Hamstreet, Kent - Concise Information for Visitors

Location: 6 miles south of Ashford, Kent

Population: 1988 (2021 census)

Parishes: Orlestone and Warehorne

Introduction to Hamstreet

The village of Hamstreet used to be a mere hamlet known as ‘Ham’ with most of the population living at Orlestone, a small settlement based around the pretty 11th century church of St Mary one mile north of the village.

When the Romney Marshes were properly drained, Hamstreet became more desirable, being strategically located at the cross of the Ashford to New Romney road and the current Tenterden to Hythe road. The coming of the railway in 1851 boosted the village’s growth, which has continued steadily throughout the last hundred years. The Ashford to Hastings line is now one of only two diesel lines in the provincial Southeast.

Today, the village encompasses Orlestone parish and part of Warehorne parish. The village is twinned with Therouanne in France.

Countryside

The area around Hamstreet is relatively unspoiled, in spite of the busy bypass (built in 1994) and the southward growth of Ashford. There are many traditional Kentish weatherboard buildings at the village centre. The flat nature of the marsh means that the quiet winding lanes are very popular with cyclists. There are also three long-distance footpaths here: the Greensand Way, the Saxon Shore Way and the Royal Military Canal Path

The first two paths pass through Hamstreet Woods (SSSI), which is a large protected reserve of deciduous woodland where you will find many trails and may even hear a nightingale. A second area of public woodland can be found a mile north of Hamstreet at Faggs Wood / Orlestone Forest.

Link to walking guide here:

Link to cycling guide here:

Fame

Hamstreet had its moment of fame in 1991, appearing in map form on every postage stamp in the UK. This was to commemorate 200 years of the Ordnance Survey, because the Hamstreet area was the first to be mapped as part of a nationwide survey. The set of four stamps effectively illustrated the changes to the village over time.

Hamstreet was also featured in BBC TV's ‘Blue Peter’ as the 'base camp' for a humorous charity exercise involving climbing the 'Marsh Mountain.'

The writer, Joseph Conrad once lived near Hamstreet, and Noel Coward owned a residence at nearby Aldington, where several TV personalities have also lived. H E Bates would have been familiar with the village, and the wider area of Romney Marsh has many literary connections, including the Dr Syn books and the Ingoldsby Legends.

There is also a memorial at Johnson’s Corner (the southern bypass exit for the village). This marks where a heroic American pilot crash-landed in the Second World War after allowing his crew to parachute to safety.

Leisure

Hamstreet is a popular base for ramblers due to its variety of shops, station, Old Schoolhouse Indian restaurant, chip shop, Cosy Kettle cafe and pub.

The Duke’s Head was originally located on the High Street itself, but was rebuilt in the 1930s back from the road to accommodate coaches. The Pavilion (Pound Leas) is another popular venue.

An ale trail can be enjoyed by heading along Warehorne Road and onto the Saxon Shore Way across the fields, to the 16th century Woolpack Inn, which is linked to the church of St Matthew by an underground smugglers' tunnel. Although small, Warehorne used to have a second pub – the World's Wonder, one of five in Kent built to the same design.

Alternatively one can follow the canal path east from the garden centre (half a mile south of Hamstreet village centre) for 2½ miles and wander uphill along the lane at the second bridge to the White Horse, Bilsington. You will notice a monument dedicated to a local landowner, Sir Richard Cosway. Sadly Ruckinge (passed en route) surrendered its Blue Anchor pub to history in 2015.

Full village blog page here:

Thoughts on Sheffield

 

If you look at a map of the country and squint slightly, you can see four big blobs of urbanity running up the middle of England like the buttons on a jacket. These are Northampton, Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield. Having visited the first three, my most recent trip was to the town that is the home of the world's oldest existing football club (not 'United' or 'Wednesday' but Sheffield FC, founded in 1857). However, I didn't visit the ground as it was about six miles to the south of the city centre. Sheffield is arguably the fifth largest city in England after London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.

As with Nottingham and Manchester, there is a tram service in Sheffield. However, my aim was to walk to the southwestern suburb of Ecclesall, as my paternal grandfather was born there, in the days when it was a village just outside the conurbation. It was a long uphill walk of about three miles from the city centre and I popped into the parish church, where I was pointed in the direction of the vicar who managed to track down some info on Colton graves for me.  My grandfather struggled to settle back in Sheffield, working as a crane driver after World War I service, so he went off to search for 'gold' in California. He didn't find any, so he joined the Canadian army's Princess Patricia Regiment, eventually meeting my grandmother who was working as a house parlour maid in Winnipeg. Moving back to Sheffield, they soon relocated in the Kentish town of Ashford, which is how I came into the world as a 'Southern Softie' who loves black pudding and isn't averse to gravy on chips.

