If the principal tower of Rochester Castle had suddenly walked from its foundation, and stationed itself opposite the coffee-room window, Mr Winkle’s surprise would have been as nothing compared with the profound astonishment with which he had heard this address.
(Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers)
For me the South East is a mixed place. On the one hand it seems so very, very familiar: I know where Dover is, that the Channel Tunnel is down there, that there are places called Rochester and Canterbury and these are all fine cities with cathedrals and plenty of history to go around. But I
didn’t know about St Augustine’s Abbey or Rochester Castle or even that Rochester had a castle. (I suppose, if you’d put a gun to my head and given me a fifty-fifty chance of guessing, I’d have plumped for a yes, but I could have told you nothing about that hypothetical structure.) I knew there were places along the coast called Margate and Ramsgate. But what about Westgate and Kingsgate and any other ‘gates’ I might’ve missed? They were new and unknown to me. I knew that Peter Cushing and Alan Davies once lived in Whitstable, but was utterly surprised when I studied a map of the county to discover that that illustrious town was actually in Kent. (I think I thought it was in Essex, though I’m not sure why.) In short, the South East is a part of the country that, I think it’s fair to say, many Brits think they know quite well, but it’s full of surprises. Is there really actually a place called Sandwich? And is there a Subway restaurant there? And if not, what sort of a missed marketing opportunity is that? What’s the deal with the town of Deal? Does Broadstairs actually have lots of stairs, and are they really any broader than your average steps?
So it was with a distinct determination to find the answers to some of these questions, and to shake off any inherent smugness I might possess about what I thought I knew about the South, that I set off on a bright Sunday morning from Westfield Drive in Loughborough. With my girlfriend Rachel at the wheel of her new car, I climbed into the passenger seat, ensured my lanky legs had plenty of room to fidget about in the front, and then got ready for five days Down South. It was going to be an illuminating journey.
I took two books with me. One was Does Anything Eat Wasps? which I took partly because I like the title and partly because it’s full of interesting questions—and even more interesting answers—about … well, virtually anything really. And it’s great holiday reading, as you can pick it up and put it down at your leisure, rather than waiting for a convenient lull in the plot. The other book I took was Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island, his account of his travels around Britain in the mid-1990s. It was from Bryson that I was taking my cue, and who has inspired this travel diary. Apologies, Bill, if you’re reading (not sure why you would be though). Blame him if you don’t like this diary. No, actually, blame me, but just don’t let me know you blame me.
Our first stopping-off place was actually Birchanger Services, near Stansted Airport, just south of Cambridge. It was conveniently placed more or less equidistant along our route between Loughborough and Rochester, making it an ideal place to stop off for a wee and a burger. Burger King tend to charge what they like at these places—I paid £45 for an eyeball-and-testicle-cake with a slice of cheese stuck in it, I think—but boy did I need it. After we were fed and watered, we continued our travels south and went over the bridge at the Dartford Crossing, paying the £1.50 toll.
Going over the Dartford Crossing is a strange experience. It almost feels as though you should be in another country, so alien is the sensation; though, of course, some people do this sort of journey every day, and to them it must be second nature. But it felt weird to us. The Queen Elizabeth II Bridge is vast, a towering structure of steel and concrete that puts one in mind of Sydney Harbour rather than Thurrock. The bridge was only opened in 1991, making it one of the more recent London bridges—though of course, technically, it’s outside of London. Mind you, the Bluewater Shopping Centre is near the bridge, which is eight years younger than the bridge, and is about the closest thing to a nearby landmark you’re going to get round here.
We arrived in Rochester early in the afternoon, and wasted no time in looking around the castle, which has its foundations in the twelfth century. John Forster records how Charles Dickens wanted to be buried in ‘the small graveyard under Rochester Castle wall’, but in the end his body ended up in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. Poets’ Corner is a strange thing. Chaucer, arguably the first great poet in English, was buried there not for his poetry but for his ambassadorial work to the king, Richard II; and Dickens was buried there, despite the fact that he didn’t write poetry.
Dickens’s work is suffused with Rochester. He lived nearby, in Higham, at the famous Gad’s Hill Place, but Rochester seems always to have played a part in his life. In his first book, The Pickwick Papers (1837), Rochester is the first place where Pickwick and his companions stop off on their picaresque adventures. In his last book, the unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), the city of Cloisterham serves as a fictional rendering of the city. But it was the real thing that we had come to see, and so we set off to set about seeing it.
