Thursday, July 26, 2001

Walk 26 -- Deal Pier to Sandwich Bay

Ages: Colin was 59 years and 79 days. Rosemary was 56 years and 221 days.
Weather: Too b***** hot again!
Location: Deal Pier to the Royal St George’s Golf Links at Sandwich.
Distance: 4 miles.
Total distance: 156½ miles.
Terrain: Concrete and tarmacked esplanade, then a shingle track which was very firmly packed, finally a smart tarmacked road.
Tide: In.
Rivers to cross: None.
Ferries: None.
Piers: None.
Kissing gates: No.24 at the Sandwich Estate.
Pubs: ‘The Alma’ in Deal where we enjoyed Whistling Will, and Marie Celeste which was delicious!
‘English Heritage’ properties: None.
Ferris wheels: None.
Diversions: None.
How we got there and back: We packed up our camp in Walmer and drove to Sandwich where we found a shady parking spot near the station. We caught a train to Deal, visited the ‘real ale’ pub, then walked to the pier.
At the end, we walked across the golf links into Sandwich, had two very welcome cups of tea from our flasks in the car, then drove back home to Bognor.

Colin had done his research a little better today, and when we got off the train in Deal he led us directly to the pub he was trying to find yesterday. The beer was much better there, especially the one called ‘Marie Celeste’ which we awarded top marks! So we started today’s walk in a better mood altogether despite the intense heat. It is the hottest day yet with temperatures up to 30°C!
We sat in a seafront shelter in the shade to eat our lunch which we had bought in the town, then we continued northwards from the pier. After about a mile, the houses ran out and so did the prom. This was the site of the third of Henry VIII’s castles, Sandown Castle.
Unfortunately, this one was allowed to fall into ruin long before the days when anyone thought it important to preserve such things, so there is hardly anything left of it. Apparently, it was the same size and shape as Walmer Castle, but in the 1920s the few remains were encased in concrete as part of the sea defences there. All you can see is a sort of circular shape with a few steps leading up to it at the end of the esplanade.
Continuing north we had a choice, either to walk on the top of the shingle bank with a slight breeze from the sea or walk down behind the bank on nice smooth grass with no breeze and the baking sun pouring down. On such a hot day there was no contest—the breeze, such as it was, won! It turned out that the shingle was packed down hard on the top, so it wasn’t too bad and it improved as we walked on. We saw loads of butterflies again, and plovers and gulls on the beach. Colin even got his camera out at one point, but that was the signal for them all to fly away! We walked along next to a golf course, and there were lots of people playing despite the heat—well, I suppose we were out walking despite the heat! (You know what they say about mad dogs and Englishmen…!)
We reached a group of houses called ‘The Sandwich Bay Estate’ although there is no bay there, just a continuing straight coastline. They were sumptuous buildings indeed! They looked far too big and orderly to be private residences, and we opined that they may be part of a nursing home or a very exclusive club. With their manicured lawns and regulated curtains, it all looked too institutionalised to me. Further on there was a huge beamed cottage which was for sale, so perhaps they are private but with all sorts of restrictions which would drive me mad! Anyway, we were pleased to walk on their nice smooth road past them.
We stayed on the road to partially pass another golf course, this is obviously a very exclusive area. Lots of people had driven down there and were enjoying the beach. We made use of the public toilets, and then struck off across the golf course to Sandwich.

That ended Walk no.26, we shall pick up Walk no.27 next time at the southerly set of public toilets on the shore side of Royal St George’s Golf Links. We walked back across the golf course (there is a public footpath clearly marked, but look out for stray golf balls!) to our car which was parked in the shade (thankfully) in Sandwich. There we treated ourselves to a couple of hot cups of tea—still the most refreshing drink even in those temperatures. Then we drove home to Bognor, a deadly journey along motorways.

