October 8, 1983: Cuxton to Bearsted
Near Harp Farm. From left: Marge, Tosh, Dorothy (with Bertie on lead), Harold, Jude.
Linick’s Walking Legion received additional recruits on Saturday, October 8, 1983. Tosh, Harold, and Jude were again present, but Dorothy rejoined the ranks and our Australian friend from Between The Sheets, Marge Zander, enlisted as well. To these six there was yet another addition, the aforementioned young Bertie, our Miniature Schnauzer pup, only five months old, and about to sample many new experiences.
We three left Morshead Mansions at 7:00 exactly, combining our departure with the dog’s early morning walk. Fortunately the gates were open and we made good progress through Paddington Rec – with Bertie completing his morning duties by the time we had reached the exit. Here he had to go on lead – but there was no hanging about today; eagerly he pressed forward, halting only when he reached the more unfamiliar hard surfaces of the Maida Vale tube stop. I purchased day return tickets for the three of us (dogs still had to pay back in 1983) and Dorothy picked Bertie up for the escalator ride down to the platforms; a train was just pulling in and we stepped aboard – the puppy whimpering a bit amid the deafening noises of his first underground journey.
He was asked to do his own walking through the endless corridors of Charing Cross and this he did well, but he continued to emit little squeaks of excitement, appeased only by the opportunity of chasing some pigeons as we reached the mainline station and by the attentions of a bearded bobbie who knelt to give him a cuddle. Marge was the first of our group to arrive, already wearing her new designer blue rain jacket. The Lees came next; I issued both Dorothy and Tosh 10p pieces so they could go to the loo. Harold seemed to be starting another cold but Jude came in with glowing cheeks, having ridden on her bicycle all the way from Hampstead. “By the way,” I had to inform her, “did you know that we aren’t returning to this train station?”
We left at 8:05, enjoying solitary occupation of a narrow compartment entered only from the two outside doors and reeking of antiquity. How could we be sure that this wasn’t the train that killed Huskisson? Naturally Bertie insisted on a place on the upholstered bench. He behaved himself tolerably well with the exception of one gas attack upon poor proper Marge. We caught up on school gossip and, after a rather boring ride, changed at Strood. I asked a ticket taker for help in locating our next departure and when we arrived at the platform I confirmed with the guard that indeed this was the Cuxton train. Dorothy preferred to scramble up and down the stairs with Bertie in her arms; he remained on her lap for the very short ride to Cuxton and we were walking over the bridge to Cuxton station at 9:20.
Harold announced he wanted to use the loo and I thought this was a good idea too. The gents had been designed by that same student of peristyle and patio architecture responsible for the loo at Borough Green. As we left we encountered Dorothy and Tosh; the ladies loo was under repair and they had decided to use the gents as well. They charged in before we had a chance to tell them that it was a urinals only affair –but they soon re-emerged, making appropriate sounds of disapproval and blaming us for setting them up. We walked along to the main road, Dorothy twitting Marge about missing the local jumble sale. Then there was a long pause at the petrol station as the girls remedied the deficiencies in the train station’s sanitary services.
All this time Bertie had been on lead, but now I tried to slip him into my empty blue pack, hoping I could get him off a busy road section and preserve some of his limited energies –by carrying his thirteen and a quarter pounds on my back. It had worked in our flat, but on the A228 he began to squirm immediately, thinking he was missing some action, so I had to let him down before he jumped free. He then charged up the hill on lead, pulling eagerly forward as the girls made frequent stops to harvest lead-coated late blackberries.
We had been promised dry and bright weather for our start, with no rain before the end of the afternoon, but as we approached the Medway Bridge the last bright spot in the eastern sky disappeared, and a mist began to lash us. There was a howling wind up here and the mile-long passage was invigorating, to say the least. I had to put on my blue coat and Jude donned a fluorescent yellow rain slicker. I had to carry my brown Borsalino hat but Dorothy’s Irish tweed somehow stayed in place on her head. Strangely enough, we did pass a few discarded items of clothing on our pavement. I assumed they had been ripped from the backs of other walkers by even more strenuous breezes – or left discretely behind by purposeful suicides.