The castle is rather high up, and after climbing some pretty steep stairs, we arrived at the top, overlooking most of the city of Rochester and taking in a pretty view of the cathedral, which stands just over the road. Looking over the side of the walls gave me a renewed sense of my acrophobia; but it was worth it. The stone keep is the tallest in the country; work on it began in 1127 when William de Corbeil, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was put in charge of the existing castle—which had been there in some form or other since the previous century. It was with the stone keep that the castle—as it now stands—really began life. Most of the keep remains to this day, and a pretty imposing sight it is too.
In 1215 the castle was besieged by King John and his supporters during the First Barons’ War, and he undermined the south-east tower of the castle by using pig-fat to set light to the mine. As a result, the south-east tower collapsed, and was rebuilt by Henry III a few years later with a slightly rounder design (this was because people had since realised that rounded edges helped to deflect arrows more successfully than square ones).
The castle has a cesspit which boasts an information board showing a drawing of a man squatting to defecate, which is all I need to make me fall in love with a place. Walking up and down all the winding spiral steps certainly tires you out, though, and I was more than a little in need of a cooling drink—it was a hot day, and castles seem to sap all my moisture from my body—when we left.
So we headed to a pub with the oldy-worldy name of Ye Arrow. The pub is situated perfectly between the castle and cathedral. Unfortunately, that is the only thing about it that is perfect. The view is perfect, of course, so long as you remember to look away from where you are, and over at the scenery. In a way, the place had been offending us since before we even stepped inside and ordered our drinks. The pub’s beer garden (if it can be called a garden, since not one inch of greenery was to be seen anywhere) had been belting out jazz music since our arrival at the castle, and the ensuing din had filled the entire area. It’s hardly the soundtrack you want when looking around a medieval castle. The castle may have been under siege from King John in 1215, but in 2010 it was under attack from four men with saxophones and drums and dodgy waistcoats.
But we were thirsty, and couldn’t see any other pubs within the vicinity. So in we went. We had an expensive drink served in the most disgusting glasses I’ve ever seen anywhere, having played Russian roulette with the chairs (over half of which appeared to be irreparably broken). Then, once we had found chairs that wouldn’t collapse underneath us, we sat down to enjoy our drinks. The pint of Old Speckled Hen that now passed my lips tasted distinctly watery, as if someone had plopped several ice cubes in there a number of hours ago and left them to melt in the ale. Whatever had happened, it wasn’t worth £4, which is what it cost, more or less. Still, the state our throats were in, we’d have probably supped a drink out of our sweaty socks if no pub had been there.
Then we headed over to the cathedral and had a good look round. The cathedral we see there today was largely the work of Gundulf, who, when he wasn’t hanging out with hobbits and picking fights with balrogs, was busy being Bishop of Rochester in the late eleventh century. Before he died he’d got as far as building the nave of the church, which is the oldest in England. The whole place is somewhat smaller than, say, Canterbury or York Minster, but it is nevertheless an impressive building. The monks’ dormitories are now public toilets, of which I can inform you that the gents are perfectly passable, if a bit cramped. God knows how the monks ever passed a decent night’s sleep there.
When we emerged from the cathedral we became aware of just how tiring all this castle- and cathedral-walking is. It’s not just physically tiring—walking up and down all those narrow stairwells does take its toll on the legs, though—but mentally draining. You’re bombarded with information—from little boards telling you what room in the castle this was, that this was where the servants made the beer or had a crap or got a beating from their lord for getting caught with their hand in the cow—and feel obliged to take as much of it in as you can, because you’ve paid for the experience and are aware that you won’t be here again for years, if at all. So it was that I headed back to the car with a head full of musty smells and vertiginous heights, and not much about the history of the places I’d been to. Bits of the day that I’d taken in somewhere and somehow later returned to me, as I lay in the Travelodge bed that night, but at the time it all rather fled from my mind.
Mind you, I swear I could almost hear my legs cry out in satisfaction as I climbed among the sheets. I didn’t dare tell them there’d be more walking tomorrow.
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