Pilgrims' Way

So you can literally go up to the beach in North Norfolk.

park on the beach there's a calf there and then come back again and it's a doable in a day um up it's not pilgrim's way it's something else oh

yeah pilgrim's way is us but is that um because obviously i haven't done that is that like off road up towards north norfolk on greenades and stuff

yeah

okay that's cool So you can make

yeah so I think if I had to lean one way or the other I would lean towards a Kent loop with Timberwood's kind of route we could also incorporate a bit of other laning to get there because I think you said it started at Hollingbourne didn't you Chas

yeah it did yeah

so we could ride out to like Bluebell Hill area and pick up the Pilgrim's Way from there and then like buzz along to Hollingbourne along the Pilgrim's Way is that off-road yeah it's like a mix it's like off-road and then like single track country lane off-road that's like on off on off

But the point to note is that often, and probably in the majority of cases, man in the early times took his shortcut across water, either by swimming or by taking advantage of floating material, and was much more concerned with the hard bank upon either side than with the depth of a stream.

If you take such a very old road as that of a primitive British trackway, whose two branches from Stonehenge and Winchester unite in what is called the Pilgrim's Way and make for the Straits of Dover, you find this trackway crossing the Mole, the Wey, and the Medway, as also the Darenth, at places where the obvious consideration has been a dry approach upon either side, and not the local shallowness of the stream.

We must remember in this connection that the word ford is used at plenty of places where the stream is too deep for crossing on foot.

It means simply a going.

It's based on walking...

I live near Canterbury, and so in 1971 I walked from Winchester to Canterbury on the Pilgrim's Way, which then became more or less lost inside the North Downs Way.

And I should just point out for listeners who don't know that that must be about 120 miles, something like that, 100 miles?

It's more than 100 miles, yeah.

He's right again.

It is 11th century monk's ale and cider house on the Pilgrim's Way in Kent.

I thought it was a nun's laundrette.

Yeah.

To learn more about how Rankin is supporting the future of British wine, Joining me on today's episode of the English Wine Diaries are Adrian and Galia Pike from Westwell Wines in Kent.

Their small family-run winery sits beneath the Pilgrim's Way and has about 70 acres under vine across two sites with plantings of Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, Chardonnay, Regent and their signature grape Ortega.

Before turning to English winemaking, Adrian and Gallia both had successful careers in music.

Adrian co-founded the influential independent record label Moshi Moshi, launching artists including Florence and the Machine and Hot Chip, before setting up the State 51 Conspiracy, a digital music agency championing independent labels and artists.