this is not your standard towpath - if it is a towpath at all. User10571 knows more about this, but my understanding is that this was a military canal, and the 'towpath' was for marching troops up and down.
Correct, it was intended as a shortcut for the movement of munitions from Deptford and Woolwich docks to Chatham docks, cutting out having to go round the Hoo peninsula - not so sure about troops being marched up and down the path....
The canal was never a commercial success, frequently silting up and leaving barges stranded, despite having a basin at either end.
One basin still remains in Gravesend. Evidence of the other disappeared a couple of years ago - there were some pretty wrecked lock-gates just near where we drop down to the Medway where the Sovietski sub lists to port - the area has since been extensively re-modelled .
The canal ran through what is now the railway tunnel - at 2.2 miles the second longest canal tunnel in the UK - and arrow-straight. Word is that if you stand at one end, you can see the light at the other. The ticket office of today's Higham railway station, was formerly the home of the canal's towing contractor.
Wildlife abounds along the canal today - if it's a warm night we'll be greeted by the cacophony of several thousand American bullfrogs, this being one of the few places in the UK that they thrive (they're a nuisance). If it's a damp night, the 450Kv pylons will buzz at us sonorously and cause our on-board computers to show that we reached a maximum speed of 68mph.We'll pass a mock-up of an urban environment, of building facades on false streets, where the armed section of the MET practice running in and out of doorways squeezing off shots at one another - the sound of machine gun fire is not an uncommon one during the daytime, from the adjacent shooting range. If we're lucky we may see a flame around 4 or 5 metres in height on the opposite bank of the canal, where methane from the sewage processing plant is burnt off. If the tide is high, we may just catch a glimpse of ocean-going container ships on their journey to and from Tilbury looking, to all intenets and purposes, surreal, as if they're marooned in the fields across Shoreham marshes. We'll also pass The Ship and Lobster, which is the first and last pub on the River Thames, as at that point it stops being a river and becomes an estuary. Don't pay too much attention to the surface in the picture below. That was taken in 2007 and it has since been resurfaced - going from apalling to, as it is now, rideable. If it's wet in the days preceding the ride or on the night, we're probably better off sticking to the tarmac.
A word of warning - as we leave the canal path and return to tarmac, beware of the first speed bump some 83 metres along the road. It's like a small brick wall which will liberate your pannier from its rack, your eyeballs from their sockets and your dentures from their gums.
