Day Eleven: A trip to Samphire Hoe

A brisk 90 minute walk at dawn, up hill and down dale, decorated like a William Morris design with the usual complement of rabbits, squirrels and assorted birds. Nearly back in Elham, I greeted an old, old man dressed in his Sunday best, on his way to church. I slowed to his pace and we talked about how he had recently moved to Elham, along with his daughter and son-in-law, having spent much of their life in and around Romford, Essex. Sadly, he had lost his son seven years ago, and his wife twenty years ago. A passing neighbour greeted him as "George". We parted at the lytch gate. Almost every day someone stops to talk with me. It was the same sitting in the garden of the Quaker Meeting House in Canterbury later that morning - Friends came over to talk.

In the afternoon we visited Samphire Hoe, a somewhat underwhelming country park beneath the Shakespeare Cliffs, created from land reclaimed from the sea by the spoil removed from the construction of the Channel Tunnel. The car park was nearly full: clearly a popular destination for a Sunday 'blow'. Samphire, sea cabbage and sea buckthorn (sanddorn in German - we encountered sanddorn saft in Stralsund last summer) were all thriving in the harsh littoral environment. A stiff breeze was whipping up the white horses as we walked over a kilometre along the sea wall. At the far end of the walk, a middle-aged man with his young daughter were standing watching the waves crash onto a pebble beach and sibilantly scour the shingle. Without ambiguity his appearance, including a lengthy beard, showed him to be an Orthodox Jew. A little while later, as we were arriving back at the car park, he approached me, explaining that his car battery had failed, and asked if I could help restart his car using jump leads. From the other side of the car park I drove our car over to his, and opened the bonnet to expose the car battery. His (now) three daughters were all in their car, and his wife hovered, expressing considerable gratitude. I concluded that the length of my beard, and having a daughter, must have allowed him to feel a sufficient degree of association that, out of the many people in the car park, he felt comfortable requesting my help.