Rants from the Hollow

Just a few miles from my house, there are some lovely parts of Surrey for an evening or afternoon bike ride. Feeling the pressure of our upcoming departure from England, I’ve been trying to squeeze in some last few rides in the part of the local countryside most familiar to me.  This ride on the last Sunday of August turned out to be an especially memorable one.

I filled up my water bottle and put my Canon G9 into my handle bar bag, and took off for the wilds of north-western Surrey.  It takes about 3 miles of riding through traffic before you get to a more relaxed place.  Although surrounded by motorways, railways, and suburban sprawl, Windlesham is a nice little community.  Church Road is a quiet and wide street that includes the Half Moon pub and Saint John’s Church.   Crossing underneath the busy M3, the countryside starts in earnest with Hook Mill Lane, a very narrow uphill through the hedgerows. Taking a right on Burnt Pollard Lane quickly brings you to the tidy suburb of West End.

I stopped at the northern end of West End to wander around the allotment. Allotments are public areas that have been set aside for the use of gardeners, and they are a common scene in England. They are also very common in the German-speaking lands, where they tend to be much, much, much more regimented and formalized. English allotments, although they can have some very elaborate fixtures, tend to be ‘organic’ looking, tending towards the sloppy.

Gordons School is located on the other side of the road from the allotments.  Originally sponsored by Queen Victoria, the school is named after the extremely colourful British army officer, George Gordon. Known as Chinese Gordon, Gordon Pasha, and Gordon of Khartoum, the school features a statue of Gordon and his camel.  Portrayed by Charlton Heston in the somewhat romanticized flick, Khartoum, Gordon was killed at the fall of Khartoum in 1885. Although he was probably in over his head, Gladstone could arguably have saved him by sending relief forces earlier, and Victoria never forgave the PM for Gordon’s death.

Riding through West End and then taking Pennypot Lane back north, I crossed the A319 and went looking for Watery Lane. Featured in several guidebooks, it is apparently the status of a byway, connecting Clappers Lane with the very posh pseudo-rural neighbourhood along Ford Road.  The road is certainly accessible by horse, and possibly by a very fit and ambitious mountain biker, but I chose to walk my bike along the narrow path that parallels the perpetually flooded and well-named lane.

I turned East on Windlesham Road, crossing the B383 along the northern end of Chobham.  Past the Red Lion Pub, the road changes its name to Gracious Pond Road. Much beloved by local cyclists of all skill levels, this long and smooth road skirts along the southern edge of the Chobham Commons, passing through lovely birch tree stands.

On the other side of Gracious Pond, I headed back towards Chertsey. Riding about 1/8 of a mile East on the busy A319, I crossed over to Philpot Lane. A beautiful little arched masonry bridge, crossing a burbling brook, is one of my favourite sights on these nearby trips.

By this point, I was getting tired and ready for home.  I almost didn’t stop when I saw the huge handwritten sign, “Free Beer,” in Chertsey. Then I remembered that there had been a beer fest the day before, and realized that they must have some left over that they would be throwing away.  I immediately turned around and headed for a large tent with a large Pimm’s banner drooping along one side.

It was like beer heaven.  They gave me a pint and congratulated me on arriving just before they shut down. I bought a sausage and downed my pint, hoping for seconds. That’s when I noticed some well-pickled locals who were filling up soft drink bottles at the bar. I poured the water out of the bottle on my bike, kicked myself for not having brought two bottles, and filled it up with the lightest ale that they had (why overdue it, right?).  It looked like I was bringing home a urine sample, but I figured it was a worthy experiment.

About a mile and a half down the road, I heard a little pop sound, and noticed a stream of foam, volcanoing away from the nipple of my bottle. I stopped, took about an inch off the top, pushed the nipple back down, and headed for home without further incident. I put it in the fridge, and had it with my dinner a couple hours later, after church. It was flat and sour–just like it was when I got it out of the tap. Perfect!

