In Kentish fields - a welcome return and a stark reminder.

I know it's been too long since I've set finger to keyboard and I'm not even going to try to describe all the things that have happened since, at the end of July, I left Paris and headed for pastures new yet familiar; Ashford, Kent. The name doesn't quite summon up the same images as where I last laid my head, but brings a whole raft of new ones and judging by the first ten weeks, it's going to be just as memorable.

By the end of three months in Paris I'd been to at least three different gallery openings. In and around Ashford these are fewer and further between, but by the end of three months here I will have gone for three fabulous walks in the stunning Kentish and East Sussex countryside.

The view from the lifeboatmen's cottages across to the Seven Sisters - sheer cliffs of blinding white chalk undulating in peaks and troughs as far as the horizon - was simply spectacular. Never mind the fact that upon reaching our destination we realised we were an entire week late for the bus.

Munching on the tartest of blackberries brought a spot of child-like happiness to a wander along the Great Stour Way. Never mind the fact that tying a thin plastic bag of said fruit to my rucksack for later was akin to setting off an indigo paint bomb every time I moved my right leg.

However, for sheer pathos and points of interest, the eight-kilometre circuit to and from the little village of Appledore has been my highlight. I went to get some much needed inspiration for this blog - well, that and to avoid wasting a glorious late Autumn day on housework - and I found it, but not in the form first anticipated.

It wasn't the most auspicious of starts, as it turns out that Appledore pulls off the Ryan Airesque feat of having a railway station about two miles away from the village itself, where my walk started. Not relishing yomping along a main road, I was relieved to soon find a footpath veering off toward Appledore through a ripening cornfield. The stalks and leaves were reminiscent of sun bleached packing paper. They looked barely strong enough to hold the bulging ears and certainly not to deter rodent raiders from their sweet golden snack.

As I approached the village, camera poised, Mother Nature taught me a lesson: perfection can very rarely be photographed, as the now descending, mid-afternoon sun slanted its rays across the languid flow of the Royal Military Canal. Where variations in depth set the water rippling, showers of diamonds would seemingly hover in mid air like mist. That said, the refraction caused by these liquid gems meant taking a worthwhile shot was nigh-on impossible.

Once I'd joined the path though, I elected to walk with the sun behind me. The light now brought out the colour of every autumn leaf, every blade of grass and every particle in the clear, blue sky. I had to discipline myself, as otherwise I'd lose the day, snapping away, before I was half way around.

The Royal Military Canal - the third longest British military monument after Hadrian's Wall and Offa's Dike - that runs for 28 miles between Seabrook in Kent and Cliff End in East Sussex, began construction in 1804, in response to the threat of Napoleonic invasion. However, the only combat in evidence today was that age-old war of patience between the angler and his fishy foe. Over three quarters of those 28 miles had been dug by hand. Perhaps those engineers had taken inspiration from the resident badgers, whose excavations dotted the landward side of the embankment.

Despite the canal never having seen action - in either Napoleonic or Second World Wars - evidence of the readiness for it to do so sat in squat, concrete contrast to the nature around. Slipping (literally) down into the hexagonal pillbox was like slipping back 70 years. I could only wonder if a rifleman had once stood where I now stood, periodically peering nervously from the milk carton-size opening, waiting for an enemy that would never come.

What was surely coming now though was dusk and as I'd feared, I was going to have to up the pace if I was to cover the eight kilometres before nightfall. It seemed sacrilegious to quick-march past the ranks of majestic, russet-cloaked elms stopping only to retrieve my hat as another hawthorn branch snagged it off my head.

After ten minutes or so more of bank-side yomping, the path cut left up a road before heading into hilly farmland. Half way up an incline I glanced left along a ridge, where a lone tree and several electricity pylons stood silhouetted against a backdrop of field and sky, the colours of which had been distilled emerald and cobalt by the fading light.

Turning back now toward Appledore, the path now took me, first up then down, across pewter-grey furrows of newly-ploughed hills. However quickly I wanted to walk now, the soft, sticky clay underfoot was making the way distinctly heavier. Not as heavy, though, as I'd thought on first entering, nor as difficult as it could have been weighed down by more than my little backpack. I don't know whether it was the blush of red seeping through the clouds, or the memory of that pillbox sitting obsolete on the banks of the canal, but I suddenly remembered that it was Remembrance Day.

