For the other hills, let them be taken on trust; they are surely there, as also are those long rises, insensible to the sight of the toiling cyclist, but patent to his feeling as he wearily pushes round his unwilling pedals. For the motor-cyclist, with disabled engine, the Hastings Road is more tragical than anything Shakespeare ever staged.
The Hastings Road is, in short, the pedestrian’s road. You would not say so much of the Bath Road or the Exeter Road between Hounslow and Taplow, and Staines; nor even of the great North Road where it runs flat through Bedfordshire and Hunts. There the way recedes ever into the infinite, and there, if anywhere, the hurtling motorist is to be excused of his illegality. Here, however, on the way to Hastings, you linger by hillside and valley, for the road goes through the most beautiful parts of Sussex and of Kent, and marches through much diverting social and national history, to the scene of the crowning tragedy of Battle. I am not of those who find the story of the Battle of Hastings sheer dry-as-dust. It is to me a living story, though over eight hundred years old, and it will live for you who explore that stricken field, if so be you explore it away from the perfunctory guides who parrot the half-holiday public through the grounds of Battle Abbey.
But they are not necessarily the larger happenings that interest me in these pages. I can find it easily possible—nay, effortless—to turn from catastrophic struggles, and take an absorbing interest in some one’s back garden: that is the way to keep boredom at arm’s length. The mediæval knight who swore by his “halidom,” and the modern hop-picker who says “blimy!” (and stronger things than that) are both entertaining persons; would that Time were bridged, and they could be introduced to one another! What the knight and the “caitiff” would severally think of either would be well worth the hearing.
For mere topography: let us maintain an invincible curiosity as to whence this river comes or whither it goes; as to what lies on the other side of yonder hill, or at the end of some alluring byway. Let us find entertainment in the manner in which the city, town, or village next on the map is different from those we have already passed; and with interests so varied the way will be all too short.
CHARLES G. HARPER.
Petersham,
Surrey.
April, 1906.
THE ROAD TO HASTINGS
| MILES | |
| London Bridge— | |
| New Cross (New Cross Gate) | 3¼ |
| Loampit Hill | 4½ |
| (Cross Ravensbourne) | |
| Lewisham (St. Mary’s Church) | 5¾ |
| Rushey Green | 6½ |
| South End | 7¾ |
| (Cross Ravensbourne) | |
| Holloway | 8¾ |
| Bromley | 10 |
| Mason’s Hill | 10¾ |
| Bromley Common | 12½ |
| Lock’s Bottom | 13¼ |
| Farnborough | 14 |
| Green Street Green | 15¼ |
| Pratt’s Bottom | 16¾ |
| Halstead Station | 18¼ |
| Polhill | 19½ |
| Dunton Green | 21¼ |
| (Cross River Darent) | |
| Riverhead | 22 |
| Sevenoaks (Station: Tubb’s Hill) | 23 |
| Sevenoaks Town | 24 |
| River Hill | 25¼ |
| Hildenborough | 27¾ |
| Tonbridge | 30 |
| (Cross River Medway) | |
| Pembury Green | 35 |
| Kipping’s Cross | 36¼ |
| Lamberhurst | 40 |
| Stone Crouch | 43 |
| Flimwell | 44¾ |
| Hurst Green | 47¾ |
| Silver Hill | 48½ |
| Robertsbridge | 50¼ |
| (Cross River Rother) | |
| John’s Cross | 51¾ |
| Battle | 55½ |
| Starr’s Green | 56¾ |
| Baldslow | 59 |
| Ore | 61¾ |
| Hastings (Old Town) | 63½ |
| Into Hastings by “New London Road” | |
| Baldslow | 59 |
| Hollington | 59¾ |
| Silverhill | 60½ |
| Hastings (Albert Memorial) | 62¼ |