Several other pictures from my rides around Surrey can be found on my Cycling Surrey photo gallery. The map/satellite image below shows my route in blue, and it can be zoomed in so you can see some of the places from my trip.

The trail heading east out of Gravesend was in horrible shape, threading its way through a mostly obsolete industrial area.

(If you want to follow along on this trip, a larger version of the map below, including mile markers and elevation, can be found on the Mapmyride site.)

Just after mile 41, the path crossed a bridge over an inlet into a small marina that turned out to be the former basin of the Thames and Medway canal.  The path went down a sort of dark alley formed by abandoned warehouses, and then took an apparent turn to the right. As it turned out, it did turn right, but not where I thought it did. Unable to find any more cycle route signs, I doubled back, and finally found a very narrow path behind an old fence. 3 feet wide at best, it made a right angle around the end of a building (not the first blind and narrow right angle turn on this cycle trip) and continued down the most convincing example of an abandoned cycle path that I’ve ever seen on two continents. The photo above shows a spot where the path actually widened enough that someone thought it a good place for fly tipping. Carefully avoiding the broken class, the path went across what was apparently the floor of a demolished factory or warehouse, an area strewn with tire-sized blocks of concrete.

Happily, the character of the trip changed entirely at mile 42. For the next  mile, a private and smoothly paved road followed the filled in bed of what had once been the Thames and Medway Canal. The pavement gave out, but the dirt was very smooth, and I could see for miles across the Shorne Marshes , which were mostly filled with salt grass, an MoD shooting range, and a lot of cows.  A 19th century fort was visible in the distance. At mile 44, I stopped to let a pair of oncoming bikers pass a motorbike barricade, and we got into a long chat. He recognized that I was riding a vintage Bianchi Volpe, and I wasn’t surprised to learn he’d been a bicycle mechanic (deja vu all over again, remembering the meeting with Alan far up the Thames in Richmond).  He showed me where you could just make out a fort on the far side of the Thames. At mile 45, in the village of Lower Higham, the path started following public roads again. There were mostly very quiet, and it was the only rural section of the entire trip.

At mile 48, the cycle route entered a former MoD area, making a steep hill climb through Chattendon, followed by a gloriously long and fast downhill into the charming village of Upnor (there’s a Lower Upnor, so why not an Upper Upnor?).  This looked like a great place to stop for a pint, with a charming little buildings all bunched together on a steep hill with a view of the Medway Estuary in the distance. I didn’t stop.  After 49 miles, I was ready to head for home.

A short offroad section dumped me out onto a dual carriageway and a confusing array of bike paths. I chose wrong, but doubled back and found the path, which soon took a steep left up a hill past an old oast house.  I stopped at the top of the hill to admire a view of Richmond’s bridges and castle, and what appeared to be a WWII submarine.

The narrow path made a steep and dangerous downhill towards river level. When I arrived at Commissioner’s Road, I couldn’t find a route sign, but right seemed to be the best choice. This was the last climb of the trip, and I was starting to drag. A little bright orange car buzzed me, spraying me with wiper fluid. At mile 52, I passed the Strood Rail Station, and decided to keep pushing on towards Rochester. At the intersection of Station Road and High Street I still hadn’t located a cycle route sign, so I asked someone to confirm that I was headed in the most level route towards the Rochester Bridge.

There are actually 3 parallel bridges leading into Rochester: a rail bridge, a newer bridge that had 2 lanes of incoming traffic and a bike path, and the older bridge with the outgoing traffic.  I stopped on the side of the bridge to take a photograph of the castle.  The last mile through Rochester was a busy one along the A2, taking me past a remnant of the medieval city wall. With both a Norman castle and a cathedral, I’m sure that Rochester is worth a longer visit, but it was after 5pm and starting to get dark, and I was ready to head back for home.  According to Mapmyride, I rode 53.17 miles between London Waterloo and Rochester Station. According to my GPS software, it was 53.75. I’ll add that to 1.5 miles round trip from my house to the Ascot rail station and take credit for a 55 mile day.