On this day we mark the loss of those who fell in fields of mud not unlike the ones through which I now walked, to be cut down, not unlike that field of corn I had first wandered blithely through. Though there were no poppies, scarlet roses marked the edge of rows of vines, that, it didn't take much to imagine in the dimming, resembled the lines of coiled, barbed wire upon which bodies lay bloodied and torn hundreds of miles from home.

At the summit of the final descent into Appledore a grassy hillock stands, upon which sits a makeshift bench. After an eight-mile trudge, most would welcome the jovial nature of the words inscribed on it: "Take a pew, enjoy the view." I declined the seat and stood taking in the peaceful serenity of the village below and before descending into civilisation once more. Down on the square, I sighted the church's flags, flying respectfully at half mast, so I offered up a quiet salute to heroes past and headed for the train...

...we will remember them.

 

Taking a closer look at the world

A friend of mine recently observed that on a beautiful, sunny day in Canterbury everybody seemed to be in a rush, few seemed to be taking the time to appreciate that rarest of occasions, a British summer's day. This travesty is, unfortunately, all too common in world where many become twitchy if a communication takes longer than a nano-second to be returned. So, this post is dedicated to taking a closer and longer look at the world, both natural and man-made and before and after the snap: be it the intricate make-up of petals on a flower; the wave-like effect of bark peeling from a tree or the water droplets skimming off the feathers of a bathing goose.

Many of the photos you'll see below are a result of me experimenting with the Macro function on my camera. These shots I then took home and played about with on i-Photo. I have divided them up and put them under four self-explanatory titles: 'Birds and Bees', 'Flowers and Trees', 'Wood, Metal and Concrete' and 'Plants plus People'. I hope you like them.

NB:Where they were taken is not really important, but there will be a short description under each picture/group if needed.

Birds and Bees:

Wildfowl of the Serpentine:

Close-up of Egyptian goose plumage

Mooching like a moorhen. 

Flowers and Trees

Daisy chain

 

Wood, Metal and Concrete

Locks in Hyde Park

Time for art plastique (métal) a Marseille

    

Books and what they're made of

Writing on the wall (or door)

Plants plus people

The unexpected garden (15eme)

Aix-treme chic

 

These last four photos are among my favourites from the last year and almost purely because I came across them unexpectedly.

The lovers' names scratched into the bark of a tree, clichéd but, by tweaking the saturation levels, the sap becomes bloody and the image takes on a sinister quality.



The computer's off, there can't be anything worth seeing on the screen, or can there?

Photo by Stephen Gildersleve

The seed pod that fell onto just that spot on my rucksack


and (my favourite photo of the year) .... a tree's detritus caught and collected in the eddy of a flushed out gutter.



Small things, unexpected things, things found where you wouldn't normally find them or found by simply looking a little closer. So, next time you're out in the sunshine with your iPhone, just let your eyes wander a little...you never know what you might find.

Just a quick addendum...

My friend Steve, who took the computer photo and has been to more places in the world than I can name, is currently compiling a video scrapbook of one-second recordings taken each day of his life this year - things that meant something to him, summed up the moment, or simply caught his eye. - He's up around the 120s at the moment, but by the time he's finished, he'll have just over six minutes of footage that could mean something different every time he looks at it. A year's worth of memories, emotions, weather, people and nature distilled into 365 seconds of film. - Why pick that one second out of the thousands more that took place each day? "Why not?" is what I say. Now, that's what I call living for the moment!

Escape to La Roche-Guyon

Looking for a spot of more far-flung escapism, my friend Dan and I ventured out into the Isle de France to the wonderfully picturesque village of La Roche-Guyon. Nestled at the foot of a chalk escarpment, in the scenic Val de L'Oise, you couldn't wish for a more perfect afternoon away from the city.

Arriving by taxi, in the searing heat, from Mantes la Jolie - buses at mid-afternoon in this part of the world are rare birds indeed - we were right in time for lunch. Save for a few hardy merchants selling saucisse seches beneath the colonnades of la mairie, everyone was enjoying their dej. Following suit we tucked into gammon and chips (jambon grillé) and the most welcome of cold pressions, while tapping the locals for info on the best sites to see.

