I rode my bike around after not having ridden for more than a year I think. After a day feeling really rubbish ralph did a bit of riding behind me and spotted that my back wheel had a proper wobble and was rubbing on a bit of the bike. That was what the goose noise was then. I just assumed I was having a hard time because I was crap and the brakes were a little wonky. A lovely man in a local bike shop straightened up my wheel for me and everything was much easier. After that I was like some kind of lightening flash. I only had a couple of instances of needing to stop from exploding lungs.
We were staying in a place called quex park and cycling about and into ramsgate where ralphs residency is. It's about 40 mins to cycle from one to the other, on quite quick countryside roads that's a fair way. At quex park there are lots of animals all over the place.
Whilst I was there we had to move from the field ralph had been camping in because we were right on the path for the murder mystery tour. We found a nice hidden spot in the woods and gently cleared the big sticks and nettles and set up the tent. Alas, a phone call later, we find that this spot is now on the spot where they are hacking a path for the actors to run between the action. It was ok, they went around the tent. When we got back we found our lovely hidden campsite is now as if there has been a path established there for years and we look like wallies for putting our tent so close to a path. Honestly, there was not even a hint of being able to walk through there before, they cut drown trees and scraped the moss off the woodland floor. A little barbaric I thought seeing as we had been so careful not to break anything. Ralph put up a rope to stop thespians walking into the tent. Again, there was no path there that morning.
They were just doing the rehearsal on our last night so we didn't have to suffer too much murder. It was quite fun, odd, but fun to watch them going around practising, and over quite quickly. I guess we were the strange ones huddled under the trees in the rain, listening to radio 4 on a wind up radio, cooking cous cous and chorizo on a camping stove, right next to a path. Oh well. The director, I think, was a little rude, saying about how he guessed it was ok to work around us, how he'd just check the tent wasn't in the way of the actors, flashing the torch at us to check it was our lantern. I hope that bit of wood manages to get back to normal and the path is lost.
Whilst in ramsgate I walked around and really liked going to the seafront. The beach there is very nice with some good bits of sand and others with rock pools and lots of exciting seaweed. I didn't see too many creatures, some shrimps and a tiny crab. I really like the big cliffs and particularly this part where the chalk meets what I think might be a man made concrete cliff cunningly disguised by the inclusion of pockets for planting. Only about 5 different plants as far as I found but still good, I collected some seeds. I also found a waitrose.
Look, some sacred geometry! This, from the ground, is an interesting seaside garden with a little board explaining the plants and why they are good to grow here. From the cliff top it is a nonsence.
Here is some slightly more authentic geometry, more attractive I think...
I took this whilst sitting on the beach, on one of the concrete bits that goes out to sea, the sand was wet. I was doing my nails and I had found the brick pebble. Not posed but I like the picture, shows how I am both a glamorous lady and an outdoorsy pickerupper. This is when I met buster, a dog who had loads of fun ignoring his owners, they complained that he just made them look like idiots.
Ralph and I went on a great outing to visit the mudflats, the cycle was a bit hairy as drivers in kent seem not to have encountered bikes before, particularly the huge heavy works lorry that pretty much touched my handlebars. If only I hadn't been concentrating on not dying I could have noted the company and reported him for dangerous driving. I hope one day soon he realises that having the death of a person on his concious is not worth those few extra seconds he gained. In fact I wish the hand of god could come down and point that out to all drivers, (big booming voice here...) 'you can very easily kill a cyclist by your impatient, un-thought through passing, are you unable to visualise the consequences of your actions and see that you are deeply dangerous and do not deserve your humanity'. After this we took to a cycle path along the inner edge of the mudflats, through swathes of fennel. All the paths into the flats weren't bike friendly so we kept going, we were also looking for breakfast. Eventually we arrived in sandwich. It's pretty strange in sandwich, all roads lead back there, it was hard to get out again. We went off to see the roman fort but because english heritage charge £4.50 each we didn't go in and started off down a strange little track with a sign to river boats. We are still learning to use the ordnance survey properly, there looked like was a path that we could take to eventually take us back to the mud flats. We went across a level crossing. Terrifying.
Following this tack we took the saxon shore way.
The saxon shore way is for walking not cycling, but it was ok. Fields. We went through some with cows, at one point the water trough was right on the path and there was a awkward moment when we had to ask the cows to move. They really stare and are quite big.
The more fields we went through, the more we started to head in the wrong direction, we had expected a bridge. The fields got a bit more rugged.
We passed under a railway and saw a man in a boat, it started to rain and ralph asked him if there was a bridge soon, he said yes. When the rain stopped we looked it up on the map and it was about the same distance ahead as we had come. Onward. It got even more rugged.
Looking out across on our side of the river there was nothing to see as far as the eye could. How strange.
We came to a strange looked after stretch with mown lawn and boat moorings, in behind was a neat garden with only the wild plants we'd been passing but neat mown paths through.
The map didn't say what this was, no house or anything as far as we could see. This was when the actor called about the path by our tent.
After this there was sheep and then it got all overgrown
Eventually we got to plucks gutter, which was where the boat man had said about, there was a pub. The pub was just about the nastiest, done up in the late 80's for the static caravan oldie crowd, pub I've seen. Whilst we were there there was a coach trip of horrible old folk listening to a tanned crooner with a backing track cd. This was about 4 in the afternoon in the middle of nowhere. Still, we had a coffee and a cider and a sit down before the cycle home.
Next day we found out from sarah at the residency that there was no bridges because there are no roads because this area was the wide expanse of water that separated the isle of thanet from the rest of kent. Wantsum.
This is our route, I think from next to the castle which looks to be the roman fort to the road at where it says east stourmouth. I think it's 7 miles.
I'm home now and I miss the good fish and chips you can get from ossie's.
No comments:
Post a Comment