Whitstable. Oysters. Rock pools. Sea anemones. But that's enough about Jeanette Winterton, not least because, the soft salt-smackingly delicious bivalves that give Whitstable it's fame and fortune won't be much in evidence in May. We'll settle, instead, for sausages, plump and bursting with meatiness, eggs rimmed with butter, all washed down with yeasty beer from the pumps pulled so fondly by the happy crew at the Waterfront Club.
And before that..........Decimus 'Dreadful' Burton at Hyde Park Corner, Vanbrugh and Wren at Greenwich, the singular joy of Harmer Street in Gravesend, the dolorous marshes of North Kent, the view over the Medway, our fave Soviet sub, the genteel charm of our halfway stop at the The Church of the English Martyrs in Strood, Dickens' Rochester, the Mysterious Spires of Upchurch, the Cloth Hall at Milton Regis, and Sittingbourne, about which too much can be said. And then, a run across the causeway to Faversham's Market Square before the eight miles of quiet, gilded splendour that is the Graveney Marshes.
This seventy mile essay through the Garden of England is our Queen of Rides. It's not the easiest seventy miles in the world - while I may have relented and taken out some of the hills, it's still a technical ride that takes a bit of getting used to. It rewards swift gear changing and careful cornering, but, most of all, it rewards those who catch the southwest wind from Faversham and skim, like kites through the early morning sunshine to the sea wall and down in to, well, to misquote, Miss Winterton, the damp, sweet starfish of a town that is our destination.
Click the link below, take a good look through the the blogwotsit and send me an e-mail
And before that..........Decimus 'Dreadful' Burton at Hyde Park Corner, Vanbrugh and Wren at Greenwich, the singular joy of Harmer Street in Gravesend, the dolorous marshes of North Kent, the view over the Medway, our fave Soviet sub, the genteel charm of our halfway stop at the The Church of the English Martyrs in Strood, Dickens' Rochester, the Mysterious Spires of Upchurch, the Cloth Hall at Milton Regis, and Sittingbourne, about which too much can be said. And then, a run across the causeway to Faversham's Market Square before the eight miles of quiet, gilded splendour that is the Graveney Marshes.
This seventy mile essay through the Garden of England is our Queen of Rides. It's not the easiest seventy miles in the world - while I may have relented and taken out some of the hills, it's still a technical ride that takes a bit of getting used to. It rewards swift gear changing and careful cornering, but, most of all, it rewards those who catch the southwest wind from Faversham and skim, like kites through the early morning sunshine to the sea wall and down in to, well, to misquote, Miss Winterton, the damp, sweet starfish of a town that is our destination.
Click the link below, take a good look through the the blogwotsit and send me an e-mail
