A Ride Through the Woods from Swanley

There's a good little café at Swanley station that seems to be open all day. I had a flask of coffee with me and a roll for lunch, but I was drawn to the Halloween iced doughnuts so I bought one and ate it when I stopped for coffee at the same church in Horton Kirby where I stopped for lunch last time. It was still closed, as was every other church I tried today.  

The sun came out while I was drinking my coffee, just like last time, then I headed off into the hills via a very nice valley road called Maplescombe. It rose gently towards the woods at the head of the valley with harvested fields on either side. There was very little traffic. Past Knatts Valley the woods began and the road climbed more steeply, topping out at about 200m before dropping steeply down towards Otford. 

I crossed the Darenth yet again, and went as far as the M25 before turning north towards Shoreham which was a well kept country village with quite a few shops and pubs. Then I went steeply downhill to Lullingstone country park where there's a cafe and shop and I ate my lunch. From there it was a VERY steep climb back out of the valley, over the M25 and then up and down at first before a long and smooth descent back to Swanley.

The map is here.

South of the Thames at Erith

It's taken me a while to get around to this third loop from the edge of London't Freedom Pass zone. In case you don't know about it, once a London resident is over a certain age they get a pass which allows them free off-peak travel all over London on most rail, underground and bus services. I made up some rules for myself. Each ride must start from a different station and at some point each loop must touch the previous loop. I thought I'd be drawing a large sunflower on the ground with my bike.

The Dartford crossing from the River Darent

The sluice at the mouth of the Darent

Well, it didn't take me long to break that rule. The River Thames meant that the nearest I could get to my previous loop was Erith, and planning a 40km loop from here which also got me out into the countryside wasn't easy, so I headed from Erith to Dartford using part of National Cycle Route 1 up the Darent valley to Dartford from where I did a loop into the country.

To the east of Erith there is a wilderness of industrial estates and potholed roads. After a while it's possible to join the Thames Path along the river, with the QE2 bridge visible ahead. At the point where the Darent flows into the Thames there's a sluice and the path turns south to follow the banks of the smaller river upstream towards Dartford. This cycle path has narrow barriers at both ends and in the past I've met touring cyclists cursing at having to unload their bikes to get through. In fact, at the Dartford end you have to do this twice in 100 metres.

There are a lot of these . . .

. . . and a lot of this kind of stuff

This wasn't an especially pleasant ride until I finally reached the southern end of Dartford's suburbs and the village of Darenth, where a side road called Roman Villa Road led directly into a landscape of fields and woods. Up here I saw a lapwing and a pair of buzzards and a whole lot of squirrels. This is also horse country, as in riding stables. In fact just about any openspace inside the M25 is very likely to see riding stables and fields full of horses.

The road to the countryside

London on the skyline

After a ride though woods and some very muddy roads I rode down a long hill with views back over London and ended up in the village of Horton Kirby where I ate lunch in brief sunshine in the churchyard (church closed) and almost thought I was in a village miles from London. A couple of crossings of the M25 put paid to that idea, and then I followed the River Darent back into Dartford, partly on footpaths that weren't exactly designed for Bromptons.

Horton Kirby

Here's the route on AllTrails.