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| The Cantii Way
Monday 27th June 2022 The Cantii Way – Day 1, Ashford to Chilham This was a bike trip with Andrew Todd, with the aim of riding the recently-announced Cantii Way, a cycle route looping around Kent. Andrew had arrived in Ware the previous night and today we had a leisurely start, leaving Ware around 10.15 and riding along the River Lea towpath to Hertford North railway station. We got open return tickets to Ashford, enabling us to return at any point within the next month and bizarrely the ticket cost £45 despite the fact that a one-way ticket would have been £44.80. Weird, eh. Anyway we had an uneventful journey down, changing at Finsbury Park and St Pancras, and got to Ashford at about 12.47 (after a 10.46 start).
At Ashford we had a walk round and a spot of lunch then rode on to Chilham. Just past Wye after crossing the A28 there was an enormous hill, the White Hill, which the climbbybike.com website describes thus: ‘The White Hill Challock is situated in England-Kent. The climb is ranked number 548 in United Kingdom and number 12444 in the world. Starting from Ashford, the White Hill Challock ascent is 2.8 km long and involves a climb of 128 metres. The average percentage thus is 14.3%. The maximum slope is 12%.’ It was certainly a challenge as it seemed to go on and on with several false summits – you reach a bend which you think is the top only to see the road rise up again heading for the next bend. I got off and pushed about ¾ of the way up but Andrew stayed the course and rode all the way up. Well done, Andrew. (NB By this stage Andrew had already contrived to lose his cycling glasses – nothing changes, eh.)
Quite a bit of the route was off-road and descending the hill towards Chilham was also quite difficult. It was a bridleway, steepish in places and with a water-hewn, v-shaped gully in the middle with lots of loose stones. We had to ride down it with brakes on all the way and Andrew walked his bike (a new Trek FX2) down part of the way.
We reached Chilham at about 16:45, our accommodation for the night being the Woolpack pub, built in the year 1488 and home to award-winning, home-produced meals according to the sign outside. The manager there was foreign, Greek or Turkish maybe, and a bit odd. I thought of him as Stavros but it turned out later he was called John. Anyway, when we were checking in we asked if there was somewhere to store the bikes. ‘No, is not possible, there is nowhere.’ came the reply. Oh. After arguing the toss a bit further and getting the same ‘impossible’ repeated back to us several times Andrew mentioned that this was the first time we’d ever been told there was nowhere for us to put our bikes. Andrew: ‘Isn’t there somewhere round the back?’ Stavros: ‘No, is nowhere.’ Andrew: ‘Well what about where the bins are?’ Stavros: ‘No, not possible, I can’t allow it.’ Andrew: ‘Why not - do you think we’re going to steal the bins?’ Stavros: ‘Yes.’ Hohoho. Bizarre, eh!
In the end, however, we were able to leave the bikes against the wall of our ‘cottage’, underneath a porch and locked together so out of any rain and safe enough. Not that there was likely to be much crime anyway in a village as affluent as Chilham… apart from maybe the odd bin theft, of course. In the evening we had a nice meal in the pub (‘zucchini something meatballs’) then walked up the road to another 500 year old pub, the White Horse, for a pint or two and a couple of hands of crib. Then it was back to the Woolpack for a last pint. There are lots of medieval buildings in Chilham, the place must be stacked with preservation orders. It’s a nice place but I expect you’d have to be rather well off to live there.
Just 20 miles ridden today, including the bit from Ware to Hertford. Tuesday 28th June 2022 The Cantii Way – Day 2, Chilham to Margate Today’s route took us from Chilham through Canterbury, Whitstable, Herne Bay, Reculver and Westgate-on-Sea to Margate. It was a modest 38 miles but being aged and wrinkly old men by now we had agreed in advance to keep the daily mileages down to 40 miles or less instead of the 50-60 or even 75 (Mull - 02/08/2012) miles of yore. It was a nice sunny day and the route, apart from one big hill on leaving Canterbury (via the University of Kent campus), was easy enough. After hitting the coast we cycled along mostly traffic-free, flat, coastal cycle-paths… well pathways, shared with walkers. Not much wind to trouble us.
