A toe in the water.
A ride along England’s south east coast.
I stood before the might of the English Channel in all its late-autumn glory, dressed in nothing more than thin lycra around my middle. The sea was limpid and Prussian blue, the waves soft, the air temperature brutally cold. Goose bumps puckered my skin. A toe tested the water and quickly withdrew. Dog walkers stopped to watch. Joggers slowed their run.
I was trying to embrace the philosophy that a cyclist should immerse themselves in the landscape through which they are riding. As I stood shivering on that shingle beach, it was clear to me however, that I needed to find other ways to immerse myself, as I was not up to swimming in a freezing sea a week before the start of winter.
The route I was riding was part of the UK-wide National Cycle Network, Route 2. It’s a traffic-free set of linked cycle paths mixed with quiet back roads for the entire length of the south coast between Dover and St Austell. It is a route of charm, of breathtaking views and many bungalows.
Leaving Portsmouth in the golden hour of dawn, I cycled East to Bosham around marshy creeks, where waders prodded at the mud and sand. The light was pure, the sea serene and swans glided past on the tide. I paused awhile and watched yachts tugging at their anchor chains. This beautiful backwater, where the reflections of quintessential English cottages shimmered in the waters of the bay, had once been one of England’s leading ports. It had been from this very quay, that King Harold II had embarked on his ill-fated trip to Normandy nearly a thousand years before.
I sought coffee in Chichester, and hoped the Cathedral would provide. On my way down the aisle to the cafe, a man hurriedly passed me, and made his way to the piano by the altar. In one urgent move, he removed the covering, opened the lid and began playing a Beethoven piano sonata. Coffee had to wait as live music roots me. The sun had stretched way beyond its zenith by the time the recital was over.
The rest of the day was a race against the sun. The route shared promenades where dogs and people abounded. Despite the distance I still had to complete, it was not a day to go fast, but to linger in the ever changing light and to listen to the sussurating sea on the shingle. Grand bow-fronted buildings of an earlier age graced sea-fronts along with the risibly unimaginative concrete boxes of the twentieth century. I arrived in Brighton in the dark, where the famous pier was flinging stars into the coal black sea.
Day two was the most perfect of days. No wind, the light of a Puglian quality, white cliffs, and a benign blue sea. And of course, this being the English sea-side, there were piers of various lengths and states of repair. People whom I’d passed on the shared paths and promenades, smiled and said thank you as I rang my bell and dogs avoided my spokes.
NCN2 avoids Eastbourne and heads inland for the soft green of the South Downs. The rider is taken deep into Southern England where it is at its most picturesque; villages grouped around greens, houses dressed in flint, plenty of pubs and there was even a rare sighting of a village shop.
Back on the coast, there were many more estates of bungalows and identikit housing estates to ride through, before lunch in a Bulgarian cafe in Bognor Regis. The town and people looked run-down and poor, yet the streets were named after royalty and rich aristocrats.
Beautiful riding followed, along wide flat paths, beside the sea, and its shingle shore. For a while, Harry aged 6, rode with me on his Isla bike and we chatted and agreed what fun it was to ride a bike on such a day, beside the sea. ‘I love it’, he said. His mother grimaced as she worked to keep up with her son motoring along on his single speed.
Later, there was the beach where I’d failed to swim and after that cliffs to climb. As the light faded, I descended into Rye, once the Dover of its day, now miles from the sea. There, amidst the timber framed houses and cobbled streets was the Mermaid Inn which is surely the most atmospheric place to stay in the whole of England with its creaking floors, 600 year-old rooms, and a roaring fire in the bar.
Day three meant Dungeness, one of my most favourite places in the world. The list of attractions is esoteric at best; two lighthouses, a spit of shingle, a nuclear power station, army and police shooting ranges, a few desultory concrete huts and black painted bungalows. However, these mixed with the brilliant light and the restless sea, create a vividly wild, edge-of-the-world feeling, so rare in the south.
As ever, I spent too long eating the freshest fish from the fish shop, walking the shingle, and wondering whether to swim or not beside a nuclear power station. The sun did not wait for me as I dithered, and it sank rapidly towards the horizon, turning the fields and sheep of Romney Marsh, orange.
Riding along under a roof of flame coloured trees and hoping to beat the darkness, I glanced through a hedge. There, through the hips and haws was a herd of elands staring at me. Nothing makes me pull on the brakes more than sightings of the absurd. Elands, grazing on the plains of Kent? Later, I learnt that they were part of Port Lympne’s Wild Animal Park which bordered the cycle way.
The light was dimming. Urgency and effort was transferred to pedals. I had to pause a couple of times up the stiff climb out of Folkestone. It was not the gradient that made me stop but the views and the scene of an old couple scooping rotting leaves into the boot of their car.
At the going down of the sun I was at the the Battle of Britain Memorial, where a stone-carved young pilot sat with his elbows on his knees, staring out across the sea to France. Poppies fluttered in the breeze around his boots.
The final stretch to Dover was fast and downhill. I was the only person travelling at speed, as the A2 was jammed with lorries queuing nose to tail. Dover’s castle, the entry door to England for 2,000 years, dominated the skyline on the far cliffs.
The magic hour, that last hour of daylight, was almost done. The sky was inflamed, and the sea, pink. Ferries moved silently across the waters and wavelets lapped the shore. Away from the squadrons of lorries, trains and cars, of boats bringing the desperate to our shores, of smugglers, patrols and guards, this little piece of beach under the famous white cliffs, was a perfect place to end a magical ride along England’s south-eastern coast.
To view the photo essay of the ride, click here