Central London CTC blog

Nick’s invitational ride takes place at a variety of seasons. This time it was a chilly grey Easter Monday morning.

Six met in the vastness of St Pancras Station for the unusually far-flung trip to Romney Marsh. The train accelerates across a newly-created landscape of concrete flyover, contoured turf, and smoked-glass office complex, like a naïf preview of the future. Soon you are flying along the Essex bank with the Thames Estuary to your right; then the tunnel swallows you up and you emerge moments later on the Kent bank, soon to vault over the Medway.

Ashford International, equally grandiose, feels out of place in the banality of the surrounding town. We head south for the coast, into brightening skies and a freshening breeze, quickly leaving behind the gravitational pull of the future. We traverse a small country of fields, woods and villages: these rural eastward reaches of Kent entirely lack the manicured plushness of the more-familiar western end of the county. Soon after Ruckinge, we ride down off this upland on to the broad expanse of Romney Marsh, pan-flat to the Strait of Dover beyond.

We are nearly to the coast when we pull up for our coffee stop, at the terminus cafe of the narrow-gauge Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway, evocative of a monochrome Children’s Hour in the days before Sky TV. A train has just chugged in, releasing Bank Holiday outing tots to a breakfast of chips with ketchup. Snuggs, wandering off for a crafty gasper, is sorrowfully apprised by a porter that Dymchurch, like all stations everywhere, does not permit smoking.

Within a few moments of our restart we reach the sea and make a right turn along the seafront into the south-westerly breeze. It is fresh, or rather fresher than fresh. New Romney affords some relief, but the pull beyond Lydd towards Camber, cutting off the nose of Dungeness, is hard. The wind drums relentlessly in the ears, tears at flapping clothing, and threatens to snatch the wheel out of the rider’s control.

It is with some relief that we haul in under the shelter of the Camber seawall, beyond which hundreds of kites exuberantly leap and twirl in the now-cloudless sky. Nick guides us skilfully to Camber’s only known outlier of the capuccino zone (© Naomi Wolf). Regardless, top menu choice has to be the all-day breakfast. With a bottle of Pride, thank you.

We take to a well-used but gnarly cycle path direct to Rye, standing on its bluff overlooking the levels. This is the turn. We make a right on to the road that parallels the Royal Military Canal heading north-east. It is long, flat and straight. With the wind at our back, the hubbub falls away directly. Pedals spin without effort. The pace goes up and up. Nick, leading on the fixed, is whirling away like a banshee. “Pedal, Nick mate,” comes a cry from the rear, “we’re all freewheeling back here!” (Well not all, Paul also being on fixed.)

This runaway train flew through the landscape on the wings of the wind, canal glittering to our right, sky brilliant blue overhead, for mile after mile.

Picturesque Appledore village marks the end of this cavalcade. We work our way back on to the uplands through ridged country, then a flat run through the Ornestone Wood, tangled, overgrown and flooded, feeling as remote as the forest of Brocéliande. Yet a short hack along a main road brings us back to Ashford and the trans-Europe expresses. Welcome back to the future.

Riders: Paul, Inez, John, Camille, Nick, and Martin