Bertie had to be kept on lead throughout all of this and also on the roads we followed to Nashenden Farm after leaving the bridge at Borstal. But when we had cleared the farmyard, its oast houses, and its friendly Spaniel, I unleashed the eager fellow and he charged uphill on our first tarmac-free track. Indeed we should have followed him because I was briefly misled when the track swung to the left and I even pulled out the compass as we halted before an unyielding rusty gate. Bertie here expended his only bit of unnecessary energy by running around in circles in the long grass; soon he was retouching noses with the Nashenden Spaniel, come to see why we were still on his turf. When we started up the path Bertie had wanted to use in the first place, we instantly discovered a post with an acorn on it. The way was now clear on the ground for miles.
The ascent was easy. Behind us, on the opposing cliff, we would see the walls of H.M. Borstal. I had to give some thought to its many inhabitants and to wonder if any had found the sustenance I regularly take from the countryside. Sillitoe’s borstal boy Smith ran along just such tracks in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Ahead of us the route crawled along the edge of a ploughed field and rounded southward to run parallel with the Medway. Bertie, to everyone’s horror, began to chew on a road apple, but when a horse itself appeared he became hysterical with excitement. I collared him while a girl, giggling at this cheeky challenge, rode by. This performance was repeated several times during the day – once with the same horse and rider as a matter of fact.
We reached a wooded section near the top of the ridge and had our first brief rest. Tosh and Jude were feverishly clawing at berry bushes during this stop; Harold made friends with a horse in a nearby field and I tried to offer Bertie some water in a chrome bowl we had brought from our kitchen. He was not much interested in this, but he did manage to make off briefly with my Mars Bar. I got it back before he was able to finish it but someone kindly noted, “Remember what else he’s just had in his mouth.”
The bowl went back in the little red pack which Dorothy and Marge had been sharing and we were off; the berry pickers got left behind on this stretch, but it was hard to get lost. Cars on our track brought us back to civilization, symbolized by the Robin Hood pub, just off route. Unfortunately, dogs were not allowed in the bar; indeed the place was full of signs forbidding this and that. The girls sat inside while Harold joined me at a picnic table. The publican came outside to make sure that Harold wasn’t eating any of his own sandwiches (one of the items on the forbidden list) and to complain about the brewery, which was being very niggardly with its paint (the Robin Hood was peeling off in despair). Some of the restrictions, it seems, had been recently imposed as a consequence of a fracas with some elderly topers who had unpacked a picnic lunch at 2:30, just as mine host was about to shut up shop. “Worse than skinheads, they were,” he complained.
We resumed our packs somewhat fortified against the cold (I had consumed half a lager and a whisky) and proceeded through the Bluebell Hill picnic area, where we discovered some wonderful loos in the car park. The way forward was not clear. I tried to find a path beyond this point but Harold, using Allen and Imrie, confirmed that we had to return to the Common Road. It was being torn up to complete a new motorway, but we made our way through the bombsite and reached the main road at the Upper Bell pub.
This somewhat seedy establishment proved to be far more congenial than its predecessor. There was no objection to Bertie, who sat on the floor contentedly, misbehaving himself only momentarily when it was necessary to howl at the approach of horse hooves outside. Food (pasties and pies) were heated up for us and the landlord even made coffee – which is more than his colleague down the road at the Robin Hood would do. Again I had half a lager and a whisky. It was shortly past 1:00 and I estimated that we could make our 5:00 train at the rate of a mile every thirty minutes. Marge wanted to back in London for a party and Tosh and Jude wanted to squeeze out every last opportunity for berrying and it wasn’t easy to balance these desires. On the whole I favored the former to the latter pace because I was worried about rain. We had been lucky so far, having had no moisture since the Medway Bridge. But the valley below was full of ominous low-lying clouds and there was no telling when our luck would run out.