It was a fascinating trip, with a lot of interesting sites that were totally different from what I usually see on a bike ride. Very little of it was attractive, but much of it was highly interesting. Surprisingly, there multiple spots in the trip where I went several miles without seeing another person, and other stretches where I only saw people in the far distance. It wasn’t a particular fast ride, with much of the trip across rough stone, pavement, or gravel, and there were a number of barriers that required stopping, and even dismounting. It wasn’t really physically strenuous, although there are far more hills during the final 25 miles than I had anticipated.  I did the trip on a touring bike with 32cm tires, and I wouldn’t recommend trying it on anything less sturdy, or with narrower tires. 35cm would have been more comfortable.

Earlier this summer, I’d led a photo club visit to the Crossness Pumping Station, a Victorian sewage treatment plant with a lavish interior and a beautiful restored steam engine.  Located at mile 19, it was very quiet. Just downstream from it was the newer facility, with a much more modern building and its waste burning plant.

I rode along the Thames for several miles without seeing another person–not another biker or walker, not a boat, not someone in a nearby building, nor anyone on the opposite shore, which was increasingly farther away.  The path was relatively smooth, but not especially scenic, scrunched between a metal railing and an industrial fence, sometimes topped with barbed wire. It passed through the meadows of Thamesmead, surrounding the sewage plant, and then went past the site of a former power plant, no some sort of industrial estate, and at one point climbed a steep little hump next to some sort of factory.

At this point, the Thames was giving off a very nautical sort of oceany smell. The tide was out, leaving several hundred feet of mudflat, punctuated with pieces  of abandoned dock, and strange sorts of garbage, including television sets and an old bathtub. For unknown reasons, shopping trolleys head for the Thames to die.  On the outskirts of the town of Erith, I first glimpsed the suspension bridge at Dartford, still 6 miles ride ahead.

The path diverted from the Thames, and at noon, I took the opportunity of stopping for lunch at Running Horses, one of the few functioning pubs I passed on this trip.  Sold out of their only real ale, it was not a memorable meal.  The path headed through an extremely unsightly industrial area, and just before mile 23, I went through an (ineffective) motor bike barrier and entered a flat area of pastures, scrub, and scrap metal yards. The next 3 miles were uncomfortably rough riding on dirt with heavy gravel.

At mile 25, in Slade Green, I passed a large dirt bike track with a race in progress (Google satellite view of the motocross track). The view was all dead grass, a narrow brown river, the Littlebrook Power Station, high tension wires, repair yards, and scrap dealers.  The path emerged into a charmless industrial estate, where I took a wrong turn at a roundabout. Doubling back, I continued along the A206 (essentially the same route I was in in Rotherhite, 20 miles earlier), and rode into Dartford.  Just past the rail station, I should have taken a left at Central Road.  Cycle Route 1 actually took a right and then, following a relatively direct route into Gravesend along the side of Watling Street. This didn’t seem very interesting, and I wanted instead to follow a different trail that went closer to the river that was shown on a Sustrans map. If it was marked, I missed the sign.  I continued up a steep hill into Dartford.

To make a long story short, after fruitlessly asking directions several times, and finally resorting to the GPS-enabled map on my Blackberry, mile 31 found me back on a bicycle path alongside the M25, headed towards the Dartford Crossing. The path followed the map and then suddenly disappeared. I stopped and asked a guard at the entrance to the tunnel, and he promised me that the path shown on the Sustrans map underneath the Queen Elizabeth II Thames bridge didn’t actually exist. I eventually proved him wrong, but instead of finding the path immediately (the narrow green thing in the middle of the photo below), I backtracked, crossed over the M25, and came into Greenhithe from a different direction, rejoining the marked bike path.

