Well enough, as long as you drive. There's no station in the village. The buses are more of a gesture than a service. Nearly three in ten people work from home and skip the whole problem. Cliffe Woods is connected to everywhere by car and to very little without one.
The nearest stations are Strood, Higham and Rochester, with Chatham and Gillingham further along, and none of them is in the village. Only about 3% of working residents commute by train. There are 7 bus stops, and about 1% of residents take the bus to work. Getting to a station means getting in a car first, which rather defeats the point of the train for most people.
Look at how people actually get to work and the argument makes itself. About 58% drive, and about 29% work from home. Walking accounts for about 4%, and cycling barely registers. Only about 5% of households have no car, while about 65% run more than one. The driveway here isn't a perk. It's infrastructure.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics, modelled for the area in 2019 rather than measured from any particular front door, put the nearest town centre about 15 minutes away by car, 23 by public transport and 26 by bike. On foot, it's about 63 minutes. Anyone who arrives in Cliffe Woods planning to walk into town for a coffee will make that trip once.
Broadband is better than the transport. Gigabit-capable connections reach about 63% of premises and ultrafast about 66%, while superfast is available everywhere, and no premises fall below the universal service minimum. For the three in ten who work from home, that matters more than any timetable. Mobile coverage is complete, with 4G or 5G from every operator across the area.
In practice, a typical commute starts on the drive. Rail commuters drive to a station, most others drive the whole way, and the home workers win on every measure.
The same 2019 modelling covers everyday trips. A GP is about 7 minutes by car, 7 on foot or 6 by public transport. A food store is about 7 minutes' walk or 7 by car, so the basics don't need a car. The hospital is a different story: about 22 minutes by car against 54 by public transport, which is a long ride if you're the one who's unwell. For employment, the model gives 56 minutes by car and 12 by public transport, a result no local driver will recognise, so treat it as an artefact of the modelling rather than advice. All the public transport figures date from 2019, and services may have been cut since, so trust the car and walking times more.
The live bus timetable is less forgiving than the model. The stops average about 27 scheduled departures each on a weekday, and fewer than one bus per stop in the peak hour, when commuters actually need one. All 6 stops with service data have some weekend service, so Saturday isn't a lockdown. But a stop you can't rely on at eight in the morning isn't a commuting option.
Road noise is the price of all that driving. Every postcode in the village sits near or above 65 decibels on the official noise mapping, the level at which road noise is treated as significant, and the loudest band recorded reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise doesn't register at all. How much of that you hear depends on the house, the road and the double glazing, so listen for yourself at a viewing, preferably during rush hour.
Cliffe Woods' connections are middling: strong broadband and short trips for the basics, set against a village with no station and buses that barely run at rush hour. Anyone with a car and a home office will be fine. Everyone else will struggle.