My next port of call was the childhood home of Jarvis Cocker, the lead singer of the nineties band, Pulp. Personally, I think that their hit 'Common People' epitomised the decade that my generation now view with rose-tinted glasses, but the band had been around for many years before remotely troubling the music charts. I took a very scenic amble eastward to the suburb of Intake, but I was unable to view the front man's front door. Or indeed any of his former residence. However, the wander back into the city centre was pleasant, with a great view before descending past an amphitheatre. I popped into a quaint looking pub which played continuous classic rock music and had a range of real ales from mild to porter. Bliss. The barman was from Lincolnshire but he said that he had found it a struggle to fit in in South Yorkshire, intending to move back home.

On the second day I followed the River Don upstream (westward). Near the industrial heritage site of Kelham Island there was a big mural of Jarvis Cocker smoking a cigarette on the side of a building (great role modelling for kids!). I then climbed steeply beside Ruskin Park and the suburb of Walkley - a typically ‘northern’ slice of urbanity (terraced streets on steep hills) and I descended a steep lightly wooded bank to reach the Rivelin Valley – a very picturesque river walk with stepping stones across at one point. Sheffield is at the eastern edge of the Peak District and some of the city actually falls within the national park. Indeed, the city is said to stand on seven hills - an epithet it shares with Rome. However, a glance at Wikipedia will reveal a whole host of other places in the UK which also make this claim.

I ambled as far as the Rivelin pub where I enjoyed two pints of excellent mild ale. Mild has almost died out in Southern England but the appeal of all the taste with none of the headache seems obvious to me. So what other delights are there to be seen in Sheffield?

The cathedral, dedicated to St Peter and St Paul, seemed an unusual shape to me and it has a crypt – I looked around this at night while a concert was taking place, using the torch on my mobile phone. The Crucible is of course home to the world snooker championships, but really unless the snooker is on there's nothing particularly striking about the building itself. However, nearby is the Winter Garden which I would describe as being like a huge conservatory containing trees of the world. There is a free museum attached but sadly I didn't have time for a thorough look round before needing to catch my train home.

There is also a 'walk of fame' near the town hall, with famous names such as the singer Joe Cocker (popular surname, huh?), the athlete Sebastian Coe, Monty Python's Michael Palin and the actor Sean Bean. Think of the Hollywood 'pavement stars' and scale it down a bit! During my visit I found scant mention of the Arctic Monkeys however – a Sheffield band that were a huge phenomenon in the noughties, arguably as the city’s Def Leppard were in the eighties. In an earlier post I've suggested a similar attraction for my home town of Ashford, which can muster Bob Holness (of 'Blockbusters' fame), John Furley (founder of the St John Ambulance), John Wallis (inventor of the infinity symbol) and the author Frederick Forsyth, as well as a claim to having had the first white lines on any road in the UK. It seems that the north / south divide is one of pride in many cases, with northerners keen to promote their towns and their heritage while southerners generally run their towns down. We give our towns nicknames such as 'Trashford' and 'Jokestone,' but is this affectionate, in the way that courting couples banter with one another? Maybe we love our towns, with all their flaws, after all. 

Who knows, but I intend to check out Leeds next, in order to tick another big conurbation off of my 'must visit' list.

Adam's Music Reviews #10 - Protest Songs & Thoughts on A.I.

 

The job of writing satirical songs and skits is becoming increasingly hard, not least because the world is so bonkers now that you can't really exaggerate it for entertainment. I decided to re-record a couple of my old songs recently with updated lyrics for the modern age and I've put them out on a digital E.P. called 'Trumped.' Check it out on Spotify, YouTube, iTunes or whatever online music conduit you use. Having recorded many albums with my mother in recording studios (as Adam Colton and Teresa Colton), this one is just a 'lo-fi' production, simply because the main emphasis is on lyrics rather than polish (and because it costs so bleeding much!). It was good enough for Woody Guthrie after all...

One of the songs, 'This Song Wasn't Written by A.I.,' although heavily influenced by Bob Dylan, is about a modern issue that worries a lot of people. Creativity is a release of tension and a form of communication for many, in the way that sports can be for others. The fact that creative fields are being handed over to computers seems a particularly mercenary decision to me. Producers and managers no longer have to pay a human to create when they can get a computer to just copy what humans have already done and reconstitute it for a new market. It is surely the most cynical thing the 'fat cats' of this world have ever done – literally turning machines into expressive humans and humans into consuming machines. And all in the name of money, of course.