Canterbury is a big place and was full of tourists and school parties when we got there, most of them converging on the cathedral. There was a queue to get in there and a fairly hefty entrance fee, so as we still had a fair distance to go and as I’d already visited the cathedral some decades earlier, we decided to give it a miss.
Overall an uneventful ride. In the evening we dined at a Lebanese restaurant where I had a ‘Moujadra stew’ (lentils and rice with salad, onions and tomatoes). Rather disappointing as it wasn’t like a stew at all, too dry for that. Then for the dessert the only option was Baklava which also proved disappointing. I’d forgotten what they were like - dry and sweet. Not keen. When it came time to pay the credit card machine came up with the message ‘Add tip?’ even though 10% had already been added. That was for the chef, explained the waitress, while the ‘add tip’ bit was for her. Seemed a bit excessive but ok, live and let live, eh. The meal plus the chef’s tip came to £39 so I tried to add another £4 to the total but after entering 4 and clicking ‘ok’ it came out as 4p (£0.04). Oops, not a lot! Had no suitable cash so that was it – the waitress laughed it off. We then walked 0.9 mile to get to a pub, the Wheatsheaf, for a couple of pints and a game of crib. Wednesday 29th June 2022 The Cantii Way – Day 3, Margate to Dover Route: Margate – Broadstairs – Ramsgate – Sandwich – Deal – Dover. Distance: 31 miles It was another fine day today, with maybe just a trace of misty rain for a moment or two as we neared Dover. There was no breakfast provided at last night’s guest house so we rode just a short distance to Broadstairs, constituency of the late Edward Heath PM, where we got an excellent veggy breakfast at the Beaches Cafe in Albion Street.
We followed the coast on fairly level tracks mostly then gradually climbed to a higher level by the time we were approaching Dover. At Dover we were on the upper road above the cliffs and there was a choice of descent, either along the road or down a path which advised cyclists to ‘wheel their bikes down’. We chose the path only to find it was definitely not ‘wheelable’ at all – there were stairs where we had to carry the bikes down as the token ‘wheelable’ surface was just a couple of inches wide right next to the wall. Panniers meant we couldn’t get close enough and even if we had it would have been extremely difficult. Never mind, we got to the bottom in the end, emerging just by the ferry terminal. That night we stayed in Longford Guest House in Folkestone Road, quite a long way out.
Thursday 30th June 2022 The Cantii Way – Day 4 Dover to Rye Route: Dover – Folkestone – Hythe – Newchurch – Rye. Distance: 42 miles Weather fine but windy along the coast and quite cool. This was a gruelling day! The first part of the ride, Dover to Hythe, seemed to be nothing but hills and headwinds and by Hythe I was knackered and in no mood to enjoy the rest of the ride. Signposting of the Cantii Way was virtually non-existent, probably because the route is so new, and for a road bike the route goes through some fairly demanding off-road stretches.
One very narrow ‘bridleway’ past a golf course on the approach to Hythe, was virtually a narrow footpath with very little room for lateral wobbles – required a lot of concentration and slow speed. At another spot we had to hunt around to find the way forward for it was not obvious at all. Eventually with the aid of the GPS we found it: it being a footpath, which was basically only discernible as a very slightly flattened area of grass, leading off through a field, with no signposts at all.
These sort of stretches, unsuitable for our laden road bikes, plus the tiredness from the earlier repeated hills and headwinds, led to both of us losing our enthusiasm for the Cantii Way by the time we reached Hythe. At least the hills ended then and it was mostly level from there on, with a fine traffic-free stretch along the Military Canal track. After that we were following the route per the GPS but when it brought us to yet another off-road stretch leading off into a field we decided to call time on the Cantii Way and make our own way to Rye. Andrew sorted the route out and we got there ok although by this time I was finding it a bit of a grind – my shoulders really ached. We reached Rye about 5.30.
