June 12 // Burgers & Bitters.
It could once be said with absolute conviction that this day marked the worst ride of my life to date, clocking in at just over 40 miles through a number of lovely rolling greenery and towns with names like Faversham (home to Shepherd Neame, otherwise known as “Britain’s Oldest Brewer”) and Brogdale but not Keynsham and certainly not Leysdown-on-Sea.
I admit here and for your eyes only that there are a few moments which find me absolutely knickered or gubbersmocked or whatever these people tend to call such a positive sensation, breezing through five-man waterside villages where my cockles were likely cockled like Copperhouse Lane and Riverside Country Park, places where sea moss swallows up old rusted-out sailboats and shag-haired dogs named Lucy or Horace trot vapidly alongside large spotted cows communicating in languages as-yet untranslated by modern science.
But the heat is also starting to hit, and after a few dozen miles and nary a single Coca-Cola, we agree to stop at the alluringly named village of Sittingbourne, which I single out for its similarity in name to the ambitiously wacky Richard Lester film, Bed-Sitting Room, a film that indeed has nothing in common with a town other than seven letters (S.I.T.T.I.N.G).
When asked for directions to this town, this Sittingbourne, it should be noted that a local ponytailed male human points us toward the Lidl and wishes us the best of luck in a town which has “a Cherokee shop, a couple kebabs, and shite else.”
One such “shite else” in the tiny town is The Red Lion, a picture-book pub which claims to be the oldest in the village, with purported visits from King Henry V, and later by the sequel Henry VIII. More importantly, it has Old Speckled Hen on sale—ales on sales!—and a little trailer in the rear courtyard from which a kindly, gap-toothed old lady serves up greasy bacon burgers from behind two lazy susans full of squeezable condiments like Burger Sauce and Sweet Chili Sauce and Mayonnaise Sauce and also probably Tomato Sauce.
We are duly observed by the hale and haggard pubgoers, having entered in our spandex biker uniforms, and I confess that I do feel self-conscious of the padded lump of material where my rinky-dink usually hides. Still, as a full-time bicyclist in the Kentish countryside, I have no other choice but to thrust my mons forward and order my burger without shame.
Two men sitting next to the aforementioned food truck decide to engage in conversation with both me and my spandex: one is young and one is, by comparison, old, and they tell me of their jolly holidays to the States while really wanting to know where I stand on the whole “President of the United States” situation. I make a fart into the mouth of the universe and that is how I feel.
The skinnier, younger one with the haircut that makes him look slightly like Gareth from the UK version of The Office is a Stella Artois man, resting it on the pear of his paunch, and soon joins us inside to chat more. He is a friendly, thoughtful fellow, and despite having run into his childhood buddy with a milky eye, he seems more interested in speaking with us, even if we’re tired and boring and sober and ignorant.
Steve tells us that Canterbury is heaven and Dover is garbage and everyone in the bar seems to agree with him; a lady wearing a California shirt who proudly claims to live in an RV on some river island even goes so far as to say that Dover is garbage specifically because of the foreigners who live there (when I remind her that we, too, are foreigners, she warmly reassures us she didn’t mean it like that, and says that these ones steal from yeh, like, you know the type).
And so once again make a fart, this time into her mouth, and before my Old Speckled Hen can evolve into a second Old Speckled Hen or a John Smith or a Guinness or—bog forbid—a gin, we shove offward toward the eastward.
Indeed, the approach to Canterbury is as shite as the mouth of an ignorant small-town local, with the last five miles crumbling into sharp gravel which test the very limits of my digestive system as well as that of my bike (it has diverticulitis). Mark’s bike is a carbon fiber bullet, light, quick, and with tires as up for any task as is its owner; my bike is as old, heavy, and inflexible as its owner, rattling about and threatening to break off into pieces and leave me huddled in some gaping hole of manure.
By the time we make it to this magical city, I calmly suggest to Mark that perhaps we try to avoid such roads in the future—for the sake of the children—and the ever-amenable man humors such a notion.
In case you weren’t aware, Canterbury is old. It’s cobblestones and grand estates and ancient pubs and might as well be prehistoric for all I know. We arrive at our hostel, itself a converted old manor, and we stink so horribly that the bottle-blonde maiden at the front desk immediately upgrades us to our own room. Ours is named after Hewlett Johnson, the so-called “Red Dean of Canterbury” who was known for his staunch support of Josef Stalin which earned him the Order of the Red Banner of Labour and the Stalin Peace Prize (I’ve yet to receive so much as a nomination). In the kitchen, a young family ignores us but for a young boy in a tucked-in polo shirt, let’s say he’s 10, who is mystified by our stench and approaches us, insisting that he shake our hand and introduce himself by name.
Did Mark shake his hand, I wonder? I just asked him. “Who, Roy?” Mark is offended that I’d even suggest he’d leave such a nubile little angel hanging (I wish to believe that Mark and Roy are still texting now, three weeks later).
It takes us quite a while to decide where to eat on this particular night, as, oddly enough, the restaurants serve food much later than do the pubs, but we end up with bangers and mash and fish-and-chips, respectively, and down several more real ales in the courtyard of a place called The Dolphin where everyone in attendance is at least 50 years younger than the age of Mark and me combined.
I tell Mark, as I tell everyone who orders fish-and-chips in my presence, that his fish-and-chips are likely of Jewish origin, even though this is a dubious claim at best, and he doesn’t really care one way or another and I nearly fall asleep in my mash and it’s obviously time for bed.
The morning of departure, we drop by Canterbury Cathedral for the second stamp in our respective pilgrim passports. Founded in 597 and rebuilt a buncha times thereafter, it was here that Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered in 1170, making it the destination of the pilgrimage that takes place Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (their journey, incidentally, also begins in Southwark, London, at a pub called the Tabard/Talbot Inn, which is now dead).
Today, however, most Francigena pilgrims make Canterbury Cathedral their point of departure, subscribing to an itinerary from the former Archishop of Canterbury, Sigeric the Serious.
Dating to 990 AD, this work survives as the oldest known written record of the Via Francigena, even though that dour boy actually started his own journey in Rome, meaning that most of us are doing the pilgrimage in reverse.
The cathedral, formerly known as Christ Church, is probably the 2nd or 3rd most Gothic building I’ve ever seen, and even this jaded Jew can’t help but admire its grandiosity or luxuriate in the cool air of its crypts, where the church keeps on display the names of every refugee to have died at sea trying to reach England in recent years.
We are so, so lucky to be able to do this stupid trip. Please remind me of this often.