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...

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.