That said, so far I would quote the trade descriptions act when it comes to 'A.I.' Unlike in Kubrick and Spielberg's excellent film of the same name, what we call 'A.I.' isn't a sentient entity capable of it's own thoughts but really a very advanced search engine that simply scours the Internet for information / misinformation and presents it in the way that a human would present it (coherent but flawed). Somebody demonstrated it to me by instructing it to 'write a book in the style of Adam Colton.' The 'A.I.' then scours the Internet for things I have actually written and approximates the style and content. Personally I wasn't convinced, although my mum said that it was indeed the kind of thing that I write. Well, they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...

I went to watch the film 'No Direction Home' at the local cinema a while back. The film presented the early life of Bob Dylan in a slightly fictionalised way. It is certainly not a glamorised perspective of him, whereas I found the musical 'Sunny Afternoon' to present a much more affable version of Ray Davies than I encountered in Johnny Rogan's biography 'A Complicated Life.' What the lyrics of both songwriters have in common though, along with Pink Floyd's Roger Waters in particular, is a desire for fairness, which is increasingly seen as a lefty tree-hugging minority view.

I realise that my own views and lyrics are somewhat to the left of the majority of local people down here in the Garden of England (Kent), but thankfully free speech still exists. I find the shift towards money as an end rather than a means to be a worrying one, with Trump as its ultimate representative. As children back in the eighties we were taught that we would have much more leisure time in the future because computers would be doing all the mundane tasks, but now humans get to do the mundane tasks while computers create. What the technological Utopian dream didn't account for was the fact that the owners of the technology are generally unwilling to share the benefits. If half the work can be done by computers, they are not going to keep all staff on the same pay doing half the work, even though their own profits would be exactly the same. Instead, half the workforce will be laid off. And meanwhile, it's very convenient for the elite to get everybody blaming each other for the problem. Down in this southeast corner of Britain politicians have cleverly channelled everybody's anger in the direction of er... the Channel. Meanwhile, the elite and bankers can laugh all the way to the...

OK, enough puns, but I sincerely hope Britain doesn't continue down the same rabbit hole that gave the world Donald Trump. Time will tell...

So, aside from my latest release, what other angsty protest material stands out from the love songs and party anthems. Here's a few I know well...

Bob Dylan – 'The Times They Are a Changin' (1964) – After writing the anti-war anthems 'Blowin' in the Wind' and 'Masters of War,' Bob gives the world his only all-out protest album. In particular, 'With God On Our Side' expresses weariness of the litany of wars that never ends. The title track refers to the generation gap, but yesterday's idealists are sadly today's tax dodgers. Bob's songs would be mostly personal after this release, with occasional 'protest' dabblings such as the songs 'George Jackson' (1971) and 'Hurricane' (1976). His Christian album 'Slow Train Coming' has some thinly veiled anger at the state of things too.

Roger Waters – 'Is This the Life we Really Want?' (2017) – War was always a major issue for Waters, with Pink Floyd's 'The Final Cut' being the first obvious sign of this. This album touches on the 'normality' of accepting man's inhumanity to man and refers to Donald Trump as a 'nincompoop.' The title track is extremely sad and 'Smell The Roses' has a Floydian feel. Mind your language though, Rog!

The Kinks – 'Muswell Hillbillies' (1971) – Perhaps the clearest sign of songwriter, Ray Davies, dabbling in politics, as he longs for a simpler life and a Britain that was fast disappearing. 'Uncle Son' sums up conservatism, socialism and liberalism in three concise lines while his panacea for everything is to 'Have a Cup of Tea.' In truth, there was often a satirical streak even in some of band's the big hits. 'Sunny Afternoon' satirises the moans and groans of the rich, while 'Dead End Street' highlights the struggles of the poor. So little has changed but we are constantly persuaded that this is the natural order of things.

Rage Against The Machine – 'Rage Against The Machine' (1992) - An angry diatribe against society's norms delivered over some seriously heavy funk riffs with regular cathartic screaming. The anti-Ku Klux Klan anthem,'Killing in the Name,' was Christmas number one in 2009, this in itself being a protest against the annual 'X Factor' festive chart domination. Colourful lingo, but generally justified IMO.

John Lennon / Yoko Ono -'Sometime in New York City' (1972) – Whilst 'Plastic Ono Band' (1970) angstily questioned society's norms, this album is more overtly political, dealing with everything from misogyny to perceived miscarriages of justice to the Northern Ireland conflict. Be warned, you get a lot of Yoko on this album too and an extremely indulgent live disc featuring the next artist on my list...

