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It took almost 40 years for Shelley-ann (Shan) and me to get to Kent (excepting many trips to Dover as a conduit to France and beyond) and it took a couple of great friends from Norway to entice us there ...  Above: Stepping out for dinner at the local golf club at Boughton-under-Blean near Canterbury in Kent; a fine party of the country for painterly attempts. A phone call from one of my longest friendships, Graham Dyson, was all we needed to initiate a foray into Kent to accompany him and and his wife, Kjersti, on a bit of a coastal romp of Eastern Kent. They were determined to holiday outside of Norway without air travel. Trains proved to be the order of the day and an exploratory attempt down to the UK offered a couple of hurdles to overcome ... getting South of Oslo and crossing a bit of reasonably serious water. I liked to think that Shan and I might have been influential in the equation, too. Graham and Kjersti had visited me a few times at home in Oxfordshire after I had been diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) in March the previous year and the experts had given me a few months to live. Those occasions had involved a fair old effort on the Dysons' part, involving flights and hire cars and excursions to our house. Despite fairly successfully fending off AML as far as my immediate longevity was concerned, my personal reliance on the NHS[1] contrived to make travel outside of the UK prohibitive. Travel insurance for AMLers was spectacularly expensive[2] by orders of magnitude that made Shan and me accept that future holidays would have to be confined to these happy shores. We booked into the same hotels as the Dysons' and were rewarded with the additional benefit that a mutual friend from the heady days of the University of Natal, Durban in the late 60s would be joining us for a couple of strolls in Kent. Graham had been in constant contact with Rod (Smith) but I'd only bumped into him very briefly during the intervening 50+ years. I'd always been fond of Rod but never got to know him properly after I gave up my law studies in about 1971 and became a cub reporter. Issues with Booking.com were overcome. Several of these emerged during our stay in Eastern England but failed to ruin the reunion between friends. Canterbury The first leg of our trek took us to Boughton-under-Blean, which was be the base for visiting the ancient city and for the first of a couple of life affirming bucolic walks. Above (l-r, top-bottom): Canterbury Cathedral, an omnipresent backdrop; river (Great Stour), parks and skies; Blackfriars Chapel withe the Great Stour in the foreground; street art abounds; sited opposite the gates of the cathedral is a pub that has been in the location for more than 500 years, now named the The Old Buttermarket[3]; rather a splendid array inside the pub, which also incorporates a restaurant area. Apart from collecting Rod from the London to Canterbury train, the cathedral was always going to be the prime attraction of our visit to Canterbury, for Kjersti, Shan and me. It is reputed to be the oldest cathedral in Britain having been founded in 597 but was completely rebuilt between 1070 and 1077[4].  Above (top-bottom, l-r): The cathedral in its entirety is all but impossible to capture in one shot; the entrance to the cathedral grounds; a sculpture named "Transport" by Antony Gormley, created from reused nails from the roof of a section of the cathedral that was being repaired[5]; a 500-year-old pub once frequented by the late Chas. Dickens; one of the many extraordinary windows (many others were destroyed over time and filled with plain glass); Kjersti and Shan admiring a mosaic floor; Graham and Kjersti ready for lunch in the town[6]. Kentish easy summer scenery. I always enjoy "painterly" photographs (as does Rod, I led to believe) so it was no hardship to return to Boughton-under-Blean (BuB) after lunch and prepare to stride out into the Kentish idyll. Stupidly, I chose to wear shorts in the clement weather. As a country dweller, I should've realised there would be lovely fresh new nettles along every path. Fortunately dock leaves were plentiful, too, so I was able to mitigate the damage down to creepy-crawly skin. I have to say my companions were more sympathetic with my plight than I'd have been with theirs if the roles had been reversed. It should also be admitted that the earnest country stroll had a slight feeling of a pub crawl. This was excellent as there is a certain expectation from my Faringdon (old) mates that photographs are taken of obscure pubs and shared immediately with them via social media. Pubs that incorporate a walk get the maximum stars. We set out from BuB happy in the knowledge that a reasonably gentle half-hour walk would bring us to the Red Lion in Hernhill, Above (top-bottom, l-r): on the way to Hernhill we spotted our first oasthouse; one would hope some of the hops found their way to the Red Lion, to which Graham is leading the charge; some unusual (to those of us from London and Oxfordshire) local brews?; the local pastoral peace (2); Kjersti and Rod surveying some parkland. Sadly the beers at the Red Lion turned out to be from a little further afield with Tenterden being the only being the only pukka tipple from Kent. The Griffin was brewed at Fullers in London. None of us really cared, though, sitting outside in the sun at this 14th century inn and contemplated a forest walk up to the highest point in the area. We didn't quite make it to the top but revelled in the Kent countryside before heading off for a delicious spicy supper at the the Korean Cowgirl at Cave Hotel and Golf Resort on BuB's outskirts. Isle of Thanet. The next morning we departed for the Isle of Thanet, heading for Botany Bay and our next hotel which had sweeping sea views but was miles from anything much else. This was not a bad thing because we's planned for coastal walks and both Broadstairs and Margate were a reasonable walk away (each about 2.5 miles away with busses and taxis to return us to our centre point). There are significant white cliffs along this piece of coast, especially en route to Broadstairs, which is an attractive seaside town, probably a little posher than Margate, but the latter is on the ascent, being influenced by the influx of artists looking for a relatively cheap place to hang out and probably also in the hope of hanging out with Tracy Emin. There is also the Turner Contemporary museum on the seaside[7] but that is for tomorrow ... A high point for me (actually I believe all of us) was our evening meal at
Endnotes
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