Just past mile 34, at the Greenhithe rail station, the cycle route turned directly south through a mildly interesting residential area, and turning East on narrow Mounts Road at mile 35. With a 2% grade, this turned out to be the steepest climb of the trip.  Swanscombe was much prettier than Dartford, with a nice park and a traditional English church. I missed a turn, but after taking a wrong turn, I found the entranceway to a bike and cycle path across an area that had been extensively quarried for chalk.  The narrow path took a screaming downhill, followed immediately by a metal barrier, and then climbed a bridge over 7-8 rail high-speed rail tracks (its worth zooming in on the Google map image at this spot–the bridge is marked ‘A’). As shown on the photo below, the Ebbsfleet International Rail Station is located here between St Pancras and Paris.  A Eurostar train went past at speed when I was leaving the bridge.

At mile 37 I went through a short tunnel underneath another train track and then quickly became confused by the bike route signs and ended up riding down the charmless Northfleet High St until I noticed a bike route sign pointing off to the left. A steep descent provided a view of the last of what had once been several dozen cement plants, all of which left huge holes in the surrounding chalk hills.  Riding through a lonely and broken down industrial area, I finally ended up in the middle of Gravesend at mile 40. I took a quick ride up and down its High Street, a pedestrianized hill perpendicular to the Thames.

Returning to the Thames for the last time, I stopped at a local riverside park. It had a cafe, a band was playing in the bandstand at the fort park, and it offered the first public toilet I’d encountered on the entire trip (to be fair, there is supposed to be one in Woolwich).  I admired the view of the river traffic, and called Elizabeth.  It was now 3:30 in the afternoon, and I wasn’t sure how far it was to Rochester.

A larger version of the map below, including mile markers and elevation, can be found on the Mapmyride site.

Sunday’s bicycle trip was a lot grittier than the bucolic country rides I normally take.  Starting from London Waterloo, I cycled 54 miles down the Thames, mostly along the London Thames Cycle Route, which follows the Thames Path for much, but not all, of the trip.  The first 8  miles were urban, but the next 20 miles were mostly industrial, sometimes on very rough and narrow paths, threading between barbed wire fences and abandoned factories.  If you want to follow my trip in another window,  a map with mile markers and elevation is available on the Mapmyride site.

The first five miles of the trip were mostly on roads (sometimes roughly paved) through Southbank and Southwark.  Just after 9am on a Sunday, there was very little traffic. I encountered a few other bikers, but unlike rural and suburban bikers, and the bikers later on in this trip, we didn’t acknowledge each other’s existence with a friendly nod.  I passed behind some popular tourist spots, like the Globe Theatre (both the reconstruction and the original site), but didn’t stop to look at them. If I hadn’t looked up when crossing Tower Bridge Street, I wouldn’t even have noticed the familiar towers of that popular London feature.  Just past the Bermondsey tube station, at mile 3, I stopped along a roundabout to consult my map, and made a course correction into Rotherhite, quickly picking up the cycle route as it zigzagged through roads and parks. I think it would have been easier just to stay on the B206 all the way around Rotherhite.  After riding across the lock gate for Greenland Dock, I finally reached the Thames at Surrey Quays, which has a beautiful view of the back side of Canary Wharf.

About a half mile along the Thames the path takes a sharp right at a very quirky statue of Peter the Great, who apparently had made a big impression on the citizens of Greenwich in 1698.  Here the cycle route alternates between the Thames and nearby roads, finally ending up at the glass-domed entrance to the Greenwich pedestrian tunnel and what’s left of the Cutty Sark at mile 7. Just beyond that is the baroque splendour of the Old Royal Naval College.   The National Maritime Museum is nearby (which I did not visit). Surprisingly, it is no longer on the Prime Meridian, which has been slipping downstream ever since the GPS satellites were put in orbit.

During the next two miles, the path winds through a number of deserted factories, old wharves, and piles of sand and gravel.  The path is very narrow in spots (see top photo), and extremely rough along the west side of Greenwich Peninsula, but there are some lovely views. I stopped to watch a very graceful old steam-driven paddlewheeler cross in front of the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf. Just north of the dome, at mile 10, the path widened, and for 1 mile, I could make good time on a smooth cement surface.  Then for another mile, the path zigzagged around some aggregate yards where small ships were offloading gravel onto conveyors that crossed above the path.  Although no working people were actually visible, many of the conveyors were operating.