Frank Zappa / Mothers on Invention - 'We're Only in it for the Money' (1968) – This is Zappa's most obvious drift into the protest genre, as he tackles everything from police brutality to the naivety of the hippie culture with a send-up of the 'Sgt. Pepper' album cover to boot. The earlier album, 'Freak Out!' (1966) contains a brilliant song about race riots, while 'Absolutely Free' (1967) bemoans 'plastic people' and hints at predatory behaviour by the elite. Zappa would mainly focus on comedy / experimentation after this, although regular lyrical lashing out would still occur, most natably on 'Broadway the Hard Way' (1988). Hypocritical TV preachers, look out!

Next month I reach the grand age of fifty. I've had a go at marriage and two attempts at being a 'townie' but like a boomerang, here I am back in the village where I grew up, living the single life again (lots of cycling and walking with the odd pub visit thrown in). Although I was always writing stories as a child, my first published piece was written when I was seventeen - an account of a five-day cycling trip for the local parish magazine. 

It was when I was 28 that I finally got a book into print, realising a childhood dream as a collaboration with my father who sadly now has Alzheimer's. The content hasn't changed greatly as you can tell from my regular travel posts, although I've ventured into other genres, such as psychological fiction and music reviews. I wonder if I'll still be writing my travelling tales in another 33 years time. Or will A.I. will be writing imaginary trips for me with imaginary meetings with imaginary characters? I think that's called a novel. Please check mine out on Amazon before my digital clone takes over. Toodle-pip!

Leatherhead and Dorking - A Cycling Perambulation

 

Remember the furore when plans were announced to do away with railway station ticket offices? After such an outcry locally, it amazed me that while buying the train ticket for my most recent cycling trip, I observed the majority of people walking straight past the ticket office to use the machine. When it comes to saving any amenity, it's the usual thing - use it or lose it. I used it!

Soon, I was being whisked across the Weald on Kent to Tonbridge and the Surrey town of Redhill. Upon alighting in the Dorking, the drizzle intensified to a steady downpour, so I eschewed my plan to cycle to Leatherhead and caught another train. Why Leatherhead? In truth, the hotel was cheap. Now, this may seem an unusual choice for a 'short break' destination, being a place that you usually bypass on the M25 without so much as a thought, but I can confirm that it is a pleasant little town and it was the home of Michael Caine for many years. And not a lot of people know that! The many-arched road bridge over the River Mole is perhaps the town's most striking feature. The Mole discharges into the Thames in West London. 

On the day of my visit I frequented the local branch of Wetherspoons and asked the friendly barman what the 'must see' features of Leatherhead are. He struggled to come up with any and consulted an equally bemused local. In short, it's not a tourist hotspot. I also found a pleasant 'local' down by the river.

The weather was slightly better the following day and I rode northeastward. I bridged the M25 on a footpath which led to the suburban Green Lane. Eventually I picked up a wooded byway. The fallen leaves were a particularly striking russet in this area. Climbing steadily, I eventually turned right onto another byway which was once part of Stane Street, the Roman road that ran from London to Chichester. The modern A29 is a significant part of this route and the 'South Downs bridleway' section is a lot more open than its 'North Downs' counterpart which undulates through woodlands, eventually descending to the village of Mickleham.

Here, I did a U-turn northward to ride a loop on farm roads almost back to Leatherhead and down along the sweeping curve of the A24 (the London to Worthing road), which must be one of the most picturesque sections of dual carriageway in the southeast. The above photo reminded me of the 1990s TV series 'Twin Peaks' somewhat. Alas, there was no diner serving cherry pie, but there is a cafe which is claimed to be the oldest biker cafe in England.

I was unlikely to fit in with the 'Easy Riders' on my pushbike, so instead I chained up my steed and sprinted over the seventeen stepping stones across the River Mole (learning from observing the people before me who got wet feet by taking it slowly). I then climbed the stepped path up Box Hill to the summit, with stunning views over Dorking town to Leith Hill, six miles away, which is the highest point in Surrey. Whilst Box Hill is on the chalky North Downs, Leith Hill is on the Greensand Ridge which runs parallel to the Downs. A long-distance footpath, the Greensand Way, follows the ridge all the way from Hamstreet in Kent to Haslemere in the southwest corner of Surrey. I once wrote a book about hiking this route called 'Mud, Sweat and Beers.' Kindle or a physical copy? It's up to you!

I descended from the busy viewing platform via Zig Zag Road, where a lot of cyclists were testing their mettle on the ascent, replicating the cycling event in the London 2012 Olympics. The Olympians, however, had to do nine laps, which must have been absolutely gruelling. I cut off one of the zigzags by using a steep footpath, which was slightly perilous in flat-soled shoes.

Tweaking my brakes, I returned to my bike and rode the paths beside the A24 and A25 to Brockham, a pleasant village around a central green – typically 'Surrey' in feel. I headed for the pub and a man let me put my bike in a shed, informing me that he hoped to fill this with meerkats. Well, why not? I had visited this pub in 2006 on a the aforementioned 'MS&B' walk, and I guess this is what makes the perfect exploration – something old, something new. Adventure with a splash of nostalgia!

