Route Britannia, the Journey South: A Spontaneous Bicycle Ride through Every County in Britain

by Steven Primrose-Smith

  “We need a word that means fancying men from Monday to Wednesday, women Thursday and Friday and gender neutrals at weekends. Oh, and it has to begin with X.”

  Anyway, back on the street and Mr Dilated Pupils was still staring at me. I didn't know what I was doing. I'm no doctor. I'd just seen a human who appeared to be in distress but now appeared to be safely buried somewhere deep in the cocoon of his own mind. I figured it was better to walk on than to try to prise him out of there.

  Near the campsite I stopped at Lidl. An Eastern European lad sat at the till, swiping cheap biscuits, with another set of dead eyes, his soul somewhere other than this supermarket. Is this what he really wanted? Minimum wage in an expensive town like Brighton, thousands of miles from his family and friends? Maybe he was saving up for a bigger dream, because this couldn't surely be it.

  After the dullness of West Sussex, Brighton seemed the reverse, almost like it had sucked all the life out of its host county to provide it with one spot of genuine interest. And even in a town as atheistic as Brighton, thank Christ for that!

  *

  I set off the next morning down the pleasant coastal cycle path out of Brighton, passing the huge marina with its tall towers of expensive flats. If the Sussex countryside had been dull then its seaside wasn't. It was stunning, its huge, rugged chalk cliffs dropping dramatically into the English Channel. Unfortunately, and typically for Britain, a decent cycle path can only last so long before the forces of council underfunding give it a kicking. The cycle path ran out at delicious-sounding Rottingdean, reappeared later and was then sporadic all the way to Seaford.

  I was initially going to cycle to Beachy Head, another of Britain's suicide capitals. But from the coast I could see the steep climb to it, the traffic-laden A259 with no pavement or verge, and realised it would have been a long and sweaty climb, pissing off a countyful of people who often seemed fairly pissed off already. I suspect it would have been me who was tumbling from that famous cliff top and not of my own volition.

  Only two places in the world see more suicides than Beachy Head. They are San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and Aokigahara Woods in Japan. There is a Samaritans sign on top and the area is patrolled by the Beachy Head Chaplaincy Team. There are usually around twenty jumpers per year, the majority of which come from outside East Sussex, indicating its reputation has led to the most macabre sort of tourism possible.

  Instead I headed inland, through car-free lanes. I saw another hillside chalk horse and then the Long Man of Wilmington. I crossed the A27, another busy road, and decided to find a route north specifically to take me via Upper Dicker. You've got to love English village names.

  I'd seen online that there were a lot of campsites around the village of Horam. The first one I came across wasn't on my list. I knocked on the door of its farm but there was no answer. A buxom blonde, Charlotte, probably about 19, was tending her horse. She said the owners weren't in and tried them on her phone but got no answer.

  “I'm sure it'll be alright,” she said.

  She remounted her horse and I followed her to the camping field. It was absolutely massive and entirely empty bar one other tent.

  “Try to find some room,” she said with a smile.

  The site had only just opened. It had showers that included a soap dispenser and a sink with washing up liquid – tiny frills you don't normally get at a campsite – and even a fridge-freezer to keep beer chilled and all for only a tenner, the cheapest I'd paid in a week, proving that, just because you're in the south of England, it doesn't mean everyone wants to rob you.

  I checked the weather forecast. It provided bad news. My sunburnt face was predicted to fade over the coming weeks. A ten-day spell of rain was on its way. Bugger.

  *

  I'd always imagined the Battle of Hastings occurred somewhere near the beach in, oh I don't know, Hastings, but it didn't. It happened in a village called Battle. Spooky! It's almost as if it was destined for conflict.

  As with all towns whose names double up as everyday words, the local businesses used it at their peril. Battle Cakes sounds more like a Weightwatcher's programme.

  I cycled through the town to the square containing the entrance to the site of the 1066 fisticuffs. I leant my bike against its huge stone walls and my cycle computer, which had been dead for the last 52 days, suddenly sprang into life. Although my bike's wheels weren't moving I was apparently doing a solid ten miles an hour. Ticking off the clicks had never been so easy.

