From Peckham Rye to Rye

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 14^th 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.