Next up, was Reigate. The town centre had the feel of a country town which wouldn't have seemed out of place in the Kentish Weald. I rode through a road tunnel where the access to Reigate Caves can be found, and as I pounded the A25 to Redhill the drizzle began again, and in the words of the gambling adverts, 'When the fun stops, stop.' So I did, and caught my three trains home.

And that was 2024. Not the most cheerful year in terms of world news. When COVID struck, wars stopped, homeless people were brought in from the cold and people worked together to defeat a common enemy (the virus). As soon as it was over, the fighting began again and the homeless were booted back out onto the streets. It's not a good advert for our species, and goodness knows what 2025 will bring now that the Americans have decided to take a second trip to 'Trumpton.' Testosterone is back in fashion around the globe. It looks like humanity had a go at tolerance and went back to hate again en masse. Something old, something new, hey? :-(

Richmond Park to Slough - A Cycling Perambulation

Autumn is upon us, meteorologically at least, and my most recent 'cycling perambulation' began at Chiswick in West London. I decided to pedal down to Richmond Park via Sheen in order to pick up the Tamsin Trail, which is a 7½-mile loop around the park, designed with cyclists in mind. The creator's daughter was called Tamsin and the rest is history. It was extremely pleasant and at one point a deer stood right in front of me in the trail. There are some quite formidable climbs however. Worth seeking out is the 'protected view' where one can see in a straight line through the trees all the way to St Paul's Cathedral. A reasonably detailed map is recommended as you'll need to spot where the route changes course to cut across the western side of the park. I missed my cue and ended up cycling uphill on the road, re-entering the park at Sawyer's Hill.

Having completed my '360,' I left the park, which covers a bigger area than the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, via the Roehampton Gate and I picked up the Thames Path as far as Kew Bridge. My aim was now to pick up the Grand Union Canal towpath westward from where the canal leaves the river in Brentford. I stopped for a quick McDonald's and upon asking if they could fill my flask up with tap water I was told 'We don't do that any more.' I didn't want to make a fuss as the girl serving was very young and had clearly been told to say this, but I did add 'I thought that was illegal' and quickly went into 'keyboard warrior' mode when handed a till receipt inviting customer feedback. Since then I have learned that only licensed premises are obliged to provide free water. In short, they weren't breaking the law; they were just being mean-spirited!

The canal towpath climbed past several locks, and only occasionally did I encounter an urban stretch, reminding me that I was still inside the lasso of the M25. I had ridden most of this canal's towpath before – it goes all the way to Birmingham – but not this section from the Thames up to where the canal link from Paddington comes in. A little further on, I branched off onto the Slough Line, which was dead straight towards the town that is mostly famous for being the setting of the TV comedy 'The Office.' Twilight was descending, and unimaginatively, I headed for the nearest 'Spoons.' Many folk turn their noses up at the pub chain but there is nearly always a free water dispenser available for customers, something that McDonald's could do with introducing if they're too busy to use taps. The real ale is generally excellent and at £1.99 a pint (as it was on this occasion) there were no complaints from me.

After riding through a town centre that seemed well-endowed with restaurants for a non-tourist town, I camped in a small wood adjoining a large park. With Heathrow Airport not far away, the sound of the planes could have been intrusive, but mingled with the traffic drone from the M4, it served more as gently lulling white noise.

Adding no litter to the dreadful accumulation in that wood, I packed up my things the next morning and headed into Old Windsor via Datchet, which seemed a very pleasant place. I was amazed that a 'full English' cost me just £6.80 in Old Windsor, fearing that it would be at least a tenner in this salubrious area! From here, I picked up the Thames towpath, with the aim of following this back into London. To my mind, Old Windsor is the western end of the continuous cycling route along the riverbank, with much of the path being classified 'footpath' west, particularly after Maidenhead to Marlow, Henley-on-Thames, Reading and the great beyond.

After passing Runnymede, made famous by the signing of the Magna Carta by King John in 1215, I passed beneath the M25 to reach Staines-upon-Thames, a town made famous by the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen for making it the home of his 'rude boy' character Ali G. I think the 'Upon Thames' was added to the name purely to offset the perhaps downmarket view of the town that people had due to this. I can confirm that the area around the Thames is very pleasant indeed.

