"Summer afternoon. Summer afternoon. To me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language" - Henry James
"Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind" - Henry James
When the American author Henry James found himself living in the historic East Sussex town of Rye between 1898 and 1916 his quotes, above, must have felt truer than ever. It's not that there's ever a time when summer afternoons, especially Saturday ones spent on the beach, aren't beautiful and it's not that there's ever a time when kindness is not a virtue.
But on an afternoon spent with wonderful friends, walking around the picturesque centre of Rye, along the Rother to Camber Sands and back, stopping off for beer and veggie burgers, and laughing heartily all day long (from the train journey out there to the train journey back) those words felt more correct than ever.
As did another of James' quotes. "It's time to start living the life you've imagined" felt, on our first TADS walk for 245 days - the longest hiatus in TADS history and for reasons nobody needs reminding of, equally apt. While we're all fully aware of the dangers of the delta/Indian variant we are also equally aware of the success of the vaccination programme and with most us having notched up at least half a century we're a fairly heavily vaccinated bunch.
Cripes! There was even some hugging going on (if not from me). More than anything it felt good to be going places, different places, again, to be able to see the corner of a friend's mouth turn up to create a smile that soon gave way to laughter, to sit looking out at golden sands and bright blue skies with a cold beer in one's hand. To see, ultimately, happiness on display.
I didn't know quite how much I needed it but it turns out - quite a lot. My day had started reasonably early. I'd taken the 63 bus to St Pancras, an impressive enough destination on its own - if a rather confusing one - it's easier to find The Body Shop than any actual platforms and if you're not careful you may find yourself on the Eurostar - and there, on the train, I met Adam, Teresa, and Shep.
The speedy Eurostar took us along the Thames (we looked out, at one point, to a bridge over the river Darent we'd passed by on the first stage of the London LOOP) and into Ashford International station where we'd meet with Pam, Kathy, and for first time on a TADS walk in two years, Rachael. Ashford International appears a fairly soulless destination but the Art Deco/streamline moderne architecture looked good in the bright sunlight and it wasn't long before we were on a far more scenic journey, through Appledore and Ham Street, to Rye itself.
A toasted cheese sandwich, a can of Coke, and a cup of tea at the station cafe where we met with new TADS Tony and Michelle fuelled us for the first leg of the day's walking and we'd not been walking long when Chris (now, officially, the thirtieth new recruit to the cult of TADS) joined us.
We passed some interesting looking buildings, including what appeared to be a drunk tank, and some interesting decor on the second floor of the Pipemaker's Arms pub, spotted some kind of vintage car, and turned left into the cobbled, postcard pretty, Mermaid Street.
Once Rye's main road, Mermaid Street is flanked on either side by quaint, quirky, houses - some with wacky signage. Perhaps its most infamous building is the Grade II listed Mermaid Inn. Established in the twelfth century, the current building dates from 1420 although includes some Tudor additions from two hundred years later. In the 1730s and 1740s the pub was frequented by the notorious Hawkhurst Gang of smugglers and, these days - it is said, some of them are still there.
In the form of ghosts. Most Haunted was once sent to investigate the inn's ghosts who are believed to reside in rooms 1, 10, 16, 17, and 19 of the inn (according to our friend Mike, these rooms are prohibitively expensive to book such is their popularity) and have, apparently, been sighted in the inn sitting in rocking chairs, wearing old fashioned clothes, and walking through bathroom walls.
Absolute textbook ghost behaviour. Ghosts are gonna have to up their game and find some new tricks if their relevance in the future is to be guaranteed. Before they became phantoms the Hawkhurst Gang would hang around in the inn drinking brandy and causing violent altercations. That, and their smuggling activities - tea, coffee, brandy, and rum being their preferred contraband, saw two gang members, Arthur Gray and Thomas Kingsmill - connections with the bread makers now owned by Associated British Foods are unproven, executed in 1748 and 1749.