Wednesday, July 25, 2001

Walk 25 -- Walmer Castle to Deal Pier

Ages: Colin was 59 years and 78 days. Rosemary was 56 years and 220 days.
Weather: A fraction cooler than yesterday with a whisper of cloud cover.
Location: Walmer Castle to Deal Pier.
Distance: 2 miles.
Total distance: 152½ miles.
Terrain: Concrete and tarmacked esplanade.
Tide: In.
Rivers to cross: None.
Ferries: None.
Piers: No.9 at Deal, another concrete one!
Kissing gates: None.
Pubs: ‘The Ship’ in Deal where Kentish Pride was nothing to be proud of and Noble Ox tasted burnt!
‘English Heritage’ properties: No.6 at Walmer castle and no.7 at Deal Castle.
Ferris wheels: None.
Diversions: None.
How we got there and back: We camped the night before in Walmer. In the morning we walked to Walmer Castle.
At the end, we walked back to the campsite from Deal.There was a cloud cover today which made walking altogether a more pleasant experience. We bought our lunch in the village of Walmer before walking the mile back to the seashore to start our walk. A few yards along the road I realised that a corn was beginning to be troublesome on my toe, so we turned back to the village to buy some of those cushioned rings at the chemist. Further on we found a bench to sit on, so I removed my boot and attached one of them – bliss! No more trouble from that quarter all day.

It has occurred to me that I have not mentioned my arthritic toe which featured very prominently in our first few walks. Well, I have not had a ‘miracle cure’ or anything, but I no longer have any bother with it because of two things. One is a painkilling gel called ‘Powergel’ which my doctor gave me on prescription. I apply it always just before putting my boots on and then carry the tube with me, though very seldom have I had to reapply it before the end of a walk. It is very effective. The other thing is that last January I bought some new walking boots! They cost an arm and a leg, but By Golly! weren’t they worth it? They are unbelievably comfortable, and rock the foot forward as I walk so that much less effort has to go into the step and I don’t actually have to bend the offending toe joint. Now I can walk for mile upon mile without so much as a twinge, in fact for walks of less than five miles I usually don’t even bother with the ‘Powergel’. They have transformed my walking–isn’t modern technology wonderful?
While we were walking along the footpath next to Walmer Castle to get back to the beach, we had a wonderful experience. The footpath is rather dark with overhanging trees, and Colin suddenly grabbed my arm which I always know means he has seen or heard something. There was a scuffling in the leaves by our feet and out popped a shrew! It was tiny, a very dark grey with a pointed nose. It sniffled around in and out of the leaves for ages, then a second one appeared! They didn’t seem to be aware of our presence at all, and we both managed to take several photos of them. It was magical!
Then a woman came along with her child and a dog, so that was the end of that.