  Inside the walls of the site a hoard of school kids charged about like Vikings who'd ingested too much of that lichen that sends reindeers doolally. It was great to see the field where Harold got one in the eye. William the Conqueror built an abbey, Battle Abbey, at the site where Harold was killed to atone for the sheer amount of death he'd inflicted upon the locals. That day hadn't been one of East Sussex's better ones.

  Once done I returned to my bike and discovered it had cycled fifteen miles without me. I celebrated with what appeared to be the ingredients of a full English breakfast wrapped in pastry. My diet wasn't getting any healthier.

  From Battle I chose smaller B-roads. Down a lane I could hear hooves coming from around a corner and slowed to a stop. An old wooden cart suddenly appeared, pulled by two out-of-control horses. It flew around the bend while the old bloke holding the reins whooped enthusiastically. The horses reared up at the sight of me and the driver's elderly wife nearly tumbled out of the back. They continued on their way, swerving from side to side, his wife wailing for him to stop.

  I was on my way to Rye. The quiet, country lanes took me past the Kings Head pub. A large blackboard on its exterior wall offered camping for a fiver in its field. I wasn't about to pass up an opportunity like that.

  I set up my tent, dumped my bags and cycled the six miles or so through Rye to Rye Harbour. I'd always wanted to see this place. It was where my dad had lived, aged about ten.

  The tree-strewn road to the village was less than lovely, its small-scale industry lacing the air with the odour of refineries and solvents, but the smells disappeared a few hundred metres down the perfectly straight one-and-a-half mile track and suddenly pretty, little Rye Harbour was upon me.

  Most of the pubs I'd visited on this trip had been poorly attended at best. The Inkerman Arms, on the other hand, was heaving, especially given that it was three o'clock on a Thursday afternoon. I bought myself a pint of Old Dairy and a packet of pork scratchings and found a table. I settled down to soak up some of my dad's childhood home. He'd lived in this pub.

  The clientele was certainly knocking on a bit. On a table sat a pile of magazines called Golden Times, aimed squarely at the over 50s. Next to it, a basket of eggs and a pile of greetings cards were for sale. On the ceiling hung loads of brass kettles and jugs, not like a theme pub, but as though they'd always been here. Its menu was mostly based on the fish landed just around the corner.

  The harbour was a little way inland via a channel. Small boats chugged up and down it every now and again. A booth sold ice-creams for just £1. Didn't they realise it was 2016? I bought one and it was bloody good. On the other side of the main track to the harbour small dunes and salt marshes were rich in bird life. This wouldn't have been a bad spot to have been a young boy. My dad had said how a local fisherman would sometimes catch more than he could physically carry to market. He'd leave the rest on the beach in a big pile. The local whippersnappers would scoop them up and take them home. After all, times were hard. Rationing was still in operation.

  I cycled back through Rye and had a proper look around. It was a town with its own personality. It deserved some sort of medal. I wheeled the bike around its streets, looking in the shop windows. A white-haired bloke speaking in a very camp voice pounced upon me.

  “Have you registered for the EU referendum?” he asked.

  I told him I'd love to vote but couldn't. I'd lived outside of the UK for too long. He was a Remainer but was suspicious of what the Prime Minister had supposedly negotia
ted with the EU ahead of his campaign to keep us in Europe. He continued in his effeminate voice.

  “But I tell you what, I don't like the look of Cameron's package.”

  I felt like I'd slipped into a Carry On film.

  Back at the pub, on a golden evening, I sat in the beer garden and spoke to the landlord. He told me how, a few decades earlier, Rye Harbour was a rough old hole with a bunch of bad 'uns called the Blue Boulder Boys and “weirdos” who lived on the marshes. Rye Harbour had been a desperately poor place back when my dad lived there.

  I mentioned that, unlike many towns, Rye had at least retained some of its character but he wasn't as convinced.

