Away to my left are the lower slopes of the North Downs and the chalkpits that I used to play in as a child. To my right, there's the estate where my friend Tony lived, and further into the distance, I can make out the cement works that dot a stretch of the river Medway.
Now I'm going past my old house - double-fronted, brick-built, 1930s - with the steeply banked front garden in which our spaniel would station herself and survey proceedings below. An elm tree once stood here, and my brother and I had a tree house in it. But then along came Dutch elm disease. And so to the end of the village and the hill where in winter cars would get stuck in snow. It's a short climb, but a hard one, with overhanging trees and a left-hand bend halfway up, and at the top I am really puffing. But the Tour de France cyclists will hardly notice it.
The Tour de France? In Burham? The world's biggest spectator event sprinkling its stardust on the Kent village where I grew up? Can this really be happening? I guess the charm of the Tour coming to Britain is the incongruity of it all, as I discovered when I made a sentimental journey back some 40 years and cycled the route that the race will take on Sunday 8 July from London to Canterbury. Dartford, Gravesend, Rochester, Maidstone, Tonbridge, Tenterden. Just try saying them all in a French accent.
This is not the first time the Tour has visited Britain. It came here in 1974, and again in 1994, but 2007 will be different - partly because the hoo-ha around the Tour gets bigger every year, but mainly because, for the first time, London is in on the act - and determined to make the most of it. The city's coup in being invited to host the start of the Tour - the race prologue on Saturday 7 July will be a spectacular five-mile lap of the centre of the city - was a prelude to winning the 2012 Olympics. And for the capital's mayor, Ken Livingstone, it's an opportunity to do three things: to show off the city to the world; to throw a great big cycling-themed party; and to promote cycling as central to London's transport policy.
Of course not everybody will be happy. Roads in central London will be closed on a scale beyond even that of the_London Marathon, and the wrath of the anti-cycling lobby will presumably know no bounds. It's also unfortunate that the Tour's visit to these shores occurs in one of the many periods when it has been overshadowed by drugs. So no mention of Floyd Landis, the American who tested positive after winning last year's Tour and plunged the event into yet another credibility crisis.
It's clearly time for a fresh start. The Lance Armstrong era is fading in the memory - the last of his record-breaking seven wins was two years ago - and most people want to put the Landis episode behind them, though not Landis himself, who still insists he was innocent.
Perhaps the British can provide the breath of fresh air the Tour needs. The cycling scene here is regarded as honourable, and we can boast a couple of leading Tour entrants in Bradley Wiggins and David Millar, the latter at the forefront of cycling's anti-doping campaign, having been banned for two years for drug misdemeanours. Both have a good chance of winning the prologue, where victory will mean wearing the yellow jersey - and receiving huge attention - at least on the following day through Kent, and probably for some days after that when the Tour enters France. But don't expect either to win overall. In Landis's absence, one should perhaps look to Kazakhstan's Alexander Vinokourov, one of the few riders to have challenged Armstrong. Other names to consider are Spain's Alejandro Valverde, America's Levi Leipheimer and the German Andreas Kloden.
