Up at 7am, showered and downstairs ready for a hearty
breakfast to see us on our way. It’s been a really nice visit with Elizabeth, Millie
the dog as well as Fred and George, the two cats. It’s just a shame we missed out on seeing
David.
We’ve also enjoyed walking Millie the collie while we’ve
been here and it was nice to be able to help Elizabeth with putting ointment in
the cat’s eye. It’s definitely at least
a two person job. I was so glad George
didn’t hold it against me and would still jump on my lap.
Luckily David and Elizabeth have numerous maps which we made
use of to plot our route to Folkestone.
Kate, who we met yesterday also gave us instructions as to how to get to
a disused railway which has been converted to a cycle path for the first part
of our journey.
So at 9.30am, off we set on a cloudy, warm morning to our
first destination, Pooh bridge. It was
uphill virtually straight away and then into a lovely forest path down to Pooh
bridge.
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| The famous Pooh bridge |
Across that and out the other
side, Kate’s directions were bang on.
Headed into Hartfield and came across the obvious sharp bend where we
should turn right onto the B road. Even
though it appeared to go in the wrong direction, we took this road and
regretted it for the next hour. We soon
realised it was the wrong road after going uphill, downhill and up another
bloody great hill without seeing the promised bridge which the cycle path ran
under. Asked somebody on the side of the
road the way to the cycle path (didn’t know) so failing that, to Groombridge
and he said you could get to it either way.
He said if we went to the top of the hill we were currently on, we could
turn left and it was about three miles to Groombridge from there. Well we’d already been on the current hill
for about seven minutes, we must nearly be at the top by now, so decided to
forgo the railway cycle track and carry on upwards. Well this hill just went on and on and on. The worst thing was that near the top of this
hill was a sign pointing to Coleman’s Hatch, where Elizabeth lives, saying it
was just 1 ¾ miles away. We’d been
cycling for nearly an hour by now. There
is nothing more aggravating than cycling hard for an hour to basically go
nowhere – it just occurred to me, that’s probably how our clients feel after
every cardio session!
So we finally get to the top of this hill. It’s the highest point for miles around and
the views are marvellous but we’re in no mood to appreciate them. The showers we had this morning were a
complete waste of time because we’re both dripping with sweat by now and the
clouds have cleared and the sun is beating down on us. We turn left and the sign says it’s still
five miles to get to Groombridge! We
freewheel all the way back down the hill we’ve just slogged our guts out coming
up (on a different road admittedly but you can’t help thinking why didn’t they
just build a nice flat road through the valley – and signpost it!), and with
every downhill, there’s a corresponding uphill.
We’re finally getting close to Groombridge and we notice a cycle path
going in the direction we want to go. So
we just think stuff it, let’s go along here.
It was lovely. Flat, great
surface and the sun was shining and the birds were singing. All too soon it ended with the very helpful
sign at the end saying “Forest Path cycleway.”
So we cycled up another hill into Groombridge and found a
pub (closed, of course) where we sat outside on their picnic tables to eat some
sausage rolls Elizabeth had packed for us.
We’d cycled a very hilly 20km to cover a distance of 10km which should
have been mostly flat.
So with that disastrous start to the day, we continued on
some lovely quiet country roads for about 5 km before reaching a busy road that
took us into Frant where we stopped at the pub for a shandy and to check messages. We didn’t have time to do anything else (we
had hoped to update the blog) because they only gave you half an hour of
wifi. So on we pushed to Lamberhurst and
then onto a very busy road to Goudhurst.
It had been a stressful day so far as even though we had deliberately
chosen what appeared to be minor roads, they were much busier than we thought
they would be and it took all the enjoyment out of the cycling.
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| Church in Goudhurst |
Goudhurst itself was a lovely town, very old building and
well kept. We stopped in the middle of
town under a big oak tree overlooking a pond with a fountain in it while we ate
our sandwiches and had a drink at 3pm.
After this we finally found the unpopulated lanes we had been craving. And after about 5km they flattened out as
well and we finally began to enjoy our ride.
Passed through Frittenden and on the road to Lashenden I spied an owl
sitting on a power line. That’s the
first owl I’ve ever seen in the wild and was surprised to see it out in the
daytime – it was only 5pm.
Managed to
snap a photo of him before setting off for Smarden and coming across a campground
on the outskirts. Seeing as we’d done
70km we thought we may as well enquire about setting up for the night and
Stuart the owner told us £10 for the night.
We asked if he happened to have any spare milk we could buy and he came
out with a litre of milk and half a loaf of bread and didn’t even charge us for
them! We then asked him where the
nearest pub was so we could skype the children and he said we could try and get
wifi off his hub. We were rapt because
if it worked we would be able to skype the children without having to hush our
voices as you do when you’re in a public place.
So we set the tent up on immaculate ground and cooked up
some beanfeast with rice and a can of tine thrown in. Got the consistency right tonight and it was
delicious. Our neighbours came over and
said if we wanted some hot water or anything to just pop over. So we thought we
may as well use some nice hot water to wash the dishes and went over and they
invited us to a cup of tea. Sat down and
had a chat with them for half an hour but I excused myself then as I was aware
time was marching on and I needed to get the blog written and photos edited
before we went and got an internet connection.
So I did that while Pete continued to chat. They told him there was a wildlife park up
the road so if we heard lions roaring not to be too alarmed. Sure enough, as we walked up to the pub (the
camp owner’s internet connection wouldn’t work for us), we heard them. It’s a scary sound, especially as we walked
back in the dark. Unfortunately the pub
internet connection was not good enough to skype and even uploading the blog
was a slow process.
Got back to the campground at 11pm after a very quick 2km
walk home as there was a thunder and lightning storm off to the south and we
were worried we’d get soaked if it came over as quick as the last one did. No worries though. We just had a spectacular lightning show to
guide us home and no rain at all overnight.
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