Sunday 8th March 2015

Saturday.

We were awoken at half two by the most awful racket. It sound like one, if not two, banshees outside, screaming and going off on one. Turns out it was two badgers having a fight. It went on for about ten minutes, jools who looked out, said they were tumbling head over heels biting each other, and rolling down the street. We did go back to sleep, but it took some time.

Jools was still awake at half five, but I did manage to got some zeds. The sun was rising, there was cloud cover, but the rising sun looked like it was setting the sky on fire, but as the sun rose, the colours faded.

What t do with the day, as last weekend we slaved in the garden, surely we deserved some R&R? Well, you will not be surprised to learn, I had a plan. A plan to visit three orchid sites, not that any would be in bloom yet, but to look at the rosettes, take some snaps, and generally be out in the sunshine.



So, after breakfast, I loaded all my camera gear in the car and we drove the short distance to Kingsdown. I have seen the orchids there a few times, but like every year, finding the exact location is tricky, but after 'getting our eyes in' as it were, and after ten minutes we found three small rosettes. I snapped them.

Back up the narrow main road through the village, back to Ringwould and onto the Deal Road.

At Samphire Hoe, they have laid a new path, right over where the thousands of spikes grow. However, they are hardy little buggers, and sure enough, I found a few well developed rosettes, all of them Early Spider, as they were at Ringwould. As usual, there had been some mild flooding at the Hoe, but once the weather warms up, it seems to dry out, and I am sure we will soon see the thousands of spikes.

Originally, we had planned to go to Sheppy, as we have not been there for many months, maybe even a year. But due to the poor night's sleep, we decided to just go to Stockbury, call in at the Medway Services for a burger and then head home. Up the M20 to Maidstone, then up the A249 through Detling and up onto the downs, turning off parking on the edge of the road.

There is a space that has been cleared so that the Early Purple Orchids are not crowded out, so we made for there, and at first we saw no sign, but on the far side, in bright sunshine were two very large rosettes, and many, many smaller ones. There are going to be a splendid sight in about a month. We walked down the site, through the small wood and through dappled sunlight, everywhere, bluebells were shooting up, and will also be a wonderful sight in about a month, we love it here more than at Kings Wood due to the fact so few people come here.



A quick drive from there takes us to Medway Services: we park and find the place rammed with people! Its never like this, but after we had queued for our order, the people had vanished, like an old oak table. Burger King might be fast food, but I don't think once a month or two doesn't hurt. We did also have onion rings and cheesy chilli bites. It was to be our main meal of the day, as waiting for us at home, for a mid afternoon treat was the cheesecake I made on Friday, now all cooled down and ready for eating.



Traffic was very heavy, we guessed Londoners heading for Margate to catch some early spring sunshine, and indeed once we turned off and drove towards Canterbury and Dover, traffic was very much lighter. Anyway, all we had to do was find some vegetables for dinner on Sunday, and we could go home and have cheesecake.

And the cheesecake was wonderful. Really not too sweet and full of lovely vanilla flavour.



Oh look, its three o'clock and the football is about to start. Jools takes as her cue to head to bed for a snooze, and I then sit and fret over whether City will recover from the slip we suffered midweek. No worries as after a quiet first half hour, City ran in four in the half hour either side of half time, and ran out 4-1 winners, but could and should have scored many more. Other results went our way, and we are now just one point off the top spot, but still lie 4th. Had we have won midweek, we would be two points clear. Lets hope we don't take it easy on another team this season then!

Cheesy beans on toast for dinner, played some Siouxsie and the Banshees, by eight I was shattered, and so was Jools, so wondering how I ever had the energy to go out clubbing and disco dancing, we went to bed for some quality, non-badger-interrupted sleep.

We hoped.