Now for the walk –
We continued along the combined footpath/cycle track from the point where we left it yesterday, but within a few yards we came to the car park for Walmer Castle which is opposite the entrance, so we turned in. We took the tape-tour which always brings it so much more to life.
Walmer Castle is one of three fortifications built along this bit of coast by Henry VIII in the early 16th Century. He had upset the Pope and the Spaniards by breaking with Rome in order to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. He closed the numerous monasteries which littered the country at the time, confiscated their wealth and allowed his mobs to ransack and vandalise the buildings. In fact, he used the stone from several local monasteries to build these three castles. Walmer was much altered in later years to form the residence of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. The Duke of Wellington was one, in fact he died here. The present Lord Warden is the Queen Mother who, although she is almost a hundred and one years old, stayed here last week as part of her duties of the office!
It was an interesting tour, not so much of a fort as of a 19th Century residence. The gardens are beautiful. We went out to look at the lily pond which is very pretty, and saw numerous dragonflies and damselflies buzzing around—my favourite insects. We then walked up through the woods a little, and decided to sit on a bench by the croquet lawn to eat our lunch. As we approached the benches, we read the inscriptions on them—they were presented to the Queen Mother on her 100th birthday last August to mark the Millennium. Oh well, I’m sure she won’t mind if we sit down, I don’t think she uses them very often! Thank you, Queen Mum!
We then went back to the coast and continued towards Deal. Colin began to get very tetchy and tried to hurry me on, and it was all because he wanted to get to his chosen ‘real ale’ pub before it closed. I wanted to dawdle and look at things, after all today was supposed to be a relaxing time between two hard-walking days. We knew there was a carnival in Deal starting with a firework display this evening, to mark the start of the school summer holidays, and a fair was setting up on the green behind the beach where we approached the town. There was a small helicopter parked on the shingle, and on enquiry I discovered that rides were to be £20 per head for a ten minute flight! No thank you!
The caravans of the fair masked two features which I wanted to look at, but Colin wouldn’t let me so I had to give up the idea of a bus back at the end of the day so I could return and study them. One feature was a plaque to mark the approximate spot where the Romans first landed in 55BC. Caesar then discovered that he had bitten off more than he could chew—Britain was not a tiny island of primitive communities which could be routed and enslaved within a couple of days, but a huge landmass supporting disparate peoples of quite advanced cultures capable of defending themselves and their way of life. So he retreated, and events kept the Romans at home for nigh on another ninety years. Even in those far off days, Britain stood independently against the world!
The second feature was a memorial bandstand on the green. In 1989, the IRA let off a bomb at Deal barracks where the Royal Military Music School is situated. It destroyed a rehearsal room, and eleven young men—several of them mere teenagers who were doing something positive with their lives—were killed.Call that war? Most people call it sheer bloody murder! Twelve years on, and the wound is still obviously raw, we could tell that by the recent floral tributes around the bandstand.
We reached Deal Castle, but Colin strode on, determined to find his pub. We walked all over Deal looking for it with several false leads, and I was hot, tired and furious! We must have walked a mile or more up and down roads, so I sat on a seat and told him in no uncertain terms to go and look for it himself! He came back to report that he had found the ‘other one’, not the pub he was particularly looking for, and that it was open all day anyway! We sat in their tiny paved garden, but the beer wasn’t very nice at all—one of the pints tasted burnt! I calmed down a bit then, and Colin felt a bit sheepish, so we walked a good half mile back to the castle and continued our tour.
Deal Castle is the second of the three castles built by Henry VIII out of monastic stone, some of the bricks still have decorative features on them! It was designed to withstand the heavier cannonfire of the day so the whole place is shaped a bit like the club symbol in a pack of cards. It is also low-lying and unobtrusive—in fact, on our way back later that afternoon, we were only fifty yards away from it when a foreign tourist approached me and asked if I knew where the castle was! We took the tape tour again which made it much more interesting, and walked round the gloomy passages at the bottom where the soldiers used to shoot their cannons and choke with the smoke, get deafened by the noise and run over by the recoil! Such is the folly of Man!
A couple of hundred yards along the coast is the Timeball Tower. About five miles out to sea from Deal lie the Goodwin Sands, a shallow area which is often dry land at low tide. In fact, when the spring tides are exceptionally low, fishermen run trips out there so people can have sand-yacht races, play cricket and generally go mad for a couple of hours! It is a big hazard for ships—a map of shipwrecks in the area, which is displayed at the end of the pier, hardly leaves room for any more to come a cropper there! But the area between Deal and the Goodwin Sands, called ‘The Downs’, also provides a safe haven for ships to rest up a while, and they have been doing that since time immemorial.
The Timeball Tower marks the site of the old Naval yard in Deal. On the roof of the four storey building is a spike with a big iron ball on it. It used to be used by ships to correct their chronometers, absolutely essential if they were to measure longitude accurately. It was worked by an electrical signal from Greenwich. At 12.55 each day the iron ball was lifted halfway up the spike, and at 12.57 it rose to the top. This was a warning to ships in The Downs to keep watching because, at one o’clock precisely, the ball dropped to the bottom again. It is now a museum, and the timeball only works during the summer months. The following day we thought we had missed it because it was getting on for two o’clock when we started our walk from the pier. We sort of half noted that the ball was at the top, then next time we looked it was down again. We hadn’t taken British Summertime into account, and we had missed it’s descent!
Deal Pier is only forty-five years old. The original Victorian pier was badly damaged by a Dutch ship in 1940, then the remains were demolished for security reasons. After the War, the people of Deal wanted their pier back, so a new one was built and opened by the Duke of Edinburgh in 1957. Unfortunately, it was made from concrete and is functional rather than beautiful! However, it is longer than Bognor Pier is now (only about a third of the length as shown in the photographs of Walk no.1 since the end fell off a couple of years ago!) and we enjoyed our walk along it. There is a lower fishing section, then we sat up the top to eat our last remaining food, an orange each. It was only 5.30pm, but a man came along and asked us to leave because the pier was closing in order to set up the fireworks for the display tonight. We finished our oranges, which we had just peeled, and as a result we were the last people off the pier—well, I wasn’t going to hurry, they had given themselves five hours! There was a mini-stage set up at the shore end with loud p.a. system being tried out. We decided that tonight was going to be VERY NOISY and were glad we were camping in Walmer!

That ended Walk no.25, we shall pick up Walk no.26 next time at the shore end of Deal pier. We had originally planned to catch a bus back to Walmer, but I wanted to go and have a proper look at the bandstand and the Roman plaque, so we walked back. Later that evening we drove back into Deal to look at the fair, which wasn’t bad for a travelling one, but expensive. We didn’t have any rides! Then we sat on a bench for over an hour people-watching and waiting for these much heralded fireworks. They were NAFF!! Pure back garden stuff – what a waste of time!

When I was sticking the original photograph of Deal bandstand into my original photo-journal, I was moved to write the following words:—
What’s new, indeed!
In 1989, Britain was at peace with the whole world; but certain elements in Ireland continued to ‘fight’ their battles of yesteryear. The self-styled Irish Republican Army let off a bomb at the military barracks in Deal which is famed for its School of Music. It destroyed a rehearsal room, and eleven young men – some only in their teens – were killed whilst playing their trumpets! This bandstand was erected as a memorial to those brave young lives, and according to the floral tributes the wound is still raw after twelve years. What did this cowardly act gain the IRA and their ‘cause’? – merely the SCORN of the world!
Even as I write this a few weeks later at the beginning of the autumn term, I am listening to the radio news. In Northern Ireland, girls attending a Catholic primary school have to walk through a ‘Protestant’ estate to get there. They are being jeered and pelted with bricks and stones! The British Army have turned out in force to protect them, they have erected steel barriers either side of the road and there is even a police helicopter flying overhead! We are talking about children aged between four and eleven, for heaven’s sake! Just how low can you get?

Tuesday, July 24, 2001

Walk 24 -- Dover, via St Margaret's-at-Cliffe, to Walmer

Ages: Colin was 59 years and 77 days. Rosemary was 56 years and 219 days.
Weather: Too b***** hot!
Location: Dover Marina to Walmer Castle.
Distance: 8½ miles.
Total distance: 150½ miles.
Terrain: Concrete esplanade at first, mostly grassy paths over chalk downs, a little road-walking and tarmacked paths at the end.
Tide: In.
Rivers to cross: None.
Ferries: None.
Piers: None.
Kissing gates: Nos. 19 & 20 just outside Dover, nos. 21 & 22 near St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe, and no. 23 near Kingsdown.
Pubs: ‘The Mogul’ in Dover where we enjoyed Iceberg, Blue Jay and Rheidol Reserve.
‘English Heritage’ properties: None.
Ferris wheels: None.
Diversions: No. 12 near St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe where our way was barred by an impossible fence and a rusty notice informed us that the path in front of the houses was ‘permanently closed’. We had to turn inland and a bit back on ourselves to find the road running behind a row of sumptuous houses.
How we got there and back: We camped the night before in Walmer. In the morning we walked to Walmer station and caught a train to Dover. We visited ‘The Mogul’ pub to get the ‘real ale’ bit in (first things first!) then walked down to the marina where we had finished our walk last time.
At the end, we walked back to the campsite from Walmer Castle.

We had originally planned to do these next three walks last week, but suddenly (and I do mean suddenly – like overnight) the weather had a relapse into the wind, rain and storms such as we suffered for weeks on end last Autumn. One day we were walking in the New Forest and it was too hot unless we were in the shade, the next day I got soaked–even through my wet weather gear–just walking into town and almost blown over as I walked up the shopping street in Bognor! So we postponed it all to this week, especially as we were camping, and now it is really too hot again to walk comfortably. However, we came, and here is the walk–
After refreshing ourselves at ‘The Mogul’ in Dover, we walked down to the marina and started the walk ‘proper’ by the Dunkirk memorial. There were a couple of stone jetties leading into the water, and a group of teenagers were gathered at the second one.
As we approached, there were shouts and splashes–the girls were sitting in an admiring group along the harbour wall while the boys were leaping from great heights into the water with much shouting and swearing, the way teenagers do these days! Then one lad got even more daring and climbed along a higher wall to leap off. Of course, the others had to follow, but we noticed that no one did the higher jump more than once! We managed to take several pictures of them mid-air.
The path seemed to continue on underneath the road where it does a whirligig to gain height, but it came to an end round the bend and we had to come back.
We knew we couldn’t get into Eastern Docks–the world’s busiest port–so we crossed the road and followed the footpath signs. There we got a bit confused. The footpath seemed to lead into the docks themselves, though on the map it went along just outside them. So we turned round and took a higher path which was signposted. This led up steps and under the road as it rushed northwards through a gap in the cliffs.
Up a few more steps and we were on a level with the cars whizzing past our ears, or so it seemed. It was a very hot climb to the top of all the steps, and we wondered at the wisdom of walking on such a sizzling day. Thankfully there was a pleasant breeze coming in from the sea, and that was our saving grace. We were now walking on grass between bushes and through a few trees. Buried deep in the undergrowth were the remains of all sorts of buildings, this has always been such a vulnerable bit of coast that has had to be defended throughout history. We were photographing beetles and butterflies and getting very hot indeed. There was no way we could sit in the sun to eat our lunch, so eventually we sat under a bush on the path where we couldn’t see the sea.
Just looking, we could have thought ourselves deep in the countryside seeing only grass and buzzing insects, but the sounds gave everything away. We could still hear the road, and there was the constant noise of ship’s engines coming from the harbour below us. Every so often a loud woman’s voice would make a long announcement over the p.a. system which was so distorted by its own echo off the cliffs, it sounded as if she was talking from the bottom of a well!We moved on, and came out in the National Trust car park where loads of scantily clad obese people were frying in the sun and generally shortening their lives by (a) eating too much, (b) smoking too much, (c) exposing acres of skin to the hot baking sun, and (d) only exercising by yacking into their mobile phones. Apart from that, the majority of them looked absolutely repulsive in the clothes that were hanging off them revealing all their rolls of fat, bra straps, beer-bellies and enormous behinds! (After a few hot days like today, we begin to rank ourselves amongst ‘the beautiful people’!!) Here we discovered a lower path, and looking over the edge we found that there was an even lower one which we couldn’t get down to. Was that the path we were supposed to be on all the time, the one we thought led into the docks? Too late now, we were not going back!
The next couple of miles of cliff path were quite crowded with walkers, and we were pleased to note that a large number of them were teenagers. It is good to see young people out in the countryside instead of cooped up indoors huddled over computers. They were quite funny, one lad asked me if I was American! (I thought my embarrassing ‘flowerpot man’ hat would have labelled me as quintessentially English!) Further on there was a dip where we were at last able to get on to the lower path which had come up to meet us, and to get away from the crowds who continued along the top. It was also noticeably quieter because we were shielded from the noise of the docks by the hill behind us and from the aggravating whine of a radar scanner on top of the hill we had just scrambled down. According to the map, this lower path was an old railway line. There were some ponies grazing there, and one suddenly decided to have a dust bath in a dried up puddle. It looked so funny, squirming around on its back.
As we approached the windmill above St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe, all the other hikers seemed to just melt away. Even the lone woman hiker we had passed and repassed and spoken to several times all the way from Dover was making her way back with the words, “I didn’t quite make the windmill!” The windmill and all the buildings associated with it are private, so the path diverts a little inland around them.
We then began our descent towards St Margaret’s where it was much quieter with only the natural sounds of the birds and the sea–a different world from the frenetic activity of Dover Harbour, though if we looked backwards we could still see the ferries plying in and out from behind the cliffs. At the end of a piece of National Trust land we were confronted with a rusty notice informing us that the path in front of the houses was PERMANENTLY CLOSED! The fence was impenetrable with weeds growing twenty foot high behind it, so that seemed pretty final. We can only assume that the cliffs had eroded taking the coast path and half their gardens with it, and that they didn’t want people walking past their front windows. As we remarked way back at Fairlight, we can’t understand people buying property at the top of a cliff, but they do.
We turned inland and a little back on ourselves, then followed the track which turned into a road down to the beach at St Margaret’s. Halfway down the road Colin noticed an old-fashioned ‘milestone’ set in the verge claiming PUBLIC FOOTPATH, and there was a narrow gap in the fence. He set off through it to explore, but couldn’t get very far because of the brambles. We concluded it was the other end of our ‘permanently closed’ footpath. I was so hot and bothered by then that I made a bee-line for the pub where I was prepared to pay extortionate pub prices for a glass of lemonade with ice and lemon, but Colin refused to have anything because the beer was ‘keg’! I squeezed my lemon juice into my water bottle and enjoyed lemon-flavoured water for the rest of the walk–got to get my money’s worth!
We left the pub and walked back along the short bit of the prom to the bottom of the cliffs we had just walked over (we could just make out where the true path had been) to look at a cave. This turned out to be man-made and blocked off, probably more old defence works of which this area abounds.
We watched a group of Cubs paddling in the edge of the sea with loud shrieks because they had to walk over shingle–yes, those were great days with the Scouts and Cubs but we don’t think we have the energy for it anymore! We were under two false impressions at this stage of the walk, (1) that we were two-thirds of the way to Walmer, and (2) that the rest of the day’s walk was flat along the bottom of the remaining cliffs. WRONG! We didn’t find out we were only halfway to Walmer (and that didn’t count the mile between the coast and our campsite) until we got back and looked at the map properly, so that was a blessing.
We continued north along the prom past the car park, but then it all came to an end and there was no way forward. With our hearts in our boots, we walked south along the back of the car park–where there was a wooden building in the shape of an upturned boat but no explanation as to its function–until we located a set of steps with a modern public footpath sign pointing upwards! It felt like climbing Everest, we were that hot and bothered. However, we made it, walked through some trees in blessed shade, then out on the downs again where the going was still upwards albeit more gently. We delighted in the plethora of wild flowers up there, one mass of deep pink seemed to be a type of pea. On and on until we reached the top where suddenly we were treated with glorious views to the north of Deal, with the pier very prominent, and the Isle of Thanet in the background. At last! we felt we were getting somewhere and our spirits soared–it was also getting towards evening and was fractionally cooler. We also found the reason for so many youngsters, especially boys, in the area–on the adjacent hillside was an enormous Scout camp comprising of at least half a dozen separate groups. It made us feel good–if Scouting can still appeal to youngsters in present-day society, then there is hope for the future. I come across so much apathy, cynicism and loutishness in my job as a supply teacher, with the really nice kids cowed and not daring to excel or be different for fear of ridicule, that I do despair on occasions.
We descended the downs ending in a steep flight of steps to Kingsdown. There was another group of lads fooling on the beach, one of them calling his leader a ‘beached whale’ amid hoots of laughter–well he was right because the chap was far too portly for such skimpy swimwear! We were now confident that the rest of our walk today was FLAT! but we were not in the mood for shingle-walking. So it was the road just back from the beach for a quarter of a mile before we turned down to the combined footpath/cycle track which starts there and runs for nearly four miles to the other side of Deal. Once again we asked each other why they can’t do this in Bognor where the esplanade is about twice as wide? It was so nice to see whole families out riding their bikes safely, from grannies down to the toddlers with stabilisers. We even met a commuter cycling home from the station in his city suit, instead of polluting the atmosphere with his car fumes and getting fat into the bargain.
At Walmer Castle we turned inland along a public footpath and walked directly back to our campsite.

That ended Walk No.24, we shall pick up Walk No.25 next time on the seashore by Walmer Castle at the spot where we left it today.