bluebirds over

misogynists' country ?

Breakfast on the front at Bexhill feels rather civilised.  A nice shelter from the wind, a little sunshine, and public toilets.  What more could you need?  Dog-walkers, joggers, cyclists, and walkers all pass by and many look at us brewing up and say hello.  Amused, bemused?  A man comes to clean the glass in the shelter and apologises for disturbing us.  How civilised.  Less civilised is the bike route out of Hastings.  Someone in Sustrans clearly thinks it's a wheeze to choose the steepest lane imaginable out of the town.  Sure, there's little traffic on it, and sure, it takes us past a campsite and through some lovely parkland before leading us on to the way to Rye.  But it's a bloody long push.  I wondered if I'd recognise anything of Hastings when we pass through because we used to visit my grandparents here around Easter time when we were kids.  I bought my first Tintin book in a WH Smiths here. But there's nothing I remember.  Oh, except for the crazy golf on the front.


The cycle route takes us inland to Rye through fields of vivid yellow gorse.  The big skies darken and it hails just as we get to the centre.  We are having our lunch in the shelter of the supermarket to escape wind and rain when two young dudes stop to ask us where we're heading.  One of them has been touring and is about to return to Kyrgyzstan where he abandoned his ride last year.  We share our experience at Birling Gap the previous day and they seem totally unsurprised. 
 

Romney Marsh

Tucking this social contact under our belts, we head off across the marshes towards the picturesquely-named St.Mary-in-the-Marsh.  There are big skies and a sharp south-easterly wind which brings a chill to our bones.  We pause for biscuits and a breather outside St. Mary's 12th century church.  It's all in quite good nick, considering it's age.   Then we cut left and right around the fields to rejoin the coast and arrive in Folkestone on a good long bike path away from the traffic.  The path ends suddenly at the town with big excavations but we manage to get onto a road which leads us to a chippy.  It's a grey, grim part of the town, full of cheap hotels and booze shops.  It seems like a great place to have our final supper in England, so fish, chips and peas it is.  

There's nothing like a big stodgy meal to help you up the hills.  We zig and zag up steep quiet surburban streets of semis (try saying that quickly.......okay, now try cycling it) and then onto an overgrown bike path that leads back onto the clifftops above the town.  It's getting dark and cold when we finally find a lane that leads to a track that leads to a gap in the middle of a field of rape.   The gap is where the tractor has entered and left the field and it's just big enough to put the tent.  In a plot nearby skittish horses snort and neigh at us.  

It's a cold night.  We can scrape the frost off the tent in the morning.  Happily it's a big descent into Dover where we breakfast in a carpark and dry the tent out in the sunshine.  A man in a van remarks on our load.  He's a cyclist and he wishes us all the best on our way.  We don't have a ferry ticket but we can ride into the ferry terminal, pass the French police check, and then through the security gate before we buy our tickets to Dunkirk.  There are ferries heading to Calais and Dunkirk every hour, which means a phenomenal number of lorries coming and going.  It would be hard to imagine this port when we leave the EU and the customs checks resume........

Blue sky and sunshine as we sail away from England. White cliffs too. And France is just ...là bas.