We were flying along the crest of a chalk cliff under a blue sky and I was thinking of that Louis MacNeice line about grasping the heat of the summer in the handlebars. It was the first warm weekend of the year and the skylarks were already singing above ancient downland. I’d been wanting to ride the Kent coast for decades. On this island of evocative promontories there are many that merit a visit by bicycle. John o’ Groats and Land’s End are the boxoffice capes. The quartet of Corrachadh Mòr (most western), Lowestoft Ness (most eastern), Dunnet Head (northern) and the Lizard (southern) attract a more select species of extremist. Cape Wrath easily wears the crown for being most remote extremity: a ride to the north-western tip of mainland Britain begins by lowering your bike into a small boat on the Kyle of Durness. I took a tent on that one. At the opposite, south-eastern tip of Britain, Kent can now claim to have the Freewheeling Cape.

The path to peaceful cycling began with a twinkle of genius in 1984 when a community movement called Sustrans opened a bike route along a disused railway line linking the cities of Bristol and Bath . It was a magnificent success and in 1995 Sustrans founded the National Cycle Network, which has grown to 14,000 miles of routes. More than one third of them are “traffic free”, Sustrans shorthand for routes devoted to cycling and walking, with occasional sections of quiet roads.

To mark the 20th anniversary of the Network, Sustrans has recently published a guide to 150 traffic-free day rides. Three of them are in Kent. On a pair of hire bikes, and with most of the luggage in my son Kit’s panniers, we pushed off from Canterbury on a quest for tranquillity.

The Crab and Winkle Way lifted us quietly out of the city to the grassy heights of the university campus and a countryside path that I can only describe as blissful. I kept wanting to stop. First there was the tiny, flint-knapped church of St Cosmus and St Damian. It’s one of only four such dedications in the country. In the third century, the twin brothers lived in what is now coastal Turkey where they were celebrated among the sick for running a free-at-point-of-delivery transplant service. A 15th-century painting shows the twins attaching the leg of a black African to the body of a white verger. Strangely, the next place on the Crab and Winkle was Cutballs Farm.



Beach huts in Whitstable (Photo: AP/Fotolia)

One of the many maps of Kent in Kit’s sagging pannier bags was the Ordnance Survey, inch-to-mile “New Popular Edition” of 1936. It’s a picture of lost landscapes and it shows a black, pecked line snaking through field and orchard between Canterbury and Whitstable. The C&W Railway is celebrated among piston-heads for being the first regular steam passenger line in the world. The 5.75-mile line was designed by George Stephenson and opened 15 years after the Battle of Waterloo, when steam locomotives looked like wood-burning stoves on cartwheels and had less horsepower than a modern ride-on mower. Invicta, the locomotive on this particular line, couldn’t get up the gradient from Whitstable, so carriages had to be hauled by a cable attached to a stationary steam engine drawing water from an adjacent “winding pond”. Today, Invicta lives in Canterbury Heritage Museum and the pond is a reflective, woodland oasis beside the cycle path, framed by a Sustrans picnic area. It’s a nice place for a lie-down.

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The line Invicta couldn’t manage is now a downhill swoop by bicycle to the outskirts of Whitstable, where the Crab and Winkle engages in a labyrinthine, road-avoidance wriggle by descending a flight of steps to a small tunnel that opens to a concrete path sneaking behind back gardens. It’s a bit like the Yellow Brick Road in The Wizard of Oz, with Whitstable Harbour as the Emerald City. These days, Whitstable’s fisherman’s huts (from £75 a night) are more likely to have a Porsche outside than crab pots, and yet this is still a working harbour, with heaps of aggregate and slag piled on the quay.

That was it for the Crab and Winkle. From Whitstable, we switched to the Oyster Bay Trail, which follows the concrete promenade beside the sea. Bright beach huts gazed across the rippled blue and the westerly wind was kind enough to push us effortlessly towards the beckoning villas of Herne Bay. The thing about these traffic-free routes is that you need to roll along with an open mind because it’s in their navigational DNA to take you off the beaten track and present you with unexpected stories.

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The trail to Reculver ends with a freewheeling whoop down to a visitor centre selling, among other things, a booklet telling the tale of Lady Stardust II, a B17G Flying Fortress that had been shot up over Germany and then lurched and banged back to Britain with three engines out and a smashed nose. One of the crew was dead and several were wounded. And yet 2nd Lt Milan Marecek from Chicago managed to put the crippled plane down on the water off Herne Bay without it breaking up. The surviving crew took to the aircraft’s dinghies and were picked up by a dory from one of the sea-forts guarding the Thames Estuary.



Reculver (Photo: AP/Fotolia)

In clear weather, you can see the forts from Reculver. It was at Reculver, too, that the aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis perfected the bouncing bomb that would be used in the Dam Busters raid. In May 1943, 617 Squadron trained for their mission by skipping concrete-filled practice bombs across the sea and up Reculver’s beach. These days, it would be hard to find a more peaceful spot. The grass around Reculver’s ruined church is perfect for picnics and on the morning we were there, the only skyward motion came from a couple of small, languid clouds sailing for open sea.