We had set off from the Longford Guest House at about 9.40 that morning but had to shop in Dover for a new phone charger for Andrew so our real depart time was about 10.10. By 14:40 we had only covered 20 miles, which shows how slow our rate of progress was – although that does include a lunch stop. Friday 1st July 2022 The Cantii Way – Day 5 Rye to Ashford Route: Rye - Woodchurch - Ashford. Distance: 29 miles Weather fine It was an easy enough ride to Woodchurch then Andrew went off to Tenterden while I continued on to Ashford. It was a straightforward ride for me and on reaching my destination I bought some wool as a present for Trisha then sat in a cafe having a toasty and coffee and doing the puzzles in the i newspaper.
At 15:30 I set off for our B&B for the night, the North Ashford Premier Inn, which was a mile or two out of town. The road was the A208 which was horribly fast and busy but a bearded cyclist I asked for advice at a set of traffic lights told me there was a cyclable track alongside the road. Indeed there was but unfortunately it expired just a couple of hundred yards short of the Premier Inn. I still didn’t fancy cycling along that road so instead I backtracked a short distance and found an alternative route via Westwell. On the way to Westwell I happened to see a golf ball lying in the road. I rode past it then had second thoughts and cycled back to collect it as a present for Eric as I hadn’t been able to find a spiderman bell for his bike. Then I saw a second golf ball, and where there’s two there may well be three, I thought. Sure enough after hunting around I found a third, so that was presents sorted for the three grandsons! I got to the Premier Inn at 16:50 and Andrew turned up around 17:10. That night I had a dire run of crib hands which ended with a couple of consolation wins. Saturday 2nd July 2022 The Cantii Way – Day 6 Ashford to Home Distance cycled: 16.75 miles What a journey! We rode into Ashford from the Premier Inn, cycling the bit of the A208 I had skipped the previous day as there was less traffic around today. We had a leisurely breakfast in the town centre before getting the high-speed train to St Pancras at about 10:45. The train’s first stop was at Ebbsfleet and there we waited and waited... and waited some more. An announcement then said there was an ‘incident’ at St Pancras involving someone on the tracks and that we would be delayed. The train was quite full and it had been a bit of a squeeze getting ourselves and the two pannier-laden bikes on board, no doubt to the inconvenience of the other passengers, but even so another two cyclists had managed to squeeze their bikes in next to us. After the delay message being repeated a couple of times we were finally told the train was being cancelled. We all got off and a helpful rail employee on the platform told us that if we rode over to a nearby station at Northfleet we should be able to get another train from there. Andrew and I and the other two cyclists, Will and Sarah, decided to do just that so together we rode about 1.2 miles to Northfleet. When we got there the platform was absolutely full of people – others from our original train plus a backlog caused by the delays.
The train we were waiting for was then also delayed allowing even more would-be passengers to arrive on the platform. When the train turned up it was already packed and of the four of us only Sarah was able to get on with her bike. We waited for the next train which was only a few minutes later, fortunately, and which had plenty of room. This one only took us as far as Dartford, however, so once there we had to change to a different train heading for Charing Cross. When we finally arrived at Charing Cross we found the station itself packed to the gunnels with people heading to the annual ‘Pride’ gathering, many of them dressed in rainbow colours or glittery / skimpy outfits. Andrew now suggested that we change into our own rainbow-coloured thongs and… no, he didn’t, just joking. He suggested we head to Moorgate station instead of St Pancras which he thought might still have the ‘incident’ going on. (Moorgate being a mainline station connecting to Hertford North).
We picked our way through the surging gay crowds outside Charing Cross and on the edges of Trafalgar Square and rode to Moorgate. There we found that there was no lift down to the trains so we had to carry the bikes and panniers down a level only to find a sign saying that no bikes were allowed on trains there. Hmph! So we had to carry the bikes back up and cobble together Plan B… or C or D… which involved riding across London to St Pancras station.
We did that and at St Pancras were able to get a train to Finsbury Park then change for one taking us to Hertford North. At Hertford Andrew decided to ride back to Ware along the road to avoid possible punctures from the rough track, while I opted for the usual River Lea towpath route. Finally arrived home about 17:00. Total mileage for the trip: 177 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