I should have swapped to the south bank at Chertsey. My route along the north bank involved me diligently following the instruction to revert to Shanks' pony at one point, soon after which the route ended abruptly at a ferry crossing. I decided to save myself some cash and I rode to Walton Bridge to resume my route on the south bank. At Hampton Court Bridge the path swaps to the north bank but I followed Hampton Court Road to cut off the meandering bend to Kingston upon Thames (note for the PopMaster quiz if I get on again: I don't think this is 'Kingston' that UB40 were singing about). Here, I decided to take a look at the town centre. I must say that I expected something more artisanal and quaint, akin to Richmond, but the bustling centre felt more like Croydon to me. Interesting though, was the artwork called 'Out Of Order,' which made use of a dozen red telephone boxes which were positioned like a row of tumbling dominoes. Interestingly, for many years Kingston was the administrative HQ of Surrey, in spite of having been within Greater London since 1965. The county council is now based in Reigate while the county town is still Guildford. Confusing, hey?

Eastward from here, cyclists will need to look out for the points where the Thames Path changes sides. It's definitely on the south bank via Richmond and Kew to Barnes, but I cut though Richmond Park to cut off further meanderings. Later on, I found myself diverted away from the north bank due to plush developments which reminded me of Dubai. There was a great view of the former Battersea Power Station across the water, which every Pink Floyd fan knows graces the cover of the band's 1977 album, 'Animals.'

I eventually arrived at Waterloo Station, where, having fallen foul of the 'no bikes on trains from 4pm-7pm' rule, which covers non-folding bikes on all trains leaving London, I sat watching people come and go, a bit like Ray Davies in the famous Kinks song. I eventually summoned the energy to check out the eateries, but I wasn't in the mood for splashing the cash (also a bit like Ray Davies, if the biography I read is to be believed) so I made do with a KFC while sitting on the pavement, as it was one of those seatless places. The surrounding area was also binless so I used a nearby wheelie-bin to deposit the detritus.

And with that, I was soon being whisked back to England's Garden. Two weeks later I would embark upon another two-day trip, this time riding the Flitch Way, a reasonably lengthy section of disused railway, now converted for the pleasure of walkers and cyclists. This runs across Essex from Braintree to Bishop's Stortford, which is just in Hertfordshire. A nearby woodland would provide me with another aircraft-dominated night's sleep, this time courtesy of Stansted, and the ride back across country to Chelmsford the following day would surprise me with myriad quaint villages with thatched cottages. Forget the stereotypes; a significant part of Essex could almost be described as a flattened out version of the West Country. And for the amateur cyclist, that really is no bad thing.

[Adam Colton is the author of 'Stair-Rods & Stars: A Cycling Perambulation']

Thoughts on 'PopMaster,' Sussex Cycling and Modern Music

It seems hard to believe that this is my first blog post of 2024 and it's nearly autumn already. So what of 2024 so far?

Following my appearance on Vernon Kay’s 'Ten To The Top' music quiz on BBC Radio 2 last year, I thought I'd give the original morning radio quiz, 'PopMaster,' a try. It was a pleasure to speak to Ken Bruce who has been a familiar radio voice to me since childhood. I managed to win with a score of 18, which was lower than my usual tally. I'm not sure if anyone would have believed me if I'd have said that I scored the maximum of 39 on one set of questions the day before! For the 'three in ten' I had Madonna. With over seventy UK hits to choose from I got lucky there.

Reassured of my musical credentials I've since released an updated version of my book '2021: A Musical Odyssey.' This started out as a lockdown project, where nights spent alone with a few drinks and an iPod resulted in me revisiting many albums that I'd discovered over the previous three decades, prompting nostalgia and memories which seemed ideal material for a book. But of course the 'musical odyssey' is something that never ends, so the book was expanded and re-released in 2023, and shoehorning a few more albums in, the 2024 reissue is now live - cheap as chips on Kindle and the bare minimum I'm allowed to charge on paperback (it's a reasonably hefty tome!).

However, imagine my despondency when I recently managed to lose my iPod with my entire CD collection on it somewhere near Chichester recently on a summer cycling jaunt.

The county town of West Sussex had proven fatal for me before – I lost a whole bike there once. I had left my bike against a gate to do what gentlemen sometimes do behind hedges and when I returned the bike had disappeared. Oddly I had felt a strange sensation of being watched before popping over the gate, but I put this down to the fact that a tractor was being driven up and down a field in the distance. When I returned I wondered if I had fallen prey to a ‘Derren Brown’ style mind trick, but there was no bike and no Derren. I would have been happy with either! I consequently had to walk the five miles back to Chichester Station along the Centurion Way in a state of total disbelief.

This time I couldn’t work out if I’d left my iPod on the train or lost it in ‘Spoons.’ After my evening meal I revisited both the pub and the station to no avail. As things grew crepuscular (it's always good to get that word into an article), I made my way to a wood near the Roman road to London (Stane Street) and camped. I returned in the morning to those same two locations to receive the same answer. At this point I felt like throwing in the towel and getting the next train home, especially as a huge grey cloud had been depositing wet stuff everywhere.