From Reculver, we were on the Viking Coastal Trail, which secured its traffic-free status by following the top of the sea wall for a couple of miles, with the beach on one side and flat-as-fenland fields on the other. It’s rare in this motor-mad age for a cyclist to feel privileged but the effect of these routes is to give the humble crank-spinner a sense of belonging.



Margate (Photo: AP/Fotolia)

We reached Margate in time for some art and ale. David Chipperfield, architect of the Turner Contemporary gallery, shaped the building to provide an even diffusion of natural light. Beyond sea-filled windows, the coast winds blow and yet within, all is calm. The current show, Self, looks at self-portraiture, which only adds to the intensity.

It’s generally taken that Margate’s recovery began with the opening of the Turner, but Julian Newick turned the taps of his alehouse one year earlier. The building probably dates back to the 1600s and one floor is held up by a ship’s mast. Before it became the Lifeboat Ale and Cider House in 2010, it was a school-uniform shop. With tweed-and-spectacle scholarship, Julian is introducing a new generation to meads, ales and ciders. Goacher’s Fine Light Ale worked for me. Later, we ate at The Sands on the seafront. The food was as sensational as the view. While peachy reflections played on the tideline, Kit tucked into terrine of rabbit, octopus and langoustine while I kicked off with cauliflower panna cotta, chestnuts and Kentish blue. It was one of those meals – and evenings – you don’t want to end.

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Day Two dawned bright and mildly Goachered. Route 15 led us along a deserted clifftop promenade towards The Cape. The path to North Foreland isn’t exactly Cape Wrath (there’s the Margate wastewater pumping station, for a start) but it’s empty of traffic and it’s a momentous turning point separating the North Sea from the English Channel. As soon as we turn the corner, we’re on a new coast: Broadstairs is so ridiculously picturesque that it wouldn’t look out of place in south Devon. When Dickens used to stay here, the public balls were but a memory and Broadstairs had lost its reputation as a gay place for “tip-top Nobbs”. But it worked for him and he managed to write David Copperfield in a house on Fort Road. And today, Dickens works for Broadstairs: there’s a Dickens museum, a David Copperfield Harvester, a café called the Old Curiosity Shop and for £135 you can have a night on Fort Road in Little Dorrit’s Classic Double (with en-suite shower).



Herne Bay (Photo: AP/Fotolia)

Really, I liked Ramsgate more, but that’s mainly because we bumped into a retired Metropolitan Police officer called John Ouzman. This one-time cross-Channel port has been transformed by the restoration of a row of Victorian waterfront arches that have been colonised by all kinds of businesses, among them John’s emporium of classic automobilia. Stocked with such gems as a Vespa ice-cream trike, a U-boat compass housing (£1,650), Rock Ola jukeboxes and an exceedingly rare BSA Gold SR 500 motorcycle, it’s more museum than shop. Parked with a For Sale sign in the sun outside was a 1965 750cc Russian motorcycle and sidecar in olive green, complete with a light machine gun, rocket launcher, night vision goggles “and additional tools”. It also has a full MoT.

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Powered by pedals, we let Route 15 lead us from Ramsgate to a delightful path along the fenny edge of Pegwell Bay. Saxons landed here (a replica ship marks the spot), as did St Augustine. But the really big landing happened much earlier, at a site we reached by taking Route 1 out of Sandwich. Richborough is the most underrated Roman site in Britain. Hadrian’s Wall, Bath, Verulamium, Cirencester and the Museum of London are besieged each summer, but Roman Rutupiae, where it all started, gets bypassed. This was the beachhead where the legions splashed ashore and changed the face of Britain for all time. The ditches they dug to prevent counter-attack are still there, and so is the base of the monumental arch that was so high it could be seen from far out to sea. Framing the invasion beach is the enormous stone fort built when it all began to go wrong and Rome had to protect her British province from acquisitive Saxons.



The road out of Ramsgate (Photo: AP/Fotolia)

By the time we pulled ourselves away and headed on along Route 1, it was clear that this modest 54-mile journey could be stretched out over a week at least. There’s just so much to look at. The (almost) traffic-free toll road across the coastal levels to Deal got us into town with enough time to have a quick look at Henry VIII’s artillery fort on the waterfront before racing the dusk up a tranquil, downland climb behind the White Cliffs of Dover.

My Thirties map recorded Otty Bottom, Hog’s Bush and a prehistoric tumulus. Like so many of the paths we’d been on, this one was traffic-free, and just for a moment we really were back in an age when tranquillity was normal.

Sustrans’ Traffic-Free Cycle Rides: 150 Great Days Out by Wendy Johnson was published last week. It costs £15.99 and can be ordered from sustrans.org.uk/shop.

Kent essentials

In Canterbury, Nicholas and Kit Crane stayed at 7 Longport b&b (01227 455367; 7longport.co.uk). Double rooms from £90 a night with breakfast, singles from £60. You need to book well ahead. In Margate they stayed at Sands Hotel (01843 228228; sandshotelmargate.co.uk). Double room with breakfast from £120 a night. Set lunch from £15 for two courses, dinner from about £33.

The Lifeboat Ale and Cider House, Margate (01843 447118; thelifeboat-margate.com).

Kent Cycle Hire has stations at Canterbury, Whitstable and Herne Bay (01227 388058; kentcyclehire.com). Prices start at £20 per day for an adult bike.