Take the no.
63 bus from Peckham Rye to Kings Cross. Board a train, with a changeover at
Ashford Int., then you’re in Rye.
An odd
town that slipped down the back of the sofa and is quite neatly tucked in to
Antiquity.
‘I don’t
see the sea.’
‘I don’t
think we cross the sea on the way down.’
I thought
it was a coastal town right up until the time we were standing in Rye. Feet firmly
on cobbled streets, looking through thin panes of glass at nick nacks from another
era – proud porcelain cats and those hairbrushes that have horse hairs for
bristles. All the houses are lopsided from age. Red roof tiles slacken and look
like they are slowly slipping downhill, pulling the plaster and the weight of
the houses with them, sinking with decrepitude. But the wooden beams sprout
upwards, holding up the entire town, lifting masses up to St. Mary’s church spire.
Which has ‘one of the oldest working church tower clocks in the country’, says
the free pamphlet. Dating to ‘1561-2’ it tells me, with the sort of accuracy
only someone with smalltown pride would insist on hammering in. I mean, it was
like 500 years ago. But this clock face has emblazoned on it an inscription,
which I stare at morbidly when the bell sounds a delicate chime:
For our time is a very shadow that
passeth away
-
Wisdom
That makes
me think accuracy may be all we have. Quite timely too, as we arrive three
hours early to check-in at the Tea House, next to the Mint. It is lovely, though
the guesthouse owner surprised by our early arrival wants us to get out of her
hair, so that she can tidy the rooms in peace (completely fair, but we only
want to leave our bags here, so that we can walk on down to the sea – there is
a sea nearby). He tells her full of gestures and charm (because he’s better at it
than me) and Brenda who is accommodating and glittery, in persona, grabs her
keys to the Mercedes and offers to drive us down. What a winner.
On the way
to her parked car, she tells us a strange story of a cantorial monk who had
done the deed with a local girl in the Medieval times.
‘He was
holed up in here – Right here.’
Pointing
to an embankment of green presided over by a weeping willow.
‘They
buried him alive.’
I expected
her to tell us tales of singing ghosts, but none followed.
Camber
Sands. That’s where the sea is at! The Camber is a huge stretch of sand with
wide open seas all round, rolling waves. Surfers and dogs. The weather was unusually
warm so I took my socks off and got my feet sandy, then wet. Strolling. You can
see Rye rise up in the distance. It sits on a ridge, which according to
Wikipedia is the reason for the town’s name. I was almost right too, about it
being a coastal town, because in Medieval days the sea reached Rye. It was a
port town – one of the Cinque Ports – renowned for smuggling. But in the proceeding
centuries landowners who wanted to expand their farmlands, reclaimed the marshland
from the ocean. They stemmed the flow of the River Rother so that it became the
only waterway that let ships sails right up to Rye, until the seascape changed
to what it is today. Rye is about 2 miles from the sea when it used to be on
top of it. I guess that clock face has seen a lot of change.
Cormorants
and sturdy sheep. Tumbling border collies; funny scruffy looking dogs out on
walks with their funny scruffy looking owners. It takes an hour or so to walk
back to Rye. We eat sweet vinegary mussels from styrofoam cups, which reminds
me in Normandy there was a dish on the menu called fruits de mer. We pass under Land’s Gate built in the 14th
Century, again Medieval, looking immoveable. Rye is really pedalling the School for Wizards & Witches and I’m starting to see a pattern. Anything that is so old
that it could be deemed mystical is on the menu at Rye. The Mermaids Inn is
very famous for being a smuggler’s haunt centuries ago. I eat two day’s running
at Simon The Pie Man, where the older waitresses wear white pinafore aprons
over their sombre black skirts and have their hair tied back in exquisite buns.
I enter and buy books from the Tiny Book Store, where the bookshop owner gives
me a knowing speech about his collection –
‘Like I
say. Books come to me. I don’t go looking for them… We got a load of Vintage
Penguins in. A whole load but it’s hard to find a First Edition… Can’t for the
life of me get hold of any Seamus Heaney, not these days.’
I like
Rye. I like how peculiar it is, or is trying to be, but does that matter? There’s a rusted blade of a short-sword
sticking out of one of the beams in our guesthouse. No one attests to knowing what it’s doing there. Gold. I’m a
tourist and I love it.
On the
final day we go to Rye Castle and Museum. £4 entry. Bargain. A well kept
Medieval castle later used as a jail. Also the first prison in
Britain to have a women’s tower, how thoughtful. I particularly liked the
exhibition cabinet on Coopers: craftsmen who made barrels. I learnt a
lot of barrel facts, such as, ‘All barrels are casks but not all casks are
barrels’. Did you know that a barrel is a measurement? And a Hogshead is one up
from a Barrel? Me neither.
On the
walk down steep cobbled streets to the station I’m inordinately glad I found
Rye. For no good reason, I feel like I’ve made an important pilgrimage from my
hometown featuring Rye in its title. (Do New Yorkers feel the same when they visit
York?) As we leave, hand in hand, I am met by the exuberant copy of the tourist
information board…
Welcome to Historic Rye
Perched on a hill, the medieval town
of Rye is the sort of place you thought existed only in your imagination.
