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Day Five, From New Romney to Rye by bike, Rye to Hastings by train, 16.0 cycling miles

    We awoke, showered and had another English breakfast. I could get used to English breakfasts quickly if I had someone doing all the cooking and cleanup all the time and I had a way to burn the calories each day. 

    We had seen a sizable bike shop half way between our hotel and, "The Ship" and decided to stay in town long enough to see if I could find a replacement for my broken rack and Jeanette's cycle computer. We were waiting outside when the shop opened at nine. I found a very substantial aluminum rack branded, "FK". It had three legs per side and had three cross welded pieces with an open top for lots of fastening room for panniers and trunk.

    I took off the broken Blackburn rack, stripped it of bolts and mounting straps and gave it to the shop owner as garbage. When I finished with my bike, I took off the useless Nashbar wireless cycle computer on Jeanette's bike and replaced it with a Raleigh 7 function wired computer. 

    It was 10:30 before we were ready to begin our day's ride. We left New Romney and rode towards Lydd, again in the marshes. The character of the marsh changed and planted crops were replaced with grazing sheep. We were still on Sustrans Cycle Route #2 and there was a bike path running along side the road. We rode the path since it was in good shape and had wildflowers planted all along. In addition, the plants were shoulder high and blocked most of the wind coming at our faces. The sky was overcast but other than a few sprinkles we rode dry all the way through the marshes. When we reached Camber we were able to ride up on the sea wall again with the ocean to our left. 

    Just before leaving the coast, we spotted an old pill box with a machine gun slit built at the crest of the dunes. We had been told that most of the defensive emplacements had been ripped out after the war but this one remained.

    We had been warned by people in New Romney of the steep hill we would have to climb to enter Rye and were dreading the experience. As we cycled closer to the town, the bike trail left the roadside and took us through some sheep pastures, still no hill, We came back to the roadway and crossed the River Rother and passed the town fishing fleet, still no hill. We finally reached the foot of a hill at the end of the cycle path and at the start of the town. All we had to do is walk the bikes about thirty five feet up a fairly steep path and we were in town, so much for the dreaded hill.

    After cycling a while you learn that cyclist's and non-cyclist's perceptions of roads and hills are totally different. We've had people tell us that a road was dead flat but when we rode it we found that it went on forever with a five or six percent upgrade, something that wears on you after a couple of miles. In the case of Rye, we were worried about a hill that didn't exist as far as cycling is concerned. Yes, the town sits on a hill but the climb is a very short, steep walk for a bike. It took less than a minute!

    We loved Rye. It's medieval streets were filled with people and we walked or rode our bikes all over town. We visited the village church, St. Mary, the Virgin. An elderly lady was singing while her husband played the organ. She had just started, "I don't know how to love Him," from "Jesus Christ, Superstar" when we walked in. She did the song with deep emotion and it moved me so much that I had tears running down my face. When I had regained composure, I walked up to her and thanked her,

    We ended up spending over four hours in Rye and it was approaching five in the evening. We were booked into a B&B in Hastings but Hastings was still about 15 miles away by bike. We decided to take the train. We found the station and bought two one-way tickets at three pounds, sixty, each. We waited on the platform until the train arrived and when the doors opened, walked to the car with the bike sign on the door and were going to load our bikes. The conductor halted us. "Wait, I didn't say that you could load your bikes."

    My wife looked a little confused. She said, "But we have tickets and the person in the ticket booth knew we had bikes!" The conductor explained that when boarding trains with a bike you needed to get permission from the conductor BEFORE boarding, that the train was his responsibility and HE determined whether he should take a bike aboard. He then told us to come ahead and helped us load the bikes into his luggage car. Another trick we learned about getting around that we would put in our navigation skills book. In the future we always found the conductor and asked permission to board. We met a lot of co-operative, happy conductors and were never refused.

    The train ride to Hastings took a brief 21 minutes and it was only a mile's ride from the station to our lodging for the night, a B&B. We checked in with our host, Mrs. Ward, who told us about a beer festival going on in the park two blocks from the house. We thought we'd check it out. We walked over and found that the entry fee was nine pounds each. The festival was actually a soft rock concert with beer stands. We declined since we didn't want to pay that much to just get in and figured we'd probably be in bed long before the concert started.

    As we walked around the side of the park back towards our B&B we ran into about a dozen constables with a paddy wagon and two ambulances. We asked what all the preparations were all about. The festival was still pretty empty of people. They advised us that they expected about 25,000 people to attend later that night and that, if true to form, most of them would get totally drunk. 

    We decided we had made a good choice in declining to go to the concert. We found a Chinese restaurant and went in expecting  typical low budget decor, paper Chinese lanterns and a few drawings on the wall. Instead we found a beautifully decorated room with painted mirrors and deep red lacquered paneling, all new. The food was as impressive as the decor and we had a delicious dinner. (Unfortunately I didn't get either the name or the location of this restaurant to list it. Sorry!)

    While at dinner, another couple, hearing our accents, asked us where we were from. We told them, California, and that we were touring southern England on bikes. The gentleman, dressed in a suit and in his sixties, asked where we were going next and gave us a number of recommendations as to what to see and what to skip. Another younger couple sat just out of sight of the gentleman speaking and the younger man would flash thumbs up or down at each of the older man's recommendations. He finally joined into the conversation and laughingly referred to the original speaker as, "Lord Hastings." My wife was fighting hard to control herself so that she wouldn't burst out laughing at the antics of the two.

    Our plans had been to ride to Battle the next morning to see the site where William the Conqueror defeated King Harold in 1066 but we were told not to bother unless it was on the anniversary of the battle since there was not a lot to see. On the anniversary there are living history reenactments of the battle. Instead they recommended that we include Pevensey Castle ruins and Herstmonceux Castle and gardens as our next day's attractions. On their advice, we changed our plans.

    We walked back to the B&B and went up to our room where we could hear the music from the beer festival. The music was excellent, mostly 80's stuff with a lot of Eagles and Chicago music. We fell asleep with the window wide open and the bands playing.

Day 6 - Hastings to Lower Horsebridge - Day's mileage 33.3

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