  “I used to enjoy going into Rye at the end of the eighties in December for that Christmas feeling,” he said, “y'know, the carol singing an' everything. It's all gone now. Cleaned up by the DFLs.”

  “DFL?” I asked.

  “Down From Londons.”

  Boat-owning Lizzie in Torpoint hadn't lived all the way over there in Cornwall; she lived not far from here, in Hastings, and told me to give her a call if I passed nearby. She popped to the pub in the evening. It was a school night and so she couldn't stay late.

  I told her about the EU campaigner in town that afternoon. She said that over the last few weeks she'd researched every facet of the EU debate and was now a passionate Remainer. There wasn't a single credible argument in favour of leaving, she said. The landlord was of a different view, which resulted in a heated exchange.

  The discussion had been intensifying of late. The country was polarising. This was particularly sad because a lot of the pro-Brexit arguments were based on lies from Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, particularly about the amount we paid to Europe. They were also countered with nonsense from the Remain campaign, stating categorically that if we left we'd all be an exact number of pounds out of pocket. Since when were government figures accurate? But worse than the lies were the false promises from Boris Johnson about redirecting EU money to the NHS. How could he promise anything? The Leave team had precisely two MPs between them – Johnson and Gove – out of a parliament of six hundred and fifty. And Farage wasn't even an MP.

  It was misinformation from both sides. The landlord was under the impression that we couldn't trade with Commonwealth countries like India. I knew this to be untrue from personal experience. The poppadams I'd once bought from an Asian supermarket in Blackburn had come directly from the subcontinent, along with the infestation of insects I later discovered in my kitchen drawer. He also complained that the apples in the orchard next to his pub were collected by “Lithuanian illegals”. That may well have been true, but that's not an argument against the EU. It's an argument for better policing. Some Puerto Ricans work illegally in the US and they aren't in the EU.

  Regardless of the heated chatter, the pub's kitchen provided a really lovely plateful of wild boar sausages, mash and gravy. The landlord told me that wild boar were local around here. After a 700-year absence they'd been reintroduced from Europe.

  Bloody wild boars, coming over here, taking our acorns!

  Chapter 10: The campsite of broken hearts

  Kent, Greater London, the City of London, Surrey and Berkshire

  The next morning I cycled into Kent and Tenterden. In the centre of town a parked car opened its door on me. I had to swerve to avoid messing up my morning. From the look I got, I suspect the driver would have been more concerned with the head-shaped hole in her door.

  Tenterden achieved short-lived national fame in 2013 by switching on its Christmas lights during the first week of September. Making such a big deal about Christmas is another very British trait; most countries don't bother until a week or two before the day itself. A lot of people do the same thing with their summer holidays, booking them six months or more in advance. If the British can only remain sane by looking forward to something in the distant future, what does that say about the present?

  As everyone learns in school, Kent is the garden of England. For all the food grown in the fields around here, there appears to be precious few places that sell any of it. The farther south I went, the fewer little shops and convenience store garages there were. There must be friendless, phoneless, computerless old dears in some of these houses literally starving to death. I continued on my way and cycled through a town with only half a name, Thanington Without. Without a what though? Without anywhere to buy food probably. Apparently, a local wag once exposed the truth with his graffiti. On the town's sign, after the words “Thanington Without”, he'd added “Classy Birds”.

  It wasn't long before I rolled into Canterbury. The big attraction is obviously the cathedral and I made my way to it through a protective sheath of chain stores. Unfortunately, the cathedral itself is ringfenced by smaller buildings and this was the first megachurch of the trip so far that wouldn't even let me see its exterior without paying, which isn't very Jesus of them. I suppose those archbishops' frocks and silly hats don't come cheap.

  I moved back towards the shops. In the street, a sweet-voiced young woman called Daisy Tickle was singing “Love You Better Now” accompanied by an acoustic guitar played by a bloke, perhaps Mr Tickle.

  The shops became less chainy and more interesting on cobbled Burgate and the King's Mile. A coffee shop advertised “Coffee made with love”. Keep your pants on, barrista. Just stick to milk.