Other visitors to the inn, over the centuries, have included Rupert Brooke, Elizabeth I, Dame Ellen Terry, and Lord Alfred Douglas (Oscar Wilde's young lover, Bosie). It's possible too that Conrad Aiken popped in for a pint from time to time. The Savannah, Georgia born poet (who I must admit I'd never heard of before) has a plaque nearby.
To be fair, Aiken is thrown into shade by the presence of his countryman Henry James in Rye. Born in New York in 1843, James spent his last two decades here (although died in London) although his most celebrated novels (The Turn of the Screw, The Bostonians, The Portrait of a Lady, and The American) were all written before his tenure here.
He lived in Lamb House, as did the less feted author E F Benson (Mapp and Lucia), and Lamb House has now been turned into a museum which, with less understandable urgency to walk and get to the beach, I may have been tempted to visit. Built by the wealthy wine merchant James Lamb in 1722, four years later when George I's ship washed ashore at Camber Sands, the monarch overnighted in Lamb House.
Moving on from Lamb House, we came to an even more delightful aspect on the Church Square of St Mary the Virgin and Rye Methodist Church. We took a diagonal path across the churchyard, admiring the architecture (and who doesn't love a flying buttress?) and speculating on headstones (a conversation that soon implied Victorian polyamorous activities) before reaching Rye Castle.
Or, to give it its proper name, the Ypres Tower. Built in the 13th and 14th centuries, it's been put into service as a prison, a courthouse, and even a morgue and now stands commandingly over the confluence of the Brede and Rother rivers (the Tillingham having flowed into the Brede elsewhere on the outskirts of Rye). Boasting a fine sandstone exterior and a portcullis, the Ypres Tower is a historical remnant of Rye's time as one of the Cinque Ports along with Hastings, Hythe, Dover, and Sandwich.
Rye actually replaced New Romney in this list when New Romney's harbour became silted up and the course of the Rother altered. It was that very Rother we were to soon cross and then follow south. A river that flows thirty-five miles from Rotherfield to the sea and one whose muddy banks, sometimes peppered with rusty craft - if not quite as dramatically as in Newhaven, make for an evocative image.
Cutting across Town Salts, we followed, roughly, the course of the river and though it was overcast it was still warm and the gentle breeze made it not far from ideal walking weather. The cute sheep and lambs, of course, only improved our day and we'd be revisiting them for an incident later in the afternoon. Don't worry - they remain unharmed.
Eventually we reached a zig and a zag in the path and we emptied out on to a golf course. The links nature of the golf course and the gentle breeze in the sunshine made me think of Scotland for some reason. There was a tramway path we should have followed but, rather quickly, we lost it and had to cross a couple of fairways which gave some of our more anxious walkers a sense of fear that they were breaking the rules.
I took the approach that the countryside and the beach long predated the golf course and demonstrated my right to roam although I certainly made sure I didn't walk across a fairway while play was in action. Avoiding bunkers, we soon picked up the tramway again and that, in time, led us to a gate which opened up on to the dunes of Camber. A short climb of which took us to our first sea views of the day and for me, if definitely not Tony, Michelle, and Chris who live in Hastings, my first sea view since Hamble-le-Rice on September 7th 2019.
SIX HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SEVEN DAYS without seeing the sea, or a beach, is, quite frankly, way too long. I love the sea. I love the beach. The Egyptian geese, mallards, and herons of the lake in Peckham Rye Park have been doing their level best to assuage my pain at not being able to visit beaches during the series of lockdowns but, when it comes to it, beach is best.
There's just something so majestic, awesome, and yet incredibly simple and honest about time spent on the beach - and Camber Sands, remarkably I'd never been before, is one of Britain's finest. A huge expanse of sand can cater for hundreds, thousands of people and there still be plenty of space. People sucked on beers, played cricket, built sandcastles, and kids buried their mums and dads in sand.
All the brilliant holidays of my youth returned to me as surely did the sadness of all the family holidays I will never have with my non-existent wife and non-existent kids. I felt a lot of emotions - but the overwhelming one was a sense of being in the moment. Of not wanting to be anywhere else but here, now, and with these people.