Just after mile 11, I finally reached Thames Barrier.  Built between 1972 and 1982, it is essentially a temporary dam that can be raised to block the Thames in case of an especially large tide.  572 yards across (523 m), large steel sections lifted hydraulically between nine concrete piers and two abutments.  It is usually necessary to close the Barrier about 4 times a year. Covered with a skin of stainless steel sheets, the world’s second largest movable flood barrier is beautiful and functional.

From the Barrier, the path headed inland, past one of the many former pubs I passed on this trip, and then down Woolwich Road, which turned out to be closed on Sunday for the “Run to the Beat” half marathon.  I stopped to chat with a fellow in front of a pub, draped in the Union Jack, who was watching the race go past.

Woolwich is an interesting area that probably would be worth a longer visit. There’s an auto ferry that crosses the Thames, and another foot tunnel, which is entered through a round brick building housing the staircase, like the tunnel in Greenwich.  The path crosses between the river and the  former Royal Arsenal, which manufactured and tested armaments, and is now being redeveloped.  The view across the river is dominated by the huge Tate & Lyle sugar factory.

For those who want to follow my tracks–don’t. Just before mile 14, I found myself on a lovely, smooth cement bicycle path, and had a brief quarter mile at speed before it dead ended into a chain link fence.  I diverged through a residential area, cut through a park, lifted my bike up some steps, and found myself on a nice, smooth cement bicycle path–that dead ended in a quarter mile.  I circled around a residential area for a while and finally asked directions. It turned out that the real path was a dirt one, out of site and closer to the Thames. I carried my bike down a stairway and headed off across Thamesmead, 15 miles down, and 40 to go.

You can see more pictures from this trip on my Thames Cycle Route gallery. A map of my trip appears below:

The southern English countryside is dotted with thousands of small but substantial WWII fortifications.  Of the 28,000 pillboxes built to defend Britain from German invasion, approximately 6,000 of them are still in place.

Expecting imminent invasion, the UK put  huge level of effort into the construction of anti-tank and defence lines across Britain.  Churchill had originally planned a series of three defensive lines across the southern part of England.  The Kennet & Avon Navigation, along with the Thames, provides an unbroken wall of water across the entire southern length of England, from Gravesend through London and Reading to Bristol.

I encountered the first of many small pillboxes just beyond the weir at Hamstead Lock, where the cycle route rejoins the canal towpath.  Most of these were made from poured concrete.  Several larger ones are made, at least partially, from brick. The one above is just outside of Newbury.

The Crofton Pumping Station has the oldest James Watt steam engine still operational (installed in the pumping station in 1812). Just below the highest point of the canal, the station was located near a source of water, which it raises about 40 feet and dumps into a 1 mile long feeder which fills the canal near Bruce Tunnel. Today, the canal is fed by electric pumps, although the steam pumps were used as the primary source of water during a mechanical outage earlier this summer.

The station operated under steam until 1959. Volunteers spent about 30 years painstakingly restoring 2 steam engines, the Lancashire boiler shown above, and the facility. Restorations were completed in 1997 with the topping out of a rebuilt chimney (top photo).

The photo above was taken in the cylinder head room.  The piston rod is at the far right side, leading to the beam gallery overhead.  The three round things in the background are the valves which control the flow of steam into and out of the cylinders.  They are operated by connecting rods coming down from the overhead beam.  The photo below was taken in the well head, looking down towards the water level. It shows one of the two 30 inch bore, 8 foot stroke pumps, and the connecting rod coming from the beam above. The large cast iron pipe in the upper right leads to the launders, where the 1.25 tons of water is discharged on each stroke.

Additional photos can be found in my Crofton Photo Gallery.  Below, you can see the route I took from The Upper Westcourt B&B to Crofton.  Zoom in and use the satellite view to see the pumping station’s relationship to the canal and the feeder canal (upper left of pump house).