Company

Yesterday was all about the cello. Today it’s nearly all about the bike. Yesterday’s ride was short, an escorted half hour from Brockwell Park to Southwark cathedral, and back again – Jenny in front, navigating, and Alfie behind, protecting. You could almost hear the sirens.

There will be no performance today. There will be a brief pilgrimage stop at Rochester, so as not to break the sequence, and then on to Canterbury. That will be enough for one day.

And like last time I spent two nights in one place, I don’t want to leave. By nature, I think, I’m a sedentary person. Constant movement is not my default choice; nomadic pastoralism is a long way back in my evolutionary history.

Still, it’s not lonely like last time. Jenny is going to ride with me, at least a bit – until she gets tired, and can peel off the route and onto a train home.

London’s cycle paths are comprehensively magnificent, safe, and pleasant to ride. They are, however, convoluted beyond any reason if you’re not taking a radial route in or out of town. So our eastward progress is slow, and slightly frustrating, for a while. It becomes completely frustrated at a spiral ramp over a seemingly non-existent railway line. That sort of thing is not traversable by a 50kg cargo bike.

And then, further out of town, the A2 is just like the other day’s A14. We’re in a different Borough, and here the bike is not king at all; it’s just a faddish nuisance, to be actively discouraged.

But then, slightly later than planned, we’re in Rochester, and taking coffee on a breezy corner, before our pilgrim stop. There’s a good mainline train station here, and an easy return to London. Jenny is not persuaded. Let’s go on, she says, to Sittingbourne – if I’m buying lunch, that is.

So 15 miles further, and a Pakistani pizza in Sittingbourne, looking out of the window at a man actually sitting in a chair almost in the middle of the road. The pizza is really first class, and the proprietor wants to finish us off with a free Nutella pizza, because, he says, he can’t believe we’re cycling so far, and it was such a pleasure to meet us.

There’s a train from Sittingbourne too, but Jenny isn’t on that one either. We skirt round Chatham, and find ourselves on the “England Coast Path”. It’s very definitely estuary here, rather than sea; but there’s a gentle little pleasure park that really feels like seaside. And we can definitely smell the sea.

Faversham, 55 miles from Brockwell Park, and another stop on the line. I’m preparing to use my parental authority (which actually ran out many years ago) and insist on a return to London; after all, she has to go to work tomorrow. There’s a train in 20 minutes; Jenny’s on it.

Coming out of Faversham, along Charles Dickens streets where the smartly polished cars look quite out of place, I’m beguiled by a street with a delicately corona-spired church at the end.

There’s a churchyard with gnarled trees overshadowing the stones, a peculiar circular half tower by the door, and a set of drums getting ready for tonight’s Pentecost Praise.

Dan, in a dog collar, interrupts his arrangements to welcome me, make me a cup of tea, and show me the misericords and the medieval pillar paintings. He digs out a selection of guide books, which I will read later, and we talk about incense and Pentecostal Praise, and the scariness of Corona spires that might collapse at any moment.

But I must ride the last dozen miles to Canterbury. A brief conversation with three young Italian cyclists, in matching colours, on the first day of a ride from London, where they’ve lived for ten years, to Rome. They’re faster than me up the hill, but after that I catch them, and we ride most of the way together. Until one of them falls behind, and after a couple of miles the others decide they should wait. I claim that a victory; but I wouldn’t dream of saying so out loud.