However, I jumped on my bike and headed eastward and it soon became a warm sunny day. By the end of the day I had almost reached Halland, which is just east of Ringmer, which is just east of Lewes, the county town of East Sussex. At 64 miles, this had been my longest ride since the nineties, eclipsing the 58-mile London to Brighton ride that I took part in in 2002. My longest ever ride is probably still the final day of a ride around Sussex that I did with a certain Mr Catchpole (now a slightly famous science dude thanks to COVID experiments) in 1994.

Anyway, it was with a sense of satisfaction that I dived into the bushes to camp after such a pleasant ride, aided by the wind. The section of the South Downs Way from Pyecombe to Lewes had been particularly rewarding in terms of scenery, with an ominous looking downpour staying just distant enough at this point not to cause alarm. The plan now was to cycle home to Kent from Halland the next day, but the weather had other ideas, and a rain-lashed start to the new day sent me scuttling back to Lewes for the train home. However, after the soaking I wasn’t leaving until I’d consumed a hearty ‘full English.’

Sometime later a familiar face at the local pub came to my rescue with an iPod that he no longer uses. I loaded it up with over 1,100 albums from my iTunes program (all of which I have CD copies of) and life could at last continue along the course it was on before this unfortunate aberration had occurred.

Not everyone was as sympathetic to my plight, with statements such as ‘Why do you need an iPod? Have you never heard of Spotify?’ It is probably old fashioned thinking, but to me if you actually have a physical copy of something you take the time to appreciate it more, and many albums, films and books require this extra bit of dedication to get more out of them.

What I frequently refer to as my favourite album (Pink Floyd’s ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’) left me cold upon first listening as a teenager. Imagine if it had been these days and I had been listening online – I would have simply moved on to something else – but as I’d parted with the best part of a fiver in John Menzies (remember that?) for a cassette I listened again. And again. And again… until its full awesomeness had revealed itself! I could say this about many of my favourite artists, particularly those of the zany variety such as Frank Zappa – again having physical copies made me put in the extra work and not dismiss it as ‘a cacophony.’ A lot of classical music requires repeated attentive listening too.

You could even argue that the modern way of listening to music has shaped the progression of popular music in a way that many of us over forty aren't so keen on. In past times, there were big changes in style every few years from rock & roll to Merseybeat, psychedelia, prog rock, glam rock, punk rock, disco, synth pop, techno, jungle, Britpop, and if you insist, rap, but it does seem that since the millennium I have heard very little that sounds genuinely new in style. Outkast's 'Hey Ya!' was perhaps the last time I heard something on the radio and thought 'I've never heard anything like that before.' I guess if rapid consumption is the name of the game, the market exists purely to put out something that sounds familiar, thus any 'top 40' you hear today could just have easily have come from fifteen years ago. In contrast, imagine playing the Sex Pistols to somebody in the early 1950s, or the latest jungle rave tape to somebody in the late 1970s.

Alternatively, I wonder if we have merely achieved everything that it is possible to achieve with music. Often technology led the progression, from the use of electric guitars to synthesisers and sequencers, but now that we've reached a stage where we can cut and paste anything into a song on a computer program, has the scope for innovation waned? Time will tell. In the meantime, check out the book for more reviews, nostalgia and musical musings. And don't forget to review the reviewer by leaving your ratings and thoughts on Amazon. Rock on...

Adam's Music Reviews #9 - Beatles Special

Yes, it is that crossing!

On November 2nd 2023 the Beatles will release what is somewhat emphatically being called their final song. Following 17 number one singles in the sixties, the three remaining Beatles added instrumental and vocal parts to two Lennon demos in the 1990s, 'Free as a Bird' and 'Real Love.' 'Free as a Bird' became their fifth number two single while 'Real Love' reached number four (surprisingly the same position as the double A side of 'Something' and 'Come Together'). The proposed third track, 'Now and Then,' was abandoned, until now. Will it become the band's eighteenth number one? Who knows. But to mark the occasion I'm going to review my favourite works by the band as a series of awards. You'll see what I mean...

Best Lennon & McCartney Song - A Day In The Life (1967)

I remember listening to this as a teenager on a Walkman in my grandparents' bedroom and thinking 'This is scary sounding. I'm never taking drugs!' This, the closing track to 'Sgt. Pepper,' sees John Lennon pitying those he views as dull and unenlightened, before an orchestral riot leads to McCartney's jaunty bridge, a little like the hurricane taking Dorothy to the Land of Oz. Lennon's lugubriousness has the final say before the the orchestral chaos leads to one of the longest notes in rock music, hammered out on five pianos simultaneously if I remember rightly. Even the Beatles couldn't really top this for ingenuity. It is one of three songs I can think of where Lennon and McCartney clearly wrote contrasting sections, the others being 'We Can Work it Out' (1965) and 'I've Got a Feeling' (1970). OK, if you insist, 'Free As A Bird' (1995) too.

