September 16, 2022
Day 10: Faversham to Rochester
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We set ourselves the very modest goal of reaching the city of Rochester today, which would be a journey of about 44 km. 44 km? that is normally just a morning's ride, but we could not guarantee that we would achieve it here in a whole long day. In a sense, we were guaranteeing it, because we had reserved a place at the Golden Lion in Rochester. We have already forfeited two nights rentals for failing to make it under English conditions, but maybe we are starting to learn what is possible and what is not.
We can't really claim to be that super fast of learners, because with the still short looking 44 km ride ahead, we instinctively felt we could hang around for the hotel's full breakfast, and then we toddled into town to queue at the Post Office to buy six stamps for postcards.
In the town (Faversham, eh) a market was being set up. It had a lot of new and used dry goods, but a couple of bakers too. The bakers were kind of bake sale style, and did not tempt us to try out any products.
At the Post Office, while Dodie queued, I had a look at our emails. One was from daughter Joni, who included some commentary about the huge queue waiting to file past the Queen's coffin. The observation was that the queue, which now extended past the Tower Bridge, had become a "thing" on its own, even with its own web site. The British are a bit crazy about all this.
But I did not need Joni's email to have evidence of the British mania. In front of me a Royal Mail box had been adorned with a knitted crown, stuffed Corgies, and the knitted lettering "Thank You".
This mail box "bombing" nicely illustrates the British love of the Royals, and also of knitting!
While in town, we also made brief stops at two pharmacies, looking for wrist braces, since now both Dodie's wrists have become painful. One hour later, mixing in a bit of getting lost, we were exactly back at our original hotel! Ok, let's try this again!
The first thing of interest for us, as we (almost) exited the town, was the medieval Davington Church, which is the oldest building in this region. We do feel we are passing lots of old churches like this, normally with flint-stone walls. There are a few old looking thatched roof buildings, like the one shown below as well. But generally the architecture we see is dominated by fairly dull brick houses, many detached, and many arranged as row housing. The overall impression is not of poverty, but not of wealth either. Britain seems to be mostly a lower middle class society.
We have begun to recognize, if not to appreciate, the different styles of roads that we are encountering in England. Probably the most pleasing of the lot is the narrow lane, with hedges or farmland on either side. There is barely room for one car on these, and one car plus a bike is a bit of a crush. Two cars, two cars plus bike, truck, these are all recipes for excitement.
Anyway this is the type of road we encountered in the first part of the day, and it was OK.
Along our way through the laneways we came upon some really huge and exciting apple orchards. All the trees were dwarf and pruned in an upright style, and they were clearly very productive. It was much like the Adige valley in Tyrol.
Plums and pears were also in evidence, but apples really dominated. This region, Kent, is known as the Garden of England.
You can see that apples are big business here, from this stack of bins, about to be filled.
There are other crops grown in the region as well, such as is illustrated by this beautiful landscape formed by the stubble from a grain of some type.
We did notice some hops plots, and wondered that the supports and structures seem less tall than we find back at home. We are definitely in a hops area, and even traveled down Oast Lane. "Oast" by the way, does not mean anything like "hops" but is the kiln for drying hops.
Oast houses are very photogenic, and for a time Scott Anderson was quite taken with shooting them in the Anderson's recent blog. It's not a competition, but I must say after bagging the one shown below, I captured the granddaddy of oast houses - a six tower affair. With this, I , like Scott, can close out the oast house quest, in a self satisfied way.
After the lanes and orchards, we briefly moved into a kind of suburban maze, comprised of non-descript houses. Of course as you see there was no cycling space where one could develop a rhythm and make some progress. It was mostly sidewalk riding and street crossing.
At one point there was a blockage of the street, with a sign that read "Street closed for 15 minutes", but of course it did not specify when that 15 minutes started from. We ignored all this and just barged through. As you see in the photo, we were not the only ones.
Now at last we burst out into the region that I guess would be called the Thames estuary, although the water we were beside was in fact the Medway river. As with everything else in this country, the lands along the water are famous and have a long record of activity. Signs along the way illustrated the history and use of every little square.
From our point of view, the water was nice to look at, but the twisting gravel path was still slow going.
We were looking forward to the Rochester area, for which we had an image of a "town" with a castle and cathedral. But it seems this is all so close to London that what we are talking about is more of a neighbourhood. These east of London places, like Chatham, have an industrial/working class/ shipyard/ naval background. Just getting to them involves some big roads (big roads here are helpfully labelled B roads) and literally dozens of crossings, using the essential pedestrians push the button and wait devices.
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Our place in Rochester is called the Golden Lion. It is mostly a pub, with some rooms upstairs.
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We are now very close to London again, and of course we have the Queen's funeral coming up. There is almost no room at the inns, and even scouting quite far up our previously intended route is not producing places to stay. Well ok, there is the Granby Hotel in Gravesend. We'll cycle over there, only about 15 km, and then think about our options.
p.s. About the e-assist: Yes, mine is definitely dead. That made today a bit of a trial, dragging around all the now useless e-assist weight. Dodie has shifted as much weight as possible to her bike, not exactly a joy for her. I phoned our bike shop in Victoria that had sourced and installed the e-assist gear, and learned that it came not from the company in Vancouver I thought, but from a mostly internet based supplier. Our shop suggested I track down this supplier, who probably has a presence in Europe. But so far I have not found them. I will see if I can get the Victoria shop to take a more proactive role. We do have a kind offer from Jacquie Gaudet to help with shipping something out to us. But so far we can not determine where the parts we need might actually be found. With the hills and dales that exist even in this flatish area, today's 40 km ride felt to me more like a normal 80. I am not sure I am up for (in to) another 65 days of de facto 80's!
Today's ride: 47 km (29 miles)
Total: 349 km (217 miles)
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