Saturday 10th June 2017

I have now been living in Dover, or near it, for ten years now. I moved down on about the 9th June 2007, after a two month voyage around Indonesian Papua looking for oil, and after spending three of my previous four weeks shore leave in Kent with Jools, I made the move pretty much permanent. We celebrated by going to the Welsh Marches for a week's holiday, and nearly got drowned out. We also went to Stourhead for the first time, and due to a cock up in booking a room near Bath, we ended up staying on the estate in the pub, and able to walk round the estate in the evening, and woke at half five to see dawn arrive. It was rather magical.

My seafaring days are long behind me, I now send other out to sea to inspect and write reports, and I "manage". Just manage, I suppose. And Jools and I have been married for eight years come this September, Molly is 12 in July, and the twins are as old as they are, I could check.

We are just back from a day trip to deepest Suffolk, but you will have to wait until tomorrow to read about that. Anyway, the weekend is slipping through our fingers. As always.

Saturday morning, we managed to lay in until half seven. How rock n roll is that? I lay in bed trying to guess what the weather was like outside, and also guess the time since the clock radio was deemed to be "too bright". Anway, hearing the boiler heating up the water meant it was after half six. Just five more minutes he said falling back to sleep.

We could have a lay in, as the sun wasn't due to burn the clouds off until ten, and I needed the sun to get the best out of the orchids I planned to photograph at Pegwell Bay later.

Jools rises at half eight, and we both have a bad case of wooly heads caused by too much sleep! a luxury this time of year. I make bacon butties and brews for us, and by the time we have both eaten and cleared up, there is sunshine outside, and I can hear the orchids calling.

We go out taking the Sandwich road; my old commute, but nothing familiar about it now as the road passes through the fields south of Whitfield, the first of several thousand new houses are being completed, and a new roundabout is bing finished. Quite how services will cope with the population of the town nearly doubling, we don't know, but jams that we have now will get worse, for sure.

At Sandwich, there are signs for free buses taking people to Dreamland in Margate for an event. What event we don't know, but only one bus out of dozens visible is moving. Turns out it was a gig by the cartoon group, Gorillaz fronted by Damon Albarn of Blur. I knew nothing of the gig, and even less at this point, so we drove on, thinking how packed Margate would be, especially as now the sun had cleared the sky of clouds, and it was going to be a glorious day.

We park by the viking ship, grab the camera gear and take the steps down to the old hoverport. The port has been abandoned for nearly 30 years, and nature has reclaimed it, to the extent it is an important unofficial reserve, and worth seeking out for plants and butterflies. People also walk their dogs here, and when the old power station was blown up, we watched it from here.

I had returned here to look for the Bee Orchids, as two weeks ago there were very few, as a result of the lack of rain through the winter and spring. I hoped with the rain in the last two weeks, there might be more showing.

But first we go to look for a mutant Southern Marsh a friend had seen last week. But we fail to see one with heavily spotted leaves, but do find many new spikes as the colony spreads further and further on the site.

It is at this point I should point out that as a result of what happened next, I learned a lot about what to do when one finds a new or rare species of butterfly. I have learned so much with orchids, as one I day I will tell the story of the variant LSO I saw last week. Anyway, Jools goes off to search by herself, and I go to look for Bees nearer the sea.

It was at this point Jools sees and snaps an unusual butterfly. How unusual? It is found in Jamaica and Texas. Not Kent. She does not know that at that point, but does know its worth snapping, so does that, taking 8 shots with her compact camera, and trying to call me over to see it. But I am in an orchid-induced trance, looking for spikes, and do not hear her.

When we do meet up, I look at her shots, and agree it is something special, so we go back to where she saw it, but fail to find it again. Oh well.

We split up again, and in the shade of a shrub, I find three Bee spikes, in good shape and worth snapping. Ths few in the open I had found we already over. In total I find nine spikes, and snap all bar one. This is on a site that last year produced hundreds of spikes.

We meet back up near the steps, and walk back up the car, where the grassed area is now getting full of families out enjoying the sun, but I had only more orchids in mind.

A short drive away is the nature reserve, and parking at Ebbsfleet we walk back over the main road into the reserve, Jools bailed out on this and stayed near to the entrance reading, whilst I ventured into the reserve to look at the dirty interbreeding dachts. The CSO, Southern Marsh and Heath Spotted would all interbreed if given the chance, and produce varying mutated offspring. This is on top of how widly variable they already are, so trying to identify any where two or more species grow together is hard. Hard, and I have given up.

But seeing these deeply coloured and patterned spikes in the deep undergrowth is just stunning, and an orchid is an orchid, even if it's mudbblood, right? I find dozens of spikes, some hard if not impossible to get to, but I take shots I can, from a distance so showing the leaves too. I walk for an hour, round and round, checking near to the sea in case a Lizard or two had been blown along from Sandwich Bay: it will happen one day. But not this year. I do find the CSO responsible for the SMO mutations, and amazing how two tiny spikes could do so much interbreeding, but thanks to insects, they do.

Happy with that, I walk back to Jools and we walk back to the car, to go to Preston to the butcher, as the freezer is empty except for wild garlic sausages and bags of home made chilli. So, through the fields to the edge of where the Stour used to meet the sea, and now at least 5 miles in land. Chicken, steak, beef joint and other stuff I buy, which I hope to turn into wonderful meals at some point. I also get pork pies for lunch, which will be as soon as we get in as we were hungry bunnies by then.

Back home the same way, arriving home at one, and ready for lunch. With a bottle of chilled beer, I cut the pies up and serve with some savoury snacks I also bought. And it is perfect.

The butterfly is revealed to be a Julia, or more accurately, Iulia, and the only confirmed previous sighting was in 1937. But in the days of being able to by chrysalis online, clearly an escaped captive, and depsite me thinking it very big deal, no one else did. So, Jools saw and snapped a butterfly normally seen the other side of the Atlantic.

There are shots to process, music to listen to, and the afternoon to fill, and generally try not to fall asleep. This is not helped with yet another football match of the season that refuses to die: Scotland v England, a World Cup Qualifier, and lots to play for. But coming three weeks after the end of the season, many player did not have their heart in it, and after England score with 20 minutes to go, that seemed, it. But, two great free kicks put Scotland 90 seconds from an unlikely win. Only, failing to keep possession, a ball knocked into the box, and Harry Kane slams the ball home.

SEASON OVER. For sure.

We sit outside watching the dusk creep over the garden, reflecting on a great day, and thinking of Sunday, spent mostly in a car driving back and returning from Suffolk.