We were both keen to head up to the ruined tower on the hill we'd noticed on arrival, so, after taking a post-lunch stroll along the Seine, we made our way to the Chateau de La Roche-Guyon. Built up against the chalk cliff itself, the castle contains a melange of different architectural styles ranging from 12th to 18th century. Facing the river are additions made mostly in the 18th Century and the grand designs of duc Alexandre de La Rochefoucauld and his daughter la duchesse d'Enville. Intricate ironwork gates and ornate pavilions catch the eye, but it is the hidden, older buildings that take the breath away (quite literally)

Various views of the chateau

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Coat of arms of the de La Rochefoucaulds

A very grand entrance!

At the eastern side is the imposing cour d'honneur, flanked by a round tower and abutting the cliff that contains a series of tunnels, storerooms and bunkers hollowed out by the Germans during World War 2. Inside the grand entrance a stunning stained glass window refracted a rainbow of coloured shards of light across the otherwise austere stonework.



Upstairs, amongst the usual trappings of life two centuries ago, we found immense, exquisite tapestries that both of us thought must have been paintings, until we saw the weave. There was also a room of curiosities, containing myriad stuffed animals and mysterious balls of rock. Perhaps most curious of all was the red, leather sofa placed half way along a medieval walkway. What with temperatures touching 30º, we could only imagine duc Alex was on intimate terms with Palin and co.'s Spanish Inquisition.

In a passageway, just past a little, nondescript courtyard, a small sign read "There are 250 steps to the top..." Said steps began in a regular, square-cut fashion as they spiralled up and into the building. At one point, however, the stairway opened into the fresh air, the chalk cliff making up one wall and a wooden framework the other. We then plunged into the cliff itself, into a tunnel bored through the smooth white rock, the steps, worn down through the centuries, turning into treacherous, down-curving shelves, ready to catch the unwary climber.

Now, both and Dan and I have become quite obsessed, over recent months, with George Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire ("Game of Thrones" for those only watching it), a smorgasbord of war, sex, political intrigue and dragons, set roughly around 200AD. So, as we wound our way up the rough-hewn passage, it became hard to rein in wild imaginations: the dwarf, Tyrion, climbing the Eyrie to win his innocence in front of mad Lysa Arryn; Varys creeping through the bowels of the Red keep, sewing intrigue and betrayal, or Grand-Maester Pycelle trudging his way to his ravens' roost (now dovecote) with some message of foreboding.

"No, no, my Lord Eddard. After you, I insist!"

"After you, my Lord Tyrion."

When, finally, we emerged once more into the air, and then into the remains of the medieval dungeon keep, each grey, stone cell, with mere arrow slits for light, became, without much of a sortie into the imagination, the prisons of the noble, but naïve, Eddard Stark, the bitter, but rueful, Theon Greyjoy and the arrogant, but honest, Jaime Lannister. There was even a genuine, 12th century privy, for the disposal of m'lord's night soil.

...and you thought Turkish toilets were bad!

Gazing over the view from the keep, over village, symmetrically laid out gardens,  and further on to the wide, looping Seine and mottled green/white cliffs, gave us a fleeting sense of power - from here, you could defend against anything. Come the Second World War the Germans must have been less certain.

...I don't know either

Back downstairs we took a trip into the 1940s and entered into the pallid chill of Rommel's caves. Square incisions into the walls indicated shelves on which the sheltering soldiers stored tinned foodstuffs, ammunition or clothing. Larger tunnels, with room-sized hollows carved into the side, could have been dormitories in which they cowered from allied bombing raids. A sound system broadcast the sounds of perpetual panic through the tunnels, though, in truth, they needn't have bothered as the sense of history was as palpable as the damp seeping through the chalk. In the final, cavernous room a monstrous contraption consisting of a chair surrounded by bands of metal connected, by a cobweb of wires, to an array of antique machines, conjured up images of unspeakable inhumanity. No labels were present so imagination, as it had done for most of the day, filled in the blanks.

The day finished as it had begun, with a couple of cold ones at the local, the conversation barely touched the realities of the working week ahead and as we poured ourselves out of the taxi a little later on, both Dan and I agreed that to really take a break from it all you need to let your mind wander.