May 29, 2000: Deal to Dover
Most come to Dover for the ferry or the white cliffs
– but what about the charms of this gnome-filled front garden?
Monday, May 29th, was a bank holiday and on it the Lees and I returned, after an absence of thirteen months, to the Saxon Shore Way. We met at 8:15 in Victoria Station – where only three ticket windows were open to cope with the holiday crowds. The Lees went to get coffee and pastry and I paused at a kiosk to get some snacks too. Our train, the 8:35 to Dover Priory, was already waiting at platform 7 and we were soon seated in one of those old side-door slammers that Connex Southeast has yet to retire. Tosh’s jumper was soon covered with pastry sugar.
It took an hour and forty-five minutes to reach Dover and this was plenty of time to bring the Lees up to date on the affairs of ASL. It was a beautiful morning, after much recent rain, and the countryside was sparkling and green. We had only the briefest of intervals at Dover Priory, finding a train already waiting to take us to Deal – which we reached at 10:45. A short stroll put us back on the coastal promenade where, from the outset on a clear, brisk and shining day, we could see the French coast across a multi-colored sea, radiant in milky blue and green shades.
Almost immediately Tosh insisted on visiting the shingle in search of geological specimens – since was always looking for rocks to put in her new rock polisher. There didn’t seem to be any chance of her getting lost, as our paved path paralleled the shoreline for several miles, so off she went, soon lost to our sight. Harold and I plodded forward in silence, making good progress on the promenade, leaving Deal Castle and the seafront hotels behind us and gradually approaching Woolmer Castle with its decorated cannons in fearsome array. There were lots of holiday strollers and their dogs about – but I didn’t see any Schnauzers.
The path narrowed and took a few doglegs but the bank of shingle remained on our left as we reached the back alleys and front gardens of Kingsdown. There was a pub, the Zetland Arms, just at the point where the well-marked Saxon Shore Way abandons the coast. It was already open at 11:50 and Harold and I went inside for some liquid refreshment. I was eager to add “Z” to my alphabetical list of walkside pubs (now missing only X). Harold had half a pint and I a Diet Coke. We took these out to some benches at the edge of the sea and positioned ourselves to see how long it would take Tosh to reach us, either on the shingle itself or on the private road we had just traversed. In fact, it took a long time, over half an hour. She had managed to get lost, had missed some of the green signs, had doubled back looking for us once, and had come this far only when some people told her about the pub.
It was close to 12:30 when we sat down inside and began a very long wait for our food. Harold had a cottage pie, Tosh a ham sandwich, and I a quite indifferent plaice and chips. The pub was really crowded, which is why things took so long, and it was close to 1:40 by the time we were ready to leave (the Lees forbore ordering coffee here in consequence) – we had only covered about two and a half miles so far.
We walked away from the shore and turned left on leafy Undercliffe Road, our first ascent of the famous white cliffs ahead of us. I fell behind in some of the steeper stretches but I was happy with my progress and, as we entered more open country, exhilarated by the day and the prospect. In spite of the weeklong rain things were dry underfoot, because of the chalk, and I knew that we would fare far better on such grassy surfaces than we might on other inland routes today. There were lots of people about up here as well. Near the top of our rise we visited the monument to the Dover Patrol; Tosh was behind at this point and Harold and I had some water while sitting on the steps of the monument.
Then we left the car park and descended to a path on the brow of the cliff – in happy memory of so many similar scenes on the South West Way. Soon we were heading briskly downhill, at last making up for our late start, and, as we entered woodland, there was a steep set of switchbacking stairs to take us all the way down to the beach at St. Margaret’s Bay. A small pack of Cub Scouts was ascending. “These steps are a nuisance,” one of them complained. At the bottom the Lees spotted loos and a kiosk and they each had a coffee. Tosh bought me a Magnum bar and then disappeared to have a look at the pebbles on the beach. Our table was situated near the parking lot and this was not too pleasant on a busy holiday. It was about 3:00 when we started up again, only about half way along in our day’s journey.
Again we turned our back on the shore and climbed up a road, taking a turnoff to the left to follow a road past a museum (which was celebrating Noel Coward) and a pine plantation. The Saxon Shore Way’s metal directional badge had been vandalized at this point so I sat down to have a look at the guidebook – which most of the day remained in my pack. While I was doing this a chap advised us that all routes would bring us to the same spot, in this case the lighthouse which gave its name to the downs. The SSW, it turns out, heads back to the sea at this point, so we climbed a road that soon had us back on a cliff edge path. This rose gradually and put us out on the lighthouse road itself. There were many people clambering about this structure, but we turned downhill to follow another exhilarating path around Fan Point and Langdon Hole. I later noted that by reaching the latter spot I had completed mile 3100.
Views of Dover Castle and the harbor walls were available now and there was a grand sight of ferry activity, in all shapes and sizes, heading to or coming from France. At Fox Hill Down there was a National Trust cafeteria and we paused long enough to use the loos. I decided to put the guidebook in the map case because now, as we approached civilization, there were a lot of instructions in the text. At a hairpin bend just beyond the car park we began a steep descent on the Jubilee Steps, encountering one muttering woman who had taken her shoes off to make the climb up. The ferry terminal was directly below us and there were announcements in a variety of languages floating up from the p.a. At the bottom we crept through an underpass and found ourselves on a row of terrace houses. East Cliff was on our right as we continued forward to Marine Parade, where – after dodging the coastal traffic – we reached the harbor promenade. It was the third time we had reached Dover on foot – and probably the most pleasant.