  There were lots of souvenir shops milking the Queen's recent 90th birthday. What is it about royal events that so enthuses the tea towel industry? And why do the people who claim to love her want to wipe her face all over some dirty crockery anyway?

  Overall, invisible cathedral aside, Canterbury had been a pleasant place to spend an hour or so but it was time to leave. My plan had been to cycle on the Crab and Winkle trail to Whitstable. It followed the route of the world's first regular steam passenger railway, closed in 1952, but the path wanted me to do weird things, like get off and walk, which is the opposite of what a cycle path should do, and so I decided to use the roads as I always seem to end up doing. This took me up Tyler Hill, where a sign had been defaced and now said, “Please d-i-e slowly”.

  It wasn't long before I hit the north Kent coast and Whitstable. Near the harbour, built by Thomas Telford, a little city of market stalls sold gifts and snacks. Patriotism was in the air. A man was trying to photograph a couple's Union Flag scarf-wearing bulldog. More Britishness occurred when a Mr Whippy van's ice cream machine exploded comically and the six-strong queue all cheered raucously. That sort of thing doesn't happen in other countries. In Germany they'd just tut and say, “Ach, terrible engineering!”

  Maybe the patriotism was related to the referendum, now less than a fortnight away. I was interested in what Radio Four was going to talk about once it was all over. At least seventy-five per cent of its output was related to Brexit. And the referendum's presence was here too. Boats in the harbour flew anti-EU banners. One said, “Save the fishing industry. Vote leave!” Given its unprofitability I would have thought the UK fishing industry appreciated its EU subsidies. It was heartening to see their desire to stand on their own two feet again, but the only way to save the fishing industry would be a total ban on sea-fishing for a decade or two so our waters could grow some bloody fish again.

  I cycled out of the harbour, past an untidy beach with mud and small pebbles and more stalls selling shellfish, and into town. It has a pleasant, characterful main street. A man with the handsome, healthy looks of a south European ambled down the pavement wearing an Athletic Bilbao red-and-white-striped football shirt sponsored by Bimbo, the American sliced bread made chiefly of fresh air and sugar. I wonder if he knew what Bimbo means in English. It could have been worse. The Danish national football team was once sponsored by an energy company called Dong.

  I transferred to a smaller coast road, through Seasalter, a village whose very name tastes of kelp. There wasn't much going on but after the traffic of Britain's south-east it was lovely to cycle peacefully beside the sea for a while. The quiet lanes
terminated in Faversham and then morphed into the horribly busy A2 to Sittingbourne. It's not just the locals over on ilivehere.co.uk who like to have a dig at this town. David Baddiel once described it as the sort of place “you feel overdressed with two ears”.

  South of here is an area mercifully free of large roads. Lanes, often only a car wide, link ghost villages populated by huge, expensive houses but no pubs, shops or any other amenities. How does a community grow when there's nowhere to meet your neighbours? Or maybe all your neighbours are bankers and you don't want to meet them anyway.

  Certainly nobody seemed to be bothering with community-building projects such as smiling or acknowledging the existence of others. Not far from the starchily-named village of Stiff Street I was nearly hit by a Ferrari because he assumed I'd move, despite his own Give Way sign. This close to London, there was clearly money here – lots and lots of it – but the area had less soul than the playlist at a zombie discotheque. Of all the places I'd seen so far in Britain, this is the last place I'd like to live. Which is just as well as it's also the last place I'd be able to afford.

  The lanes took a long time to negotiate. I knew roughly where there was a campsite – in Detling – but it turned out that I knew very roughly. I popped into the first pub I'd seen for an hour and asked directions. The site was another three miles away, said the bloke, over the dual carriageway, down a lane and then up a massively steep dirt track. By the time I arrived, the sky was threatening rain. The female warden took pity on me and my sweaty forehead and gave me a handful of wet wipes. She then charged me half price because “there's only one of you and it's not fair”, a principle I hoped would spread like a virus throughout the whole of the UK.