DARTFORD TO ROCHESTER, AYLESFORD, AND BOROUGH GREEN
There is an excellent route from Dartford to Rochester, avoiding the Dover road, known to comparatively few cyclists other than local—a road that, instead of passing through places so busy and populous as Northfleet and Gravesend, is rural through the whole of its course, from Dartford Brent to where it joins the better-known way at the top of Strood Hill. The Dover road between these two points is, as just remarked, the “better-known” route, but it is by no means the oldest. That distinction can be claimed most emphatically by this, for it follows the course of that old Roman military way, the Watling Street, and was a portion of the route along which went the pilgrims to the shrine of Thomas à Becket at Canterbury.
STONE.
Coming uphill from where Dartford is seated in its deep hollow beside the Darenth, a high tableland is reached, and with it a parting of the ways. Our own route is plain to see—straight ahead—and is made additionally clear by the aid of a specially informative sign-post. For those, however, who would take the opportunity, when so near, of seeing one of the most interesting parish churches in the country, it may be hinted that two miles down the Dover road—the left-hand turning—is Stone. Let the stranger be careful when inquiring for Stone, and ask specifically for the church. Otherwise the gaping rustic is apt to smile significantly, Stone being famed for its lunatic asylums.
The interior of the Early English church at Stone is a Westminster Abbey in little, designed probably by the same architect, the stones from the same quarries, and carved by the same masons. It stands on a hilltop overlooking the busy estuary of the Thames, near Greenhithe, and its immediate neighbourhood is made sordid with cement works and chalk pits. A huge factory chimney, some six times the height of church and tower, immediately adjoins the churchyard. When in the fulness of time it falls, there will probably be little left of the church, even as a picturesque ruin.