It was still sunny and breezy and there were lots of people about gazing at the heavens. This was because, as the town was getting ready to reenact the 60th anniversary of the Dunkirk rescue, a Spitfire was performing in the skies above the town.
We continued forward until we reached a street called New Bridge, turned our back on the sea here, passed the India Mutiny monument and dropped down into a pedestrian underpass. Here a drunken tattooed yob in a Dallas Cowboys cap overheard our American accents and interrogated us for the next few minutes on our life histories. We shook him in the Market Square, turning left on Queen Street and girding our loins for the last part of the walk. This did not involve a quick search for the Dover Priory station, but a mile and a half trek over to Aycliff first.
The reason for this expedition was that I had determined that we would not walk the next, Dover-Etchinghill section of the Saxon Shore Way– as this stage is identical with the route of the North Downs Way, a route that Tosh and I had walked once and Harold twice. But I could see from our guidebook that the SSW followed a different path from that we used to get from Sunny Corner to the train station all those years ago, and that in order to have a true sense of completion we had to take it and then double back at its conclusion. I could soon tell, in addition, that, indeed, since our last time in these parts, the NDW had also been routed along this traffic-free bypass as well – so we had signs for both routes to help us out on a number of occasions.
Unfortunately the route now required some steep climbing, up Adrian Street (and past a site associated with Betsy Trotwood’s house) and up some steep steps in pursuit of the fortifications known as the Western Heights. I had to do some scouting and check my map closely as we reached the moat of this impressive redoubt – eventually determining that indeed we were meant to circumnavigate much of the structure by turning inland. The Lees were a good deal behind me here so I had to pause and wait for them just before I reached the Military Road – which was climbing up from a part of Dover that contained, I could see well below me, the roof of our train station.
We turned left at the road and walked past more fortifications until we reached a junction with a minor road that passed the site of a church of the Knights Templar. This had been a pretty strenuous half hour but matters were to take a further downturn when the first raindrops began to fall. It had been getting grayer recently but I had placed my faith in Weathercall’s assertion that the only showers for this day would be in northern Kent. And this was not just a shower but a real thunderstorm, right above us, it seemed – with flashes of lightning and peals of thunder crashing every few minutes. We paused to put on our raingear, which I always insist we carry, but Tosh, naturally, didn’t have her rain pants. That lady was casting baleful looks at me, as though I were directly responsible for getting her electrocuted on the spot. Perhaps it never occurred to her that if she hadn’t dawdled all day long we would have been inside by now.
We could now begin a descent, the rain driving into our faces, with a view of the NDW path climbing down from Shakespeare Cliff directly ahead of us. My shoes kept getting untied and I struggled to retie them (a heel strain was no doubt the result of this slippery free-for-all). We were getting pretty wet in spite of our protection and I was glad to get back to firmer ground as we neared the coastal highway. The prospect of following it back into town was not a delightful one (Tosh wanted to wait for a bus) but Harold, finding our feet at the foot of the Military Road again, proposed we use it to climb back to the heights and thus avoid the company of all the traffic. This we did, the rain now lashing us from behind. I hadn’t expected this extra bit of uphill but I pushed myself relentlessly (I was also having back trouble) and at last we reached a spot we had abandoned half an hour earlier. I lead us on a corking charge downhill, the rain now driving at us from the left, and in a few sodden minutes we were back at a downtown roundabout, with signs pointing us in the right direction for the train station. It had been a long time since a day walk had turned out to be so affected by wet weather.
We arrived at 6:40 and Tosh tried to jump into a waiting train but it was soon clear that we had nineteen minutes before departure time and so we retreated to the station cafe to buy some snacks for our journey. Then we sat down and peeled off the wet layers, hanging our raingear from convenient luggage racks. The guidebook was wet, of course, and my black sweatshirt was pretty sodden – so after we got going I took it off and sat in my t-shirt. It was chilly, however, and eventually I put my clammy rain jacket back on. Tosh complained about her wet trousers. We ate our sandwiches and other snacks and Harold and I shared a Diet Coke. I called Dorothy on the mobile phone and gave her an e.t.a. of 9:30.
The train was not too crowded but our loquacious yob pal was aboard this carriage and in an attempt to remain invisible we kept staring intently out the window whenever he appeared – he was working the train with his chatter, questions, and commands and in this fashion we discovered that he had spent two and a half years “inside.” He told the husband of the family behind us, the one with all the squalling kids and the wife with no front teeth – “Now you’re taking her out tonight.” He had an even louder friend. Every time we pulled into a station, this chap stuck his head out the window, put his thumbs up, and shouted “Gillingham!” at the top of his voice to anyone on the platform.
At 8:45 this uncomfortable journey came to an end and the Lees and I parted at Victoria Station. I was lucky with both of my tube connections and so I was able to reach home base closer to 9:15 – after a very eventful outing.
It will be recalled that we did not walk the Saxon Shore Way stage between Dover and Etchinghill – because we had covered this territory as part of our walk on the North Downs Way. If you are interested in a preview of this section you need to look at the following link:
(Although our line of march on this day is opposite that which most SSW walkers would be using.)
To continue with the next stage of our SSW walk you need: