Welcome to my One Gongoozler blog. It's kind of you to drop in. It's just you and me here. Let's start with Dartford. As you can see from the photograph of what meets you from the train station Dartford has been the subject of recent regeneration. Penetrate deeper and you find the regeneration project's apotheosis: a new shopping centre and one-way system. Apart from the sad fact that this is typical of community regeneration programmes - find the soul of a place and transplant it with a load of new glass and steel chain shops that close down the independent ones - it's strange that the word regeneration is used for it at all. It's not as if we 'generated' communities in the first place, they evolved. Come to think of it, when do we use the word regeneration at all (apart from when Doctor Who gets a new body)? I suppose it means 'remade', but does a host of new shops remake a town? Or does it just clone one? It's a leading question, and merely rhetorical, please don't send lots of letters (although you can leave a comment round here somehow). Anyway, the people of Dartford don't need regenerating - they were helpful pointing me in the right direction several times. In fact, I got to know most of them.
It wasn't long before I bumped into National Cycle Route No. 1, which is the Route 66 of the cycling world. It runs from Dover to John o'Groats, largely on traffic-free routes. If Jesus rode into Jerusalem today, it could well be on a bicycle following National Cycle Route No 1, praising Sustrans and puzzling scholars with this postmodern re-working of the prophecy. This thought was enough to squeeze a few lines of Blake's Jerusalem out of me as the route took me past a massive power relay station, the new Eurostar station at Ebsfleet, several deafening motorways and what I think was Bluewater Shopping Centre of no-hoodies notoriety. This last looks like a vast upside-down crash-landed space-station with no windows, all dumped in an old quarry. I was tempted to grab a shovel and start filling in the hole but I was going downhill and wasn't about to stop just for something like that. For the Garden of England, Kent has quite a lot of crap in it. Route 1 delivers in the end, though, for soon I was passing apple and pear orchards and fields of hops; farmers were making rolly-polly bales in the wheat fields and occasionaly there was the sweet smell of overripe plums and damsels growing wild by the road-side. I couldn't breathe in enough of it, but during a particularly long and care-free inhalation I was cruelly reminded of the roadkill basting in the sun on the hot tarmac. Live and learn. I meant damsons.
Where were we? Along the south bank of the Thames estuary, backed by the ceaseless heavy industry of the north bank, the hulks of old, abandoned boats ooze into the mud that steams in the sun and smells of seaweed. Once these boats were brand new, the loveslabour of craftsmen who knew how to cut and bend planks of wood to create the sweeping lines that only the eye could judge right for the sea. As these boats decay, revealing more of themselves in their rotting hulls and cross-spars, they take on a sort of twilight existence - half-way between made and unmade, waiting for the sea to take them finally. The sea gets everything in the end, you and me included. Perhaps they know this when they launch boats, or perhaps it's something best remembered later.
Unfortunately, by now I was getting lost more and more often. It didn't help that the cycle route was jumping about all over the place like a fibrillating heart, all in order to keep clear of the howling A2, nor that the signs were often facing the wrong way. This directional deception was deliberate, either the work of hoodies, hoodlums and oiks denied the freedom of the Bluewater Centre and forced to roam the streets or, I imagine, old ladies climbing on top of their shopping trolleys and switching the signs sound with a wobbly stick and a grin. It's possible that neither stereotype was responsible, I just don't know. I became particularly lost in Sittingbourne. I don't want to slander the place directly but a fellow cyclist who told me I was going the wrong way before I'd even got there said the town was 'a bit yucky'. Tell you what, book a holiday there and make your own mind up. Suffice it to say that when I eventually found out how to leave Sittingbourne all my burdens seemed to lift and a choir of angels sang alleluia. The people were friendly, though - I met most of them asking directions again. By now I'd met half the people of Kent, it was 6 o'clock and I still had 40 miles to go, so there was nothing else for it - A2 or bust. I turned onto this merciless dual carriageway to suffer cars, lorries and similar heavy chunks of metal screaming past me at 100 mph, maybe 200 mph, it was hard to tell. For 25 miles the ride was one long near-death experience for old numbbum here, but Raquel was faithful and got us both through the ordeal. And when I realised I still hadn't eaten the samosa from Dartford Waitrose, I felt moved to sing Jerusalem again. By the time I reached what seems to be Dover's only campsite it was dark. Although I was charged a whopping £15 to camp for the night and had to put up the tent in the dark, they sold me a fried egg sandwich, I washed off the salt and the sunburn and morale remained irrationally high (until the early morning alarm incident described above). I went to sleep dreaming of Esmerelda and the bells, which, my dear and patient reader, would be a great band if your name was Esmerelda and you wanted to make it big in pop music, but that's another day's project.
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