In Canterbury: a walk in the Kent Downs

June 17, 2022

With our bikes both still trapped inside of Kent Cycles for the day we decide we’ll take a hike together. Rachael’s still feeling stiffish from yesterday’s walk and doesn’t want one too long and strenuous. I ask for a number and she eventually forks one over - ten miles sounds about right, she thinks. I can do that too I think so I turn to the map to look for inspiration.

I find it, too - there’s a train line that runs often between Margate and London, more or less following the Stour. Stops here, in Chartham, Chilham and Wye. We could take the train one way and walk back, turning it into a one way hike that would work well for Rachael if she gets exasperated we me, my camera, and my plodding pace.

We talk it through, more or less agree, and discuss how soon to leave. One issue is the heat. We’re experiencing the last day of a heat wave and as we eat breakfast it’s already above 70 on a day that will max out at 90. We want to get an early start, leaving as soon as morning coffee has percolated through the systems. We’ll begin walking from here as soon as we’re ready, hike to a station, and then catch the train home.

Somehow though this idea falls off the table when I start crafting a walk and in its place a loop lands on it that’s 12.4 miles, reasonably flat, gets us out into the Kent Downs AONB for about half of it. We’ll do that. Rachael loads the loop to our devices and an hour later we’re walking southeast out of Canterbury.

We don’t get far - just over a mile, and still in the city - when we come to Saint Martin’s Church and decide to stop in for a quick look. The look isn’t especially quick though because this is one of the essential sights in Canterbury. I’d forgotten this church was here and was one I’d wanted to walk over to anyway. Saint Martin’s was begun in 580, predating Saint Augustine’s arrival in Canterbury on his mission to bring Christianity to England. It turns out that the religion already had a small toehold here, brought by Queen Bertha of Kent, born near Tours and moved here to wed her pagan husband Ethelbert, the king of Kent. It’s the oldest parish church in the English speaking world.

So that’s worth a stop and a few photos of course. But this is a hiking day so we’ll just drop one here as a spacer to break up the text and walk on. Others will come along later.

Saint Martin’s Church, Canterbury. An ancient place: the oldest parish church in the English-speaking world, used as the private chapel of Queen Bertha of Kent until Saint Augustine arrived in 597 AD.

There’s not that much to say about the walk itself that can’t be shown in photos - just a simple walk in the country, punctuated by the occasional village. Except that it ends up even longer than we expected. At the end we were happy to take a more direct walk back to town and save two miles, but even then we still ended up at 13 miles. It was a big relief when the cathedral came into sight in the distance, and it was especially welcome that so much of the day was along shaded lanes that protected us from the blazing sun.

Well, two other things to comment on. First, it’s remarkable what a diverse set of roads, lanes, paved paths, footpaths and bridleways we stitched together on this route, and it’s especially remarkable that there is so much public access granted to ways that skirt or traverse private land. What a foreign concept to Americans, so used to encountering fences, locked gates and no trespassing signs and warnings that violators will be shot on sight everywhere you look.

Second, it’s startling and a little frightening to discover how little quarter drivers give to walkers on the margins of their routes when there’s no shoulder or sidewalk. They don’t slow down! They barely even veer much at times. Quite unnerving, and it makes you especially appreciate the rights of way that are too narrow and rough for any kind of motor vehicle.

Our walk today begins on the Via Francigena, the historic pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome. We were just in Rome last fall and don’t need to see it so soon again so we turn off well before there.

In Patrixbourne, an attractive village with some beautiful, well maintained homes.

We’ve started seeing an occasional chimney hooded like this with a vane that causes it to pivot with wind direction. Purpose?

Saint Mary’s parish church, Patrixbourne. Built in the late Norman period of flint and Caen stone (a form of limestone) imported from France.

The windows are from Switzerland, from the 16th and 17th centuries.

Soon we leave the Road to Rome and segue onto the North Downs Way, a comfortable walking path; but we also take occasional shortcuts across less well maintained walking paths narrow enough that the long grasses brush against our legs.

On one of the shortcuts, I think. Enough slower that it might have been faster to stay on the main route.

I’ve come prepared! I don’t need it here in this beech forest, but we’ve got plenty of sun exposure elsewhere along the walk. At the end of the day I throw my hat on the bed and am distressed later to see that the sweat has bled through and stained the sheet red.

Some sheep, as we near the village of Bridge.

A temptation in Bridge, but not yet open for the day.

Beyond Bridge we’re off the North Downs Way and now loosely following the Cambridge Outer Ring, again with improvisations. We pass through a surprising variety of paths - through woods, a variety of grain fields, and even an apple orchard. Great views and atmosphere, giving us a real feeling for the land - but not the easiest walking conditions at times.

In the Kent Downs, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Where in America can you just take a walk through a privately owned apple orchard like this?

Another Saint Mary’s Churth, this one in Lower Hardres.

The bridleways were the roughest. We might avoid bridal paths in the future.

This magnificent maple gave us a few feet of shade as we walked the long bridal path.

We were relieved to find this beautiful, shaded footpath paralleling the narrow, shoulderless Iffin Road - a route that looked like it would make an iffin awful place to walk.

We head straight to Kent Cycles when we reach town, fancifully imagining the bikes will be ready and we can bike the last quarter of a mile to our inn. Dream on, Team Anderson! The mechanic is still at it, has found still more issues that seem to confound him more than a little. The plan is they’ll be ready by end of day because he understands we plan to leave town in the AM (we haven’t updated him with our changed plans).

But when we call just before their closing hour at six, he says to come by at 6:30 - he’s working late, still wrapping up. We have a dinner reservation at 6 though, so we tell him we’ll stop by first thing in the morning for them. Hopefully they’ll be ready, and hopefully we won’t be in need of a different LBS soon to fix them even better.

Dinner tonight was another fine meal, at Marlowe’s this time. Crowded when we arrived, but soon cleared as the place evacuated quickly, with diners presumably off to a performance at the nearby theater. The meal was excellent, but the most interesting moment was asking for an Americano to go with our lemon crisp. Our server asked what size, which surprised me. I asked the difference, and she said one was 175 and the other 250. Both sounded cheap so I sprang for the larger one. At the last minute I called her back, wondering if she’d misheard me. And a good thing, since it spared me the embarrassment of being served a large glass of Merlot. Americano, Merlot? I’m doing no better here than I was asking for water in France.

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