorned it with replica gold discs and framed photographs of the group, but like Sir Mick, I got no satisfaction. I have since learned that there is a blue plaque commemorating the place where Jagger and Richards first met at Dartford railway station.

Dartford did however have a bustling market in its high street (as opposed to flinging it out as far as possible as though allergic to such trading like the similarly Kentish town of Ashford). I wheeled my bike past the impenetrable crowds and on via a pleasant park.

The town itself seemed dearly in need of some of its most famous ex-resident's money, but the park was pleasant enough. My aim now was to attempt to follow the River Darent southward. I rode some suburban roads and then found a footpath which brought me out via meadows onto the A225 near the A2 bridge. Just beyond this, in the village of Hawley, was the Papermaker's Arms. I chained up my bike and ventured inside.

The young barman was fascinated when I showed him the picture of the 'Wonder' on my village's hiking page on the Internet. This reminded me of the boy in the film 'A.I.' finding out that he was actually one of many identical models. However, where the boy in the film was devastated, this barman was overjoyed to discover that the pub was one of five!

After supping a local ale, I continued and turned off of the main road to go through the villages of South Darenth and Horton Kirby. The healthy quota of pubs in these Darent Valley villages was nothing short of impressive.

I eventually came out onto the A20 at Farningham and continued along the A225 to picturesque Eynsford where I watched a Landrover splash its way through the ford. Beyond the station, I took a lane to Lullingstone and rode a path by the river, northward again so I could look at the castle. I stood at the impressive arched gatehouse, admiring the stately home across the lawn, before continuing again. A little further, the Roman Villa seemed to be located inside a modern building, designed to preserve it. I feared a fee of some kind (although I was recently impressed by the Roman mosaic situated within the park at St Albans which can be viewed free of charge), and returned to the A225 heading south, making a detour to the village of Shoreham on the lanes, where I counted four pubs. Four!

My ride ended in another village, Otford, where I caught the train home and it wasn't until May 8th 2015 that I returned to the challenge. This time I had my fiancée in tow, having attended our legal preliminary meeting to marrying at Maidstone registry office. Yes, it's complex to marry somebody from outside the EU, although bizarrely if she was marrying somebody from outside the UK but from within the EU and living in the UK, none of the red tape would apply. Like most things in life, this simple meeting expanded to fill our day, as we had make a lightening-speed trip back home (around thirty miles away) in order to return with the photographs and additional line in our 'proof of residency' letter that they hadn't told us we needed.

We were pretty shattered after this and a little drive along to Barming to check out The Redstart Inn seemed to be the perfect tonic. Inside, the bar was lively and I kept hearing words like 'Miliband' and 'Farage.' I guess the recent election had meant a change from the usual pub 'staples' of conversations like football and smut! This particular 'Wonder' was up a quiet residential lane. There was a village feel here, in spite of being on the edge of Maidstone, one of Kent's largest towns.

Our final 'Wonder' would be just a photo, as The Bell at Coxheath is now an Indian restaurant, and dinner was waiting for us at home. This former pub stands beside the east/west B-road in the village centre which has a semi-urban feel. It's even got a set of traffic lights!

So, having completed this challenge a few years behind schedule, I'll leave you to ponder the merits of checking out more of my travel writing on Amazon Kindle or vowing never to waste time on this blog again. If your view is the former, the book 'Mud Sweat and Beers' by Adam Colton may be of interest.