BUY ME LOVE

Laura Laker rides the Cantii Way, Cycling UK's new mixed terrain loop of Kent

There's no doubt, it's a spooky place. It's long after sunset on a path on the sea wall, between ocean and marshland, and beyond the glow of our front lights there's someone down on the beach with a head torch. Probably hiding a body, I instantly think. He stands like a weird statue, the light from his head motionless as we pass. To make matters more bizarre, I think I hear intermittent laughter, a soft "chaa haa", and I've no idea where it's coming from. My ears are mostly filled with the sound of moving air and it's otherwise a time of quiet contemplation, of digestion of the massive fish and chip dinner we've just eaten in Herne Bay, and I'm concentrating on following the rider in front, and avoiding accidentally riding off the sea wall into oblivion.

 

As the light fades, the smells of the marshes and the sea come into relief. The seven of us have just pedalled downhill across a magical field, toward the silhouetted Reculver Towers, with a crescent moon and the stars overhead, and the odd dog walker passing by.

We're looking for Hawk Place campsite, on a wedge of land between the sea and the high-speed rail line. We've ridden 38 miles of the new Cantii Way from Wye in Kent on day one of our 145-mile, four-day cycle adventure circling the country of the Iron Age Cantii tribe, who once lived here. It's the second in a trio of routes in the south of England that Cycling UK has developed with the EU regional development fund, of which Cornwall's West Kernow Way, launched in 2021, was the first.

I turn my ear to cut out the wind - and realise what I'm hearing. Frogs, gently calling in the night. A few birds, alarmed by our lights, fly up in the darkness.