Best Harrison Song – While My Guitar Gently Weeps (1968)

This is George Harrison's finest song in my opinion, although I cannot claim to having heard all of his solo work. This 'White Album' track includes Eric Clapton as a guest for the weeping guitar solo to augment George's lyrics expressing the frustration that any thinking person will have about humanity's behaviour. This seems to be a message that is more urgent than ever today, yet I have a sneaking suspicion that George was channelling his frustration about his bandmates at this time as much as anything.

Best Early Album - Please Please Me (1963)

Rewinding right to the beginning of the Fab Four's career, the boys exploded into our hearts and minds with the famous count-in of 'I Saw Her Standing There.' I particularly like the Lennon-McCartney song 'Misery,' but the album's highlights for me are not 'Twist And Shout' or the title track, but two covers where John Lennon's vocal drips with pathos, these being 'Anna (Go To Him)' and 'Baby It's You.' Debut albums don't get much better than this. The band's first single, 'Love Me Do' is here too.

Best Mid-Period Album - Rubber Soul (1965)

The distorted photo on the cover perhaps hints at the mind-bending direction the band would eventually take, but on this album, folk is as big an influence as anything, 'Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)' being the obvious example. 'The Word' is a favourite of mine with its early attempt at a funk rhythm, Paul dabbles with French in 'Michelle,' Ringo gets a bit of country music out of his system on 'What Goes On' and the fuzzed guitar tone on 'Think For Yourself' is a new sound for the group. However, the crown goes to John Lennon on this album for the wonderfully thoughtful track, 'In My Life.' George Martin's speeded up piano solo is to be credited too.

Best Late Album - The Beatles (White Album) (1968)

Not 'Sgt. Pepper' – that's controversial! On this double album, the foursome did whatever they felt like with no constraints of commercialism. Styles vary from folk to Charleston to 'country and western' to heavy metal, and 'Revolution 9' simulates the effect of waking up during a series of bizarre dreams, before Ringo lulls us back to sleep with 'Good Night.' George as ever got to write and sing one track per LP side while Ringo got to sing one track per LP. Here, he presents his first foray into songwriting with 'Don't Pass Me By.' Meanwhile, it's Paul who rocks out the most, with 'Back in the USSR' and the cacophonous 'Helter Skelter.' However, the high point of the whole album for me is the segue from 'The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill' into 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps.' Segues are a lost art. The world need more segues!

Best Lennon Album – Plastic Ono Band (1970)

Not 'Imagine' – more controversy, huh? Before we got the 'John as a saint' persona (which he never encouraged), we had this – a raging diatribe against all society's norms. This would have been something of a shock for those who remembered the Beatles as lovable clowns from their early years. 'Working Class Hero' is a classic, although I would advise a '12' certificate if you have kids. Was this the first F-word on a successful album? And more to the point, did the world end? 'Look at Me' is a very nice introspective acoustic track, and in case anybody was hoping for a continuation of the Beatles' career, John laments 'The dream is over' on the penultimate track. After some activism, John would settle into family life before his tragic demise, and comparing the relaxed feel of his final songs with this album is like comparing chalk and cheese. There's a companion 'Yoko Ono / Plastic Ono Band' album too. Try it if you dare.

Best McCartney Album – McCartney (1970)

Sorry (again), it's not the Wings album, 'Band On The Run.' Bizarrely, Paul's solo debut wasn't appreciated at the time of its release in spite of the fact that Paul plays every instrument on the album, pretty much inventing the genre of lo-fi DIY production. The songs are extremely melodic and seem to reflect the fact that Paul was dealing with depression following the break up of the Beatles, seeking solace in a quiet life with his first wife, Linda. The romantic vibes were in perfect sync with my own life at the time I discovered this album when courting my now-estranged wife; 'Man We Was Lonely,' 'That Would Be Something' and 'Every Night' encapsulate the feel perfectly. The most well known song here is probably 'Maybe I'm Amazed,' a rousing piano ballad that was later released as a live single by Wings. The album contains a few Beatles leftovers like 'Teddy Boy' and 'Junk' and personally I think the critics of the time needed to open their ears a bit.

Extracted from '2021: A Musical Odyssey' by Adam Colton. The 'expanded 2023 edition is cheap as chips on Amazon Kindle and under a tenner on paperback, while the original edition is now reduced in price.