A Canterbury Tale

A few days ago I was fiddling around in my workshop, and my old Lynskey caught my eye.  It was fitted with the tyres and wheels that I had bought for Flanders, and looked, well, purposeful.  What it needed was a decent ride...

Thinking it over, I decided that the Pilgrims Way would be a good target - some lanes, some track and very little traffic.  I've had a look at parts of it a few times over the years, but have never ridden the whole thing.

Taking a look at maps, and then at some of the standard literature on the topic, I decided that the 'whole thing' was a bit of a stretch.  The standard work on the Pilgrims Way is Belloc's 'The Old Road' of 1910.  It's a nice book, and a good read, but a critical look at maps, and particularly satellite images, gives plenty of scope for debate.  Belloc asserts a route from Winchester to Canterbury; satellites support Farnham to Canterbury, the western part being pretty diffuse.  From Farnham to Reigate you can see bits and pieces, but from there on it becomes more and more continuous, so that made part of my choice.

In essence it's an ancient trackway, with carbon dating evidence in places going back to about 400AD.  The bit that concerns me is a 'sill road', running along the lower edge of the chalk escarpment above the cultivated (or cultivatable) land below.  Spring Bottom Way is part of it, landscaping for the Titsey estate interrupts it, then it's the Pilgrims Way from there most of the way to Charing, with gaps every now and then for Chevening and so on.  So I decided to start at Titsey, which is handy for me.

For several miles the route is a pleasant country lane, but quite suddenly, just past Chevening, a little piece of the real thing appears.  Just a hundred yards or so, but a great indicator of things to come - and, indeed, how things were.

The surface is chalk, or chalky, trodden smooth by thousands of pairs of feet.  It's a bridleway, but there's not a great deal of evidence of horse traffic, and the overhanging trees would make it uncongenial to ride on any but the smallest horse.  There's not much sign of wheeled traffic, either - wheels make grooves, and the only grooves are the occasional trenches made by tractors.  But, on a dry day, it's great to walk or cycle - the wetter its gets, the worse it will be.  Damp chalk is slippery, the tractor trenches will fill with water, so it's a ride for a dry summer's day.

On into Kent, on a combination of lanes and increasing stretches of old track.  It's easy to follow and enjoyable to ride.  The first major obstacle in the route is the crossing of the Medway, a wide valley, marshy in parts.  Maps and satellite images show four regular crossing routes, North to the bridge at Rochester, South to the ford, later a bridge, at Aylesford, or two crossings by ferry at Upper Haling and Snodland.  The Upper Haling ferry survived until the 1960s, but there are no ferries now, so I went for the bridge at Aylesford.  It's a pretty, ancient bridge, now closed to motor traffic, and a road runs from Aylesford back up to the track on the hillside.  For most of its length it is fairly flat, rolling along between the 300' and 500' contours.

The next part is excellent riding; mostly track, interspersed with quiet lanes.  I saw very few cars, a handful of pilgrims and loads of partridges.

Just North of Charing I elected to leave the track and to take to country lanes.  It looked to me as if the ancient track passed Charing and then turned over the hill towards Canterbury.  Certainly, that's what the A252 does, and I had no particular desire to ride on it.  So, a wiggle through some very pretty lanes followed by a bit of cycleway led me through the city walls into Canterbury.  

I asked a passer-by to take a photo of me, just about where Tommy Godwin stood in 1939 - I've put a snap of him in the archway.  Then it was time for lunch, in the Buttermarket Square.

Getting back was easy - trains from Canterbury go either to Redhill, and thence to Dorking, or to direct from Canterbury to Victoria, so a couple of hours later I was back home delighting Maggie with the wonders I had seen.

A good ride for a dry day - 60 miles from Titsey to Canterbury.  I made about 12 mph, more on the lanes and less on the tracks. You need nothing special in the way of bike, and I've got a gpx track for any who are interested in the detail.

Mark