We now had a steep descent down the hillside, our progress slowed at the outset because Jude had forgotten her sloes in the snug. We traveled down a leafy lane and almost overshot Kit’s Coty on our right, the neolithic burial chamber, a mini-Stonehenge encased in an iron fence. At the bottom of the hill there was a brief side trip to the Countless Stones but these were used not for archeological research but for Dorothy and Marge to readjust their socks and makeup. More road walking brought us back to the Pilgrim’s Way, here a rather trashy lane featuring the burnt hulk of an abandoned motorcar. We were given an underpass to get across the motorway.
The Whitehorse Stone stood at the foot of a very steep ascent, our last of the day, a miniature Box Hill, with a canopy of trees rendering the whole scene especially dark on this grey afternoon. Bertie charged right up, often pausing to wait for his master or mistress. We were soon on top and back into the light, walking along the edges of huge plowed fields. We found a few dry rocks and paused for a rest. I poured Bertie some water. Harold put on some tape and Tosh complained that the local rose hips were dried up. She was threatening to make us rose hips soup; indeed this was produced a few weeks later. It was a bit sweet for a starter.
There was some very easy walking now, mostly level, along field edges and through the margins of woods. Daytrippers abounded. We left the vegetation for a while and rounded a sheep-filled pasture called Frog’s Rough. Passing in front of Harp Farm we joined a tarmac road. “Everybody stop,” Dorothy demanded, “Bertie won’t do his doodoo until everyone is standing still.”
There was a very muddy lane to be endured through Boxley Wood. Small metal arrows on some of the trees helped mark the way. Near the end of this stretch we got caught up in a boys’ race and crossed the finish line ourselves amid hurtling bodies. Then it was over a few stiles on open pastureland with Bertie’s favorites, horses, standing in the way (and on the Way) at each fence. Dorothy handed the puppy over to me on these occasions but he was pretty well behaved. We began a steep descent through seductive blackberry bushes and emerged at the motorway’s side near Detling.
Here I was greeted by a surprise. Since last year’s publication of the HMSO guide more of the official route had been opened, for the NDW plinth clearly ordered a leftward ascent whereas the guidebooks still mandated a temporary low-level route. It was really not practical to follow any more of the official route today because we were still trying to make that 5:00 train – and it had already gone 4:00. I marched us down into Detling, therefore, and here we began to hunt for the old alternative, finally having a conversation with the local postmistress, who kindly came out of her shop to give me directions. The old route, she said, was now overgrown – and so she advised us to take the road to Thurnham and then bear right for Bearsted. Unfortunately Bertie now had to be put on lead, but he was still keen to keep going after all this time.
Now that the end was drawing near Tosh was risking all the skin on her hands to snatch at specimens for her dried flower arrangements. At Thurnham we headed south and charged downhill at a corking pace. Once again I didn’t quite know the distance to the station because it lay just off the edge of my map. Furthermore I remembered the train arrived shortly after 5:00 but I couldn’t remember the exact moment so I just told my troops 5:00 sharp. About a quarter of a mile from the end, worn out more from the constraints of the lead than the exertions of the march, Bertie sat down in a heap. Jude carried him for a while, then we again tried him in the pack – but he kept falling out. So Dorothy carried him the last few hundred yards as we literally dashed up the station steps and over the bridge to the ticket office. Gasping for breath we discovered that we had another nine minutes in hand. To this day, the once-deceived Tosh has not forgiven me for misleading the gang about the exact departure time – nor does she entirely trust me when I set times today.
I gave Bertie a drink. I really felt quite light-headed when I stood up too quickly after kneeling next to my pack. Everyone had done quite well – Marge and Dorothy had put in especially outstanding performances on a thirteen-mile day. Bertie got to have his own seat on the train back to London. “Why not?” Dorothy said, “I just paid for his ticket.” No sooner were we aboard than it began to rain. It was already dark outside.
Bertie was much calmer during the return ride on the Bakerloo Line, when we got back to London at 6:20. He was able to do his own trotting once again in Maida Vale, moving along briskly on his mud-soaked little legs as we turned the last corner at 7:15.
To continue with the next stage of our walk you need: