Walk 29 -- Richborough Roman Fort & St Augustine's Cross

Ages: Colin was 59 years and 108 days. Rosemary was 56 years and 250 days.
Weather: Baking hot, there was no respite from the sun.
Location: Richborough Roman Fort & St Augustine’s Cross.
Distance: 0 miles.
Total distance: 171 miles.
Terrain: Mown grass surrounded both these sites. I didn’t even put my walking boots on.
Tide: Don’t know.
Rivers to cross: None.
Ferries: None.
Piers: None.
Kissing gates: Nos.28 & 29 to get in and out of the site at St Augustine’s Cross.
Pubs: ‘The Greyhound’ in Sandwich where Colin enjoyed Bateman’s Mild and I enjoyed a shandy because I was even thirstier than yesterday!
‘English Heritage’ properties: No.8 at Richborough Roman Fort, and no.9 at St Augustine’s Cross.
Ferris wheels: None.
Diversions: None.
How we got there and back: We packed up our camp at Sandwich, and drove to Richborough. After looking round there and having our lunch at their thoughtfully provided picnic tables, we drove to St Augustine’s Cross.
At the end, we sat in the shade of some trees by the Cross to drink a cup of tea from our flasks. Then we drove home to Bognor. Whew! It’s hot!

The haze of yesterday had disappeared by this morning, and we were treated to a day of perfect blue skies, negligible wind and temperatures up to 30°C (86°F)! In other words—it was hot! Fortunately our tent was pitched in the shade of a tree; but even so, by the time we had packed everything away in the car, we were both bathed in sweat—sorry! “Horses sweat! Gentlemen perspire! and Ladies merely glow!” Well, I was ‘glowing’ a heck of a lot! We went into Sandwich and found the ‘real ale’ pub first in order to cool down a little.
The first site we visited was Richborough Roman Fort. Two thousand years ago, this site was by the sea at the southern end of the Wantsum Channel (which was up to half a mile wide) and the Isle of Thanet really was an island. Now Richborough is some two miles inland. Eighty-eight years after Caesar claimed to have ‘conquered’ Britannia—when in actual fact he was stranded in the Deal area for a few weeks by the weather and unexpected high tides which decimated his ships—the Romans came back in force and built their first fortification here at Richborough. They dug ditches from which they could repel the local Celts, and continued to land more and more troops with supplies.
Gradually they built up a city, called RVTVPIAE, which must have been of some importance because it had an amphitheatre. They built an enormous triumphal arch out of white marble (which they had imported all the way from Italy) and, after landing, all the Roman legions marched through it on their way to conquer the rest of Britannia. The first Roman road they built in Britain, Watling Street, leads away from the site towards LONDINIUM (London). Fortunes changed over the next few centuries, RVTVPIAE changed countless times, and eventually high walls had to be built to repel the Saxons in about the fifth century.
We followed the ‘tape tour’ which was very interesting and brought it all alive; but quite honestly, after two thousand years, there is not much left to see! It is just that this site is of huge significance in the history of the British Isles. The most prominent feature remains the outer walls which were constructed to repel the invading Saxons; but by the time they were built the Roman Empire was in decline and most of the Romans had already retreated to the warmer climes of their own country. A few of the original ditches have been dug out again, all that remains of the enormous four-sided marble arch is the base and the famous Watling Street is merely a farm track. We asked about the amphitheatre which is about half a mile away, and we were told that it is possible to get to it, though difficult. We would have had to struggle through a couple of fields where there are no footpaths, and there is hardly anything to see anyway—merely some grassy lumps. In view of the heat of the day, we decided not to bother.
We sat at one of their picnic tables which had been thoughtfully placed in the shade of a tree. We ate our lunch looking at the view of redundant cooling towers belonging to a redundant power station which we could see over the redundant walls of this redundant Roman fort, and we reflected on the irony of changing times!

Next we visited St Augustine’s Cross. St Augustine is reputed to have brought Christianity to our pagan shores when he landed at Pegwell Bay in 596AD and preached his first sermon on this spot. This was apparently enough to convert King Ethelbert and hence the whole of the British nation became Christians, discarding all their pagan practices. Bet it wasn’t as simplistic as that! However, this cross was erected in Victorian times to commemorate the beginnings of Christianity in southern England. The original plaque is in Latin, so another one was put beside it with a translation in English.
The area around the Cross was mown grass and partly in shade. So we brought our flasks from the car and enjoyed a cup of tea whilst sitting on the grass out of the heat of the sun. It was certainly not the weather for walking, we would have wilted within the first few yards! We decided to postpone the next part of the walk from Ramsgate to Broadstairs until September, and went home.

That ended Walk no.29, though it hadn’t really been a walk! We shall pick up Walk no.30 next time at the bus stop on Ramsgate Harbour. The journey home to Bognor on such a hot afternoon was horrid. We went across country, avoiding motorways because it was the Friday of a bank holiday weekend—now that we are retired, we always stay at home on bank holidays!

Walk 28 -- Sandwich to Ramsgate

Ages: Colin was 59 years and 107 days. Rosemary was 56 years and 249 days.
Weather: Hot and sticky. It gradually got hazier as the day progressed and turned very dull by the time we reached Ramsgate. Later it brightened up, but got hotter if anything.
Location: Sandwich Quay to Ramsgate Marina.
Distance: 8 miles.
Total distance: 171 miles.
Terrain: Three dreadful miles alongside a very busy road through an industrial estate and past a power station. Then the blissful contrast of suddenly turning into a Nature Reserve leaving all that noise and pollution behind! Some grass walking, along low cliff tops, and finally tarmacked and concreted pavements in Ramsgate.
Tide: In.
Rivers to cross: No.8, the Stour at Sandwich.
Ferries: None.
Piers: None.
Kissing gates: No.27 at the top of the cliffs above Pegwell Bay, but we almost missed it because it was rusting quietly in the undergrowth while the main path had long since taken a short cut bypassing it!
Pubs: ‘The Crispin’ in Sandwich where Colin enjoyed Everards ‘Tiger’ and I enjoyed a shandy because I was very thirsty on such a hot day!
'English Heritage’ properties: None.
Ferris wheels: None.
Diversions: No.14 along the bottom of the walled cliff past Ramsgate ferry terminal where they have closed the road and put up signs saying, ‘NO PEDESTRIAN ACCESS’. We had to climb the 70 or so steps we had just come down to walk along the top.
How we got there and back: We camped the night before in Sandwich. We walked through the town to the bridge. We ‘psyched’ ourselves up at the pub for the hot and boring first three miles, then we started the walk!
At the end, we happened upon a bus by the Marina in Ramsgate. We hopped on it quickly, and it took us back to Sandwich.

From our campsite, we walked along the rest of the old town walls in Sandwich, the eastern way to the quay. One of the walls is called ‘Rope Walk’ because it is the place where rope-makers used to twist their twine. They needed a lot of space to do this because, like all spun cords, the twine must be held taut whilst the twisting takes place. Then it has to be doubled up without touching itself until it has been correctly placed—that way it will naturally twist together in a strong rope. We came on to the quay through Fisher Gate, one of the original medieval gates to this fortified town.
We called in at the pub near the Barbican to ‘psyche’ ourselves up for the day’s walk. Not only was it a very hot day—though blessed cloud left it not quite as hot as yesterday—but we knew that the first three miles would be through an industrialised area and dreadfully dull! At last we made a start, and shortly after midday we crossed the bridge into Great Stonar.
In medieval times, Great Stonar was a thriving port, a rival to Sandwich; but it was built on the mud of the silted up Wantsum Channel that separated the Isle of Thanet from mainland Britain. (A thousand years before, the Romans built their main fort—now called Richborough Castle—on the mainland side of what was then the Wantsum Channel.) One night, the whole town was washed away in a terrible storm and all trace of it has since disappeared. Sandwich, built on firmer ground, continued to flourish—but the Wantsum Channel carried on silting up. Now Sandwich is no longer a port, and there is an industrial estate on the site of Great Stonar. We kept passing people in hot office-type clothing walking into Sandwich for their lunch—we are glad we no longer have to work every day!
Next we passed a lake with notices telling us it was DANGEROUS and to KEEP OUT. It belongs to the new power station which was the next complex we passed. All the while we were on a pavement next to a busy road, but at least it was flat. After a roundabout we could walk along a new cycleway, but the A256 was so busy we were almost walking faster than the traffic jam! According to the map, the river was right by our side, but we could see no sign of it behind the fence and brambles.
We passed another ‘Works’ where everyone looked very efficient and busy—and also very hot—and then we came to the Stonar Cut. The River Stour meanders so much across the silted up Wantsum Channel that it almost meets up with itself. Here at the narrowest neck, which can’t be more than fifty yards across, a ditch has been cut to provide a shortcut for the river. It is kept closed most of the time by a tide gate, but when open it provides flood relief for the people of Sandwich. A derelict barge lay scuttled in the mud in the Cut—when we came back this way on the bus at the end of the day, this barge was under water as the tide was in.
Next, on our right, was the derelict Richborough Port. A secret port was constructed there during the First World War, and used again during the Second. Since then it hasn’t been used for anything, and we couldn’t see any remnant of it behind the fence and twenty-foot high weeds!
We walked past a garage and a ‘Little Chef’ restaurant, and ignored both. Then, across the road, we passed three cooling towers and the tall chimney of a disused power station—which were for sale! Who would want to buy three redundant cooling towers? Would you then be responsible for their maintenance? Will they let you knock them down or will they be classed as ‘listed buildings’ as soon as you try? I’d love to see the estate agent’s advert!
A notice by the road welcomed us to the Isle of Thanet. We had really put on a pace since crossing the bridge, and had covered the three deadly miles in an hour! It was with relief that we turned into a narrow gate and entered the Pegwell Bay Country Park. We only had to put a few trees between us and the road, and we were in a different world! Peace and quiet—the sound of traffic was usurped by the call of birds and the lapping of water on the shore. We felt we had come through Purgatory and could now relax and enjoy the rest of the day’s hike. We sat on a bench overlooking the mouth of the Stour to eat our lunch, directly opposite Shell Ness Point where we were yesterday.
Further on there was a car park with toilets which we wanted to use. Sitting outside was an old bloke with his bicycle who started chatting to us. He was a SUSTRANS volunteer (that’s the cycleway charity, but I can’t remember what the letters stand for!) and he was patrolling his ‘patch’ to make sure it was clear of rubbish/parked cars/potholes etc. It was interesting talking to him, but like a lot of lonely people he had the gift of the ‘gab’ and we thought we would never get away from him to continue our walk!
We had to walk a bit more along the side of the road because, nearer the river, it had become very marshy; and then a grassy green sward opened out with a fully painted up Viking ship displayed in the middle! It is believed that the Saxons first landed in Pegwell Bay in AD449, so this ship was built in 1949 and sailed by volunteers from Denmark to celebrate the one-thousand-five-hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the ‘English’ people, a hotch-potch of Angles, Saxons, Danes and Vikings—see, even the English are illegal immigrants! (And probably as unpopular in their day as the illegal immigrants are now!) The ship is built entirely of wood, and to the size and specifications of a true Viking ship, as far as they know from bits of genuine ones that have been dredged out of the mud in various places around northern Europe. It has been continually repainted and is certainly impressive. We bought an ice cream to celebrate the origin of our great and noble race!!
After this we were walking eastwards again, we had been walking northwards ever since Dover. We were on the top of low cliffs, first sand and then chalk. We looked back into the hazy distance, and those cooling towers seemed an awful long way away. We were quite surprised by the distance we had walked, and we still felt fresh.
We walked along edge of a few fields and came to the beginning of Ramsgate. At first there was a huge and impressive hotel. Then we had to join a road and walk away from the coast because several smaller establishments had prime sites overlooking the shore. Eventually we were able to take a path back to the clifftop on top of a high wall. We were in public gardens, and sat on the first seat we came to in order to eat the second half of our lunch. Some young boys, with two of their Dads, were playing football happily on a green there. The youngest lad got into a ‘strop’ because they wouldn’t let him win all the time and it was “my ball”! He came and sulked on a low wall near us, and we were quite amused by his antics—he didn’t like the way they all ignored him and carried on enjoying their game!
We realised that there was a lower path nearer the sea, but we had missed the way down because it was via a sunken path looping round behind a bush. Not wishing to retrace our steps, we carried on along the top until we came to a stone staircase. Down we went, about seventy steps or so, and found a new road which came out of a new tunnel under the cliff. (We drove through it three weeks later, after Walk No.30, just out of curiosity and discovered it is half a mile long and had only been open a few months.) Water was lapping the wall beside the road because the tide was in, but further on there was a triangle of beach being used by several families who had parked their cars nearby. It was really lovely golden sand, pity the weather was so dull for them.
We came to the roundabout where the road led into the port of Ramsgate, and discovered that the road continuing along the bottom of the cliff-wall was closed even to pedestrians. There seemed to be no reason for this, except that there were a few stones and broken bottles which had been chucked from the top and no one had bothered to clear them up. A lift up to the top looked as if it hadn’t been used for years, in fact there was an air of dereliction about the whole place. We had no choice but to climb seventy or so steps again back to the gardens at the top! But there we were ‘saved’ by a café which sold mugs of tea for 50p! My, it went down well!
While we were drinking, we sat and looked out over the port. Ramsgate Port used to run the cheapest ferries to France, but we reckoned that the convenience of the Channel Tunnel had been its death knell. Lanes marked ‘cars’ and ‘coaches’ and ‘check-in’ were blocked by lumps of concrete, and the only vehicles we could see were commercial. We watched a ferry come in, and every vehicle which trundled off was a lorry. Obviously the port has gone over entirely to freight, and they have built the new tunnel under the cliffs so that these huge vehicles don’t have to negotiate the narrow streets of the town.
When we reached the marina, we had to go down seventy or so steps again! We could walk along the harbour walls, but all the facilities and floating walkways were padlocked shut. There is a lighthouse at the end of the western harbour wall, and as we neared it a little girl came up and asked, “Would you like to see my fish?” We looked in her bucket and admired her crabs and blennies. Her father was fishing nearby, and said he had caught them to amuse her while he got on with his fishing.
We then went to look at the lifeboat house, and thought we could get across to the eastern wall between the outer harbour and the marina. But no! The temporary bridge was up because the tide was in. So back we went again, and we had to walk along under the high cliff-wall where lots of fishing type businesses were inside archways under it. It was there that I spied a building labelled HOME FOR SMACK BOYS FOUNDED 1881! We assume they meant orphans from fishing smacks, but we did idly wonder whether it was a place to send our grandson, young Jamie, when he doesn’t behave!!We didn’t know whether to catch a bus or a train back to Sandwich, and were both feeling a little tired by then. We saw a bus stop ahead, with a bus parked at it. We couldn’t see where it was going because several lamp-posts were in the way, so I said to Colin, “Look, there’s a bus! Run along and ask the driver what number bus we catch to Sandwich and where we catch it!” As he passed the lamp-posts, he realised it said ‘Sandwich’ on the front, so we hopped on there and then and off we went!

That ended Walk no.28 rather suddenly, we shall pick up Walk no.29 next time at the bus stop on Ramsgate Harbour. The bus took us back to the centre of Sandwich from where it was only a short walk back to our campsite.

Walk 27 -- Sandwich Bay to Sandwich

Ages: Colin was 59 years and 106 days. Rosemary was 56 years and 248 days.
Weather: Hot sun, but with a welcome refreshing breeze from the sea. Very clear, but gradually turning hazy.
Location: The Royal St George’s Golf Links to Sandwich Quay via the Stour Valley Walk to Shell Ness and back.
Distance: 6½ miles.
Total distance: 163 miles.
Terrain: A gravel track which deteriorated to sand dunes and finally a boggy marsh! So we retraced our steps to get round a barbed wire fence and tried the top of the beach instead which was soft sand and grass. Returning the same way, we cut across a golf course, then a dusty and very boring farm track and finally a tarmacked path along the river bank.
Tide: In.
Rivers to cross: None—the reason we had to retrace our steps was that there was no way across!
Ferries: None—if there had been it would have saved us miles!
Piers: None.
Kissing gates: Nos.25 & 26 as we entered and left the Nature Reserve at Shell Ness.
Pubs: ‘The George & Dragon’ in Sandwich where we drank two Shepherd Neame beers, ‘Goldings’ and ‘Master Brew’, both of which were bland.
‘English Heritage’ properties: None.
Ferris wheels: None.
Diversions: No.13 near Shell Ness where the path got too boggy to walk. We retraced our steps to get round a barbed wire fence and walked along the beach instead.
How we got there and back: We camped the night before in Sandwich. We walked through the town and across the golf links to the spot on the beach where we had finished the last walk.
At the end, we were in Sandwich, so we looked around some more of this very interesting little town and walked back to the campsite.

Using the same public footpath we had used at the end of our last walk, we strode back across the golf course from Sandwich to get to the coast. We were surprised to find that the public toilet block we had used just four weeks ago was derelict! Both doors were firmly nailed up, and the protective wall in front of the ‘ladies’ entrance had been partially demolished. We supposed that the ‘powers that be’ considered this block to be redundant since there was another more modern block about two hundred yards to the north.
Neither of us were ‘desperate’, so we sat on the shingle beach to eat our lunch. It was a very hot day, and lots of families were piling out of their cars with all the paraphernalia (like folding chairs and windbreaks and cool boxes and rubber boats and picnic hampers and lilos) which the majority of the population thinks is essential for their enjoyment of the seaside. We were more interested in any wildlife we could see, but there wasn’t much. We spied the occasional butterfly, but they were too elusive to photograph, as ever.
Where the road turned away from the shore, there was a large crane lorry parked up with two burnt-out cars on the back. There was a black patch on the shingle where one of them had obviously been set alight. Abandoned cars have become a big problem in our countryside in recent years, they are everywhere! Many of them are stolen vehicles, driven around late at night by so-called ‘joy-riders’, then abandoned in remote places. Others are ‘old-bangers’ which finally conk out, so the owner takes it miles from home, strips it of all identification and sets it on fire to make really sure he (or she) can’t be traced. Often it is weeks or months before the shell is removed, and its our taxes that have to pay for this service!
We were using a public footpath marked on the map which leads up to Shell Ness Point—it is prettily named ‘The Stour Valley Walk’—but the path we were on gradually deteriorated the further north we went, and the people thinned out too. It became quite ‘undulating’ underfoot, and we paused to chat to a couple because one had stopped to remove some gravel from her shoe. Later we began to notice that the only people we were meeting were overweight and middle-aged men–and sure enough, we had strayed on to another nudist beach! They were quite blatant about it, posing there in the altogether. All those rolls of fat—it quite put us off our picnic sarnies!!
Colin was walking along with a long lens on his camera, peering round sand dunes looking for that elusive butterfly! His behaviour could have been misinterpreted…
We had seen surprisingly little wildlife, but then Colin picked up something from the middle of the path which he first thought was a large seed. Then we thought it might be a chrysalis, but it looked absolutely dead. So he started peeling off the outer layer to see what it really was, and to our surprise there was a moth inside which started to move!
We didn’t think its wings had formed properly because they were quite small, but we knew it needed to be somewhere in the shade to dry out if it was to have any chance of life. There was a concrete bin just inside the Nature Reserve, so Colin hung it inside there out of the sun.
We entered the National Trust Nature Reserve, and there we were really on our own—no nature-lovers, no nudists, nothing. Trouble was, there wasn’t any wildlife either! We saw a few birds in the far distance and managed to pick out some egrets and terns, a couple of herons and a kestrel; but where we were—nowt! A large area between us and the beach was fenced off with barbed wire, and our path was getting wetter and boggier by the minute. Colin was wearing trekking sandals, and refused to go on any further because his socks were getting damp! We knew we would have to return by the same route because there is no way across the river north of Sandwich, so we retraced our steps to the Nature Reserve entrance.
I said I wanted to try and get to the river mouth along the beach, and Colin grudgingly agreed. The sand was a little soft, but it wasn’t difficult to walk on. Here we saw a multitude of ringed plovers and back-backed gulls, but nothing extraordinary and it was all a bit of a disappointment. There was so much rubbish washed up along high water mark, it was unbelievable. The majority of the items were made of imperishable plastic, and I expect most of it was thrown off ships. I wish people who sail these vessels would realise that the sea is not a universal dustbin! That beach was disgusting! Near the mouth of the river, we found a wooden pallet, so we sat on it and ate the second half of our picnic. Then we returned, rather disconsolately, to the entrance of the Nature Reserve again where Colin looked up his moth. It was still alive, and its wings seemed to have enlarged a little, so it may have survived.
We were rather puzzled by a big notice there. This area abounds with golf courses, we had passed yet another one as we were walking along the dunes trying not to look at big men’s little willies earlier in the afternoon! This notice was facing the only entrance/exit to the Nature Reserve, and told us that the land we were about to walk over (our only route back to civilisation) belonged to the golf club and that we were forbidden to enter it without permission, but RSBP members could if they showed their pass! Who to? Even the nudists had gone home by then! So we ignored it, and walked along the smoother grass behind the dunes for about a mile, then we passed the same notice facing the other way. No one asked to see our pass (which we haven’t got) and no one accused us of trespassing, simply because there was no one there. We didn’t cause any damage, leave any litter nor even any footprints—so no one even knew of our passing through this ‘forbidden’ strip of grassland, and does anybody really care? There are far too many of these PRIVATE notices around our coastline.
We cut across the ‘Prince’s Golf Links’ as the quickest way to get back to Sandwich where we could cross the River Stour. The path seemed to twist and turn about, and bore no relationship to the map! Several times we stopped to check our bearings because we got disorientated. I think, in hindsight, that the golf club had moved the path to suit their layout—and, despite it being a public footpath, a golf ball landed very near us at one point. Then it turned into a lane going past a farm where they were trying to switch on an automatic watering system for their lettuces—it only partly worked. This part of the walk was deadly!
Eventually we came to the river bank, and walked along a tarmacked path all the way into Sandwich. Even this didn’t seem to give us many river views—too many reeds. I think we were disillusioned about today’s walk because we ended up exactly where we had started in the morning. We didn’t make any progress along the coast because of the impossibility of crossing the river anywhere near its mouth—also, it was a very hot day and the Nature Reserve had been disappointing.
Sandwich is a very interesting town full of beautiful old buildings which look as if they are about to fall down! About a thousand years ago, when the Isle of Thanet really was an island, it was a flourishing port called Sandwich Haven providing shelter for ships sailing between London and the Continent. It formed an alliance with Dover, Hythe, Romney and Hastings (all of which we have passed through already on this trek), and they became known as the Cinque Ports (pronounced ‘sink’). Rye, Winchelsea, and possibly some others tried to join in at a later date. The Cinque Ports became very powerful, second only to the Crown and the Church. They traded in other ports without paying taxes or tolls, they held their own courts, they dealt with their own affairs—in fact they did what they liked and blow everyone else! But their power declined when, like so many other places we have passed through on our route, the port began to silt up. In fact, our whole walk today was on reclaimed land—all those posh golf courses were under the sea until fairly recently! Henry VIII suggested the citizens of Sandwich sell the treasures of the town’s three churches to pay for the dredging, but he did nothing else to help. Elizabeth I was sympathetic too. She was made ‘very merrye’ by the hospitality offered to her by the town when she came to look at the problem for herself, but she didn’t do anything about it either! (I wonder if she enjoyed a game of golf while she was living it up!) So the silt grew, and now Sandwich is some two miles from the sea. The River Stour meanders across this new land with such contorted bends, it almost touches itself in one place.
We ended our walk by the bridge. Tolls to cross the river have been collected here at Sandwich Quay from the time of King Canute until 1977, when the very last toll was paid by the Mayor. Sandwich now has a bypass, thank goodness, so its ancient and beautiful buildings are protected a little from the constant roar of modern traffic. There was the usual list of tolls under the archway of the barbican—built by Henry VIII as part of his coastal defences—but we were more interested in another plaque which commemorated the fact that Sandwich welcomed 5000 refugees from Nazi persecution who had fled across the Channel in 1939/1940. Sixty years later, Sandwich and the whole of East Kent—in fact the whole of Britain—are fed up to the back teeth with the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who are risking life and limb to get across the Channel because we are a ‘soft touch’. We are far from welcoming, because the majority are economic migrants, not fleeing persecution at all, and many of them are criminals. They all have their ‘sob’ stories, well rehearsed and convincing, and they all know exactly how to use and abuse the system so they don’t get chucked out if they do manage to land on our soil. One of them was at our campsite the following morning, asking if he could live in a holiday caravan while he looked for work. How times change!

That ended Walk no.27, we shall pick up Walk no.28 next time at the bridge across the river in Sandwich. We walked back through the town to our campsite along the old town walls which were built to rebuff the French in the 14^th century. It was a very pleasant route, and we stopped to admire a new and imaginative skateboard ramp where youths were having a wonderful time showing off their skills. A passing lady walking her dog overheard us, and stopped to explain that it had only been open a couple of weeks. Already it had been vandalised, and there were increasing complaints about the play-park’s use late at night by drunken young people and drug taking. There is no local police presence outside of the nine-to-five weekday slot, and if a crime is committed, the perpetrators have long since fled by the time the officers arrive from afar. What sad times we live in!