6th April, Mrs Turnstone and I were in Woodbridge, Suffolk, for a change of air and scene. A walk across a little level crossing brought us out of town to a bench with an untidy patch of willow scrub behind us and the estuary before us; that was where we were looking, with shelduck, gulls, crows and many different waders. I used to be more confident in identifying these when I could count on using my beach-side lunch breaks from work; however today there were knots, redshanks, oystercatchers, curlews and a whimbrel, as well as oystercatchers, an egret and a few crows.
I would have left the bench happy to have seen these, but there was something else behind us. Not the goldfinches that were highlighted by the pollen-laden pussy willow, but a real singer, a nightingale, happy to have arrived here safely.
Will he and his mate spend the summer in this – to many human eyes – scruffy eyesore? It would be good to think many people will hear him. Mrs T and I are glad to have heard him, newly arrived from the South, just as many of the birds on the mud were preparing to fly to their Northern summer homes.
In 1660 it was clear that Oliver Cromwell’s son Richard did not have the confidence of the Parliament, the people, nor, crucially, the Navy and Army. Charles II, son of the executed Charles I, was on the Continent, hoping to return in peace, without fighting. A large contingent of the Navy was at anchor in the Downs, sheltered water opposite Deal, near Dover. Samuel Pepys, a young and talented civil servant was on board the Nazeby with Lord Sandwich, a senior official involved with the delicate negotiations to bring the King home and restore civilian government.
It was not all work and no play:
“This afternoon I first saw France and Calais, with which I was much pleased, though it was at a distance.” (from “The Diary of Samuel Pepys” by Samuel Pepys, 9.4.1660.
I still get a thrill to see France, here at Dover Castle evidenced by an horizon that is thicker where the hills and cliffs of the Pas de Calais stand tall.
We pray for peace in Britain and Europe, and we pray that the thrill of going to new or old holiday destinations becomes the enjoyment of the company of our dear ones, an enjoyment that passes over into the coming months back home.
On this day in 1826 Charles Lamb replies to John Dibdin who has written from Hastings, Sussex, where Charles and Mary Lamb had enjoyed many walks on their own holidays.
Let me hear that you have clamber’d up to Lover’s Seat; it is as fine in that neighbourhood as Juan Fernandez, as lonely too, when the Fishing boats are not out; I have sat for hours, staring upon a shipless sea. The salt sea is never so grand as when it is left to itself. One cock-boat spoils it. A sea-mew or two improves it.
By the way, there’s a capital farm house two thirds of the way to the Lover’s Seat, with incomparable plum cake, ginger beer, etc.
from “The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6 Letters 1821-1842
Four miles from Hastings, the Lovers’ Seat is on the Fairlight cliff, seen here from Pett Level on a day when clouds were forming at the cliff top. Although the beach often has families enjoying the sand that lies below the shingle seen here, a little way off are quiet spots where one can stop and stare. A rare solitude for Lamb, the convinced Londoner.
Where and when today can I find a few minutes of solitude with God and creation?
Juan Fernandez is a group of Islands in the Pacific Ocean belonging to Chile; it includes Robinson Crusoe Island, though that name was not in use in 1826.
We came across this gate while walking in Sussex. When we got home I saw that there were a few stories to be heard – or seen – here.
This is where a track crosses the railway, or better, the other way about, because the track was there well before the railway was built. There was a station here, though few passengers. The station had a wooden platform, wooden shelter and no lighting, oil, gas or electric. Not surprisingly. there is little to be seen of the station, nor of the crossing keeper’s cottage.
The footpath is on the Brede Level marshland. It must get very muddy, so someone has added cobbles to make the foot crossing dry. The crossing keeper would surely have kept the gates open to trains, closed to road vehicles, so the position was something of a sinecure, or a job for an elderly worker still strong enough to manage the heavy gates. There were fewer road vehicles than trains. A lightweight farm gate either side of the track is all that’s needed.
The old pedestrian gate is a picture; I guess it’s XIX Century. Its new galvanised post suggests that a surveyor did not want to scrap this unique specimen – the one on the opposite side is quite different, but both were clearly handmade by carpenter and blacksmith, probably in the South Eastern Railway works at Ashford. No question of an off-the-peg gate here. Note the decorative work on the top hinge, and the swivelling pulley cover to keep fingers safe; its makers took pride in their work. The gate frame will have been made of hardwood, possibly English oak, and when the upright palings had perished a sheet of marine plywood was substituted. Railwaymen seem to have had a soft spot for this gate over the last 150 years or so.
Modern technology is represented by the telephone: drivers of slow moving vehicles are warned to call the signaller for the all clear before crossing the railway. We arrived here by foot downhill from Udimore where King Edward III once stayed. He was supervising defensive fortifications at nearby Winchelsea in 1350 when the Spanish fleet came into sight and gave battle, ending in an English victory, witnessed by Queen Phillipa from the top of the track we are following.
Since then a naval safe haven has become a saltmarsh, supporting sheep beside the river; and the sea is now some distance away.