Some of us took beers from the Barefoot Beach Bar (who didn't seem to see the irony of having a sign informing patrons that shoes must be worn in the bar and whose only food offering was a surplus of Golden Wonder smoky bacon crisps - not popular with beach goers apparenly, I felt sorry for the crisps and bought a pack), some had chips and Coke, Chris popped into a shop to buy some cans of Kronenbourg, and Shep sucked on his vape like a salty old sea dog. When we were at school he once claimed that any future wife of his would need to be a "keen sailor" and it's fair to say he seemed quite at home with the "nautical theme" of this stretch of the walk.
Although when it was suggested we just stay on the beach, get drunk, and take a bus or a cab back to Rye he soon remembered that, for him, walking took priority over sailing. He doesn't always get what he wants (he didn't get the sambuca Teresa promised him regarding a bet about, of all people, Su Pollard for a start) but this time he was right and we resisted the temptations of more booze - if only temporarily.
I'd not seen Tony, Michelle, or Chris for over year, closer to two, so it was good to catch up with them and, as ever, it felt as if there wasn't quite enough time. They opted to take a different route back to Rye and though we planned to meet for a drink when we got back there, Tony and Michelle, unfortunately but understandably, had had to shoot off.
So seven of us headed back over the dunes, back across the golf course via the tramway, and back along the Rother. I was carrying an almost empty plastic pint pot for most of the walk because I couldn't find a bin to put it in. Far more excitement came when we spotted a sheep and two lambs who had escaped their field and were roaming free on the path.
"Cheeky chops" I shouted. Before Pam reminded me that lambs, on the whole, don't like to be reminded of chops. Despite the fact that they will, surely, end up being killed and eaten we did try to encourage them back into their field. It was quite a palaver and a rather enjoyable one. We managed to get two back in, and we nearly got a bollocking off a self-righteous couple who thought we were opening the gates to let the ovines OUT, but one lamb remained loose.
When we met with Chris later, it turned out that he, Tony, and Michelle were, by that point, not far behind us and had succeeded in rounding up and returning the final escapee. Back in Rye, we made a bee line for The Ypres Tower Inn. They were only allowing people in the garden and couldn't tell us if a table was available. To put it frankly, they were pretty rude to us - potential customers - and Rye's not short of pubs so we moved on. I wanted to celebrate achieving my two millionth step of 2021 (I'm aiming for four million by year's close - and am ahead of target) in a place where I felt welcome.
The Old Bell, Rye's oldest pub - a chalkboard outside proudly affirms, proved to be far more agreeable. All outside space was taken but we'd had a good fill of sunshine, I actually got tanned, and the friendly, if seriously overworked staff, found us a table indoors and we were soon ordering lagers, ales, gins, and wines. Chris wanted to drink his pint out of a glass with a handle for some reason and asked the young barmaid if she had jugs!
Luckily, I was the only one who seemed to notice this accidental double entendre and soon we were all enjoying a lovely chat (which, rather topically considering the title of this blog and walk, turned to all things Kevin Rowland related) and, as my search for a curry house in Rye with a spare table had proved fruitless, veggie burgers and pizzas. The food was pretty good actually and the company was even better.
My only sadness was that we couldn't stay longer but Rye is quite a schlep, not least for those who had come from Basingstoke and Bramley, so we bade Chris farewell (and he walked off into the distance in an impressively ripped vintage My Bloody Valentine t-shirt, Shep and myself scored some train booze, and we took the train from Rye to Ashford International and from there back to St Pancras where we all went out separate ways.
The proof of the day's success came, to me, in the happy faces and laughter on the train home and, even now, just writing about the day, I am beaming from ear to ear. For that I would like to thank Adam, Teresa, Shep, Pam, Kathy, Rachael, Tony, Michelle, and Chris (double thanks to Pam, Shep, Michelle, and Teresa whose photos have helped me to compile this blog). Next time, July, TADS are in Canvey Island but, before that, it looks like I will finally, variants and infections permitting, be able to restart my London by Foot walks (the last one was in December 2019) with a wander along the Wandle in thirteen days time. If it's even half as good as our ticket to Rye, it will be ace.
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