Back in the Saddle

After a cycling hiatus while the weather was grim, I took to two wheels again last weekend, with a rough idea of cycling through Sandway, Boughton Malherbe and Grafty Green then onto Lenham Heath and Warren Street. I often tend to set myself a few checkpoints on an OS map and have a very vague idea of how I'm going to reach them, often dismounting to venture blindly along footpaths, merely because I think they look interesting. This seems a natural way to approach trekking through the Kent sticks to me, as it takes you off the beaten track and into unexplored territory.

The trusty steed at rest

The journey didn't kick off to a very promising start. Cycling through Sandway and across the bridge over the M20, I looked down to see gridlocked traffic, the cracking sunshine obviously bringing out the daytrippers. Seemingly to ease this congestion, two emergency slipways had been opened to allow traffic onto the narrow country lanes. Cut to a frantic scene of me battling uphill into Platts Heath pursued by a steady stream of impatient Sunday drivers. A 4x4 the width of the entire road was nose-to-tail with me for some distance. Don't get me started on 4x4 SUVs. I think these upper middle-class 'status tanks' are the sorry scourge of England and unless you spend a lot of time driving up mountains/across the Serengeti or towing a caravan the size of an aircraft hangar, you don't need to own one. End of flamin' story. The driver of this particular chumpmobile, too impatient to wait for me to pull into a passing place, overtook within a hair's breadth, pushing me into a hedge. I then did what any rational person would do - I gave him a mighty double-digit salute and pedalled on my merry way. The panoramic view when I reached Boughton Malherbe was worth the brief aggro :

Just outside Grafty Green, I ventured onto a little-used public footpath which led through some woods. Peering through the knots of ivy and gnarled trees, I noticed a cylindrical brick structure and decided to investigate further. I think I've had this compulsion to explore mysterious, derelict structures since I was a nipper, when I had designs on becoming a detective (as a kid, I owned numerous books on how to dust for fingerprints, track spivs and be an all-round fedora-wearing gumshoe). The fact that this building had been claimed by the forest flora merely heightened its appeal. It reminded me of the mysterious, vine-laden structures on the cover of one of my all-time favourite records, R.E.M.'s Murmur.

The cylindrical structure turned out to be just some sort of outbuilding adjoining an eerie derelict house, smack bang in the middle of the woods (see pics below).

The path running between the two separate parts of the house, mysterious kettle in background

The main ragstone cottage

There were various objects scattered around on the floors of the main house, which initially suggested that this had perhaps recently been inhabited by squatters, but I noticed that the utensils - a kettle, bowls, metal basins etc. - were of a certain vintage. The metal basins (in the pic below) looked like they belonged on a Victorian washstand, not in the hands of the average squatter, and the kettle appeared to be from the same era. All this gave the house a faintly Mary Celeste quality. Why would somebody leave all these objects here when they left? Given the slightly spooky air of the place, I didn't want to hang about too long, so I made my way towards Lenham Heath and Warren Street

  

I continued along the foot of the North Downs, past the Lenham Chalk Cliffs and a few great cobnut foraging spots. In this general area, there are various handy signs placed by the Mid Kent Downs Countryside Partnership which suggest that, amongst other chalk-loving plants, Salad Burnet grows around here. I've yet to spot some, but I plan to hunt the elusive stuff down in the summer.

Just outside Warren Street, I stopped for a break by the water tower, which I always think resembles some sort of aquatic fort turret from a 50s sci-fi flick, the way it seems to rise up out of the crops in the field. By this stage, my weary legs were thankful that the journey homeward from here was all downhill.