In the distance across the marsh is a hill with a village and pub, a destination for our walk. A shared walk, a shared meal; reminders of why we chose to share all things, for better or worse, forty-three years ago.
Here is the beach at Pett Level, Sussex, a few miles west of Brighton. Today we have a Londoner’s reflections on the seaside and walking around Sussex, up to 15 miles a day. Mary Lamb was in Brighton with her brother Charles and a friend. She is writing to Dorothy Wordsworth up in the Lake District. Seaside holidays 200 years ago! A little taste of her summer in our winter.
I resolved to learn to look out of the window, a habit I never could attain in my life, and I have given it up as a thing quite impracticable—yet when I was at Brighton last summer, the first week I never took my eyes off from the sea, not even to look in a book. I had not seen the sea for sixteen years.
Mrs. Morgan, who was with us, kept her liking, and continued her seat in the window till the very last, while Charles and I played truant and wandered among the hills, which we magnified into little mountains and almost as good as Westmoreland scenery. Certainly we made discoveries of many pleasant walks which few of the Brighton visitors have ever dreamed of—for like as is the case in the neighbourhood of London, after the first two or three miles we were sure to find ourselves in a perfect solitude.
I hope we shall meet before the walking faculties of either of us fail. You say you can walk fifteen miles with ease,—that is exactly my stint, and more fatigues me; four or five miles every third or fourth day, keeping very quiet between, was all Mrs. Morgan could accomplish.
God bless you and yours. Love to all and each one.
I am ever yours most affectionately M. LAMB.
From The Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, 1796-1820, Edited by E. V. Lucas
This world belongs to the gulls, waders, ducks and herons, and perhaps to the birdwatchers and the wader-shod man who disappeared into the wreck with his spaniel.
Just like most of Europe, Kent is baking under a heat wave but as we know, mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun; starting from an early age. My two-and-a-half year old grandson was called in by his mother, who was ready for her siesta. ‘I can’t come in for a nap, the sky’s awake!’
I don’t doubt that a nap would have done good to both parent and child, but being awake and watchful can be good too!
Surely it was a day like this when the fiery chariot swung low to collect the Prophet Elijah. Elisha was certainly watching carefully. (2 Kings 2)
Izaak Walton wrote a charming little book on Angling, ranging through many topics, including the trout in all its varieties. We often see them in Canterbury, indeed I was once presented with an excellent trout, caught by one of my pupils, whose mother would not let it into the house, but he did not want to waste it. It was not as big as a salmon, but plenty of ‘rare meat’ for two. That fish had an empty belly, in November, but was caught on a grain of sweetcorn.
There is also in Kent, near to Canterbury, a Trout (called there a Fordig Trout) a Trout (that bears the name of the Town [Fordwich] where ’tis usually caught) that is accounted rare meat, many of them near the bigness of a Salmon, but known by their different colour, and in their best season cut very white; and none have been known to be caught with an Angle, unless it were one that was caught by honest Sir George Hastings, an excellent Angler (and now with God) and he has told me, he thought that Trout bit not for hunger, but wantonness; and ’tis the rather to be believed, because both he then, and many others before him have been curious to search into their bellies what the food was by which they lived; and have found out nothing by which they might satisfy their curiosity.
This morning the weather had changed. My friend and I would only manage an hour of gardening before the sleet drove us indoors. The grass was too wet to cut, the ground had become claggy and difficult to work.
We did want to do something useful but once my workmate had gathered a barrow load of moss from the lawn, we called it a day.
These gulls were less bothered by the weather, sitting on the Mormon church roof. From what I had heard earlier this morning, I suspect they had already checked out the park nearby for worms and scraps. Now they were digesting and keeping out of dogs’ way. Later the dustcart was due, always worth a glance from a scavenger’s eye! In a few hours the tide will have turned at Whitstable, and who knows what may turn up?
One thing is sure: this mob will fly off there together, making a terrific racket, unlike this morning, sitting sociably and all but silently, on the church roof.
The ancient Blean Wood is behind the young growth and scrub here.
Barriers and ‘Road Closed’ signs gloated across the big roundabout, cutting us off from our intended walk. ‘We could go to Victory Wood’, suggested Mrs Turnstone, so we did.
Trees growing where once was farmland – but before that, for thousands of years, there were trees.
The Woodland Trust began planting Victory Wood in 2005 before many of us had realised how urgently we need to increase our forest cover in England. 2005 is 200 years since the battle of Trafalgar, when Admiral Nelson, on board HMS Victory, defeated the French and Spanish navies. Victory, like all ships of the line in those days, was constructed chiefly from English, even Kentish Oak. There was good money for timber, and landowners did not always replace felled trees.
The sea, in the background here, transported thousands of oaks to Chatham Naval Yards from this site.
Much of the land we walked today had been cleared for agriculture post 1945, but 60 years later it was being returned to its natural state, a process that continues as staff and volunteers monitor the growth of different species.
A ladybird was basking in the November sunshine.And a pretty crab apple caught the eye.
Will Turnstone 