Sunshine

Woke up to sunshine! Finally beautiful weather all day. Well, almost as I passed through a brief rain shower near the end of the day -- there are no completely dry days in this country! -- but that was an exception.

Kent

Continuing the climbing streak of yesterday afternoon I passed through a town whuch goes by the hilarious name of Royal Tunbridge Wells where I had second breakfast in an overgrown corner of a park.

From there to Ashford the countryside is rather unexciting but it made for some quiet and relaxed riding. That's not counting the numerous hills though. It got flatter between Ashford and Canterbury where I largely followed the river Great Stour. Lots of oblivious dogwalkers and some muddy stretches off road spoiled the fun a bit.

Inside Canterbury I immediately experienced a feeling I hadn't had in a long time: Wait a minute ... those walls I just passed, that is Roman masonry! And it was in fact the ruins of Canterbury castle I just rolled past with the Roman town portal next to it. The castle site itself was not accessible though for safety reasons. Bummer.

The cathedral is only accessible for a fee so I opted out of that and continued on south. The legs were still fresh when I approached the campsite for the day near Elham and since I had some daytime left I decided to ride on and try and reach Dover. Which I did, and after some riding around looking for a place to stay I managed to find a cheap room in a guest house close to the port.

Thanks to the "unplanned overtime" this final day in the UK ended up the longest as well: 158 km with a grueling 2100 m of elevation. A worthy conclusion to my tour of Great Britain.

gallery