Saturday 7th November 2020

The first weekend in November, and the weather was to be perfectly autumnal. Not wet and windy, but endless golden sunshine and little or no wind.

And with it being the second lockdown having begun, there was no point in churchcrawling, so what better than a walk in the woods? No orchids, but there would be fngi, and drifts of golden leaves to wade through.

And there was the long lost church to find.

A flickr-friend of mine went hunting for the remains of Poulton church a couple of weeks ago, and to his amazement, he found the marker stone, The Polton Stone, within ten minutes.

I have been waiting for a fine day to go and look for the stone myself.

Polton was said to be the poorest, most out of the way parish in Kent, but the start of the 19th century it only had a couple of cottages, and the church had been gone for three centuries.

An ancient stone was said to mark the location of St Mary.

Poulton, as it is spelt today, lays along a long narrow valley from Buckland, beyond the industrial estate where Jools and I worked at the box factory.

Two miles out of town, down a single track lane, there is the banger racing track, and just past that the road runs out. But in a nearby field, is a lichen covered marker, and that is the Polton Stone.

We drove down the lane, going slow in case there would be someone coming in the opposite direction, but there were none. Even today, Poulton is a small place, just a handful of houses and an abandoned farm, slowly rusting back to nature. And there is the banger track, a place we have only been to once, to see George take part in his last race nearly a decade ago. It was all locked up on Saturday, maybe not to open again.

After parking, I walk along the road to the field and see the stone right away, I just hoped there was a gate into the field so I didn't need to climb over the barbed wire fence.

There was, so we undid the rope, went in so I could take a couple of shots, and that was it: the 350th church of the Kent Church project, one that wasn't even there.

It reads. . ."Here did stand the parish church of Poulton mentioned in the Doomsday book IX under the title of Chenth in the hundred of Bewsborough".

And that is all there is to it, a stone barely as large as a tombstone, and hard to read due to the litchen covering the carved words.

We walk back to the car, lock the gate back and amble along to the Audi.

We see no cars back down Combe Valley, past the old box factory, now slowly crumbling in places, as output is a fraction of what it was. Then through the housing estate, past the football and athletic stadium and up past our old flat on Crabble Hill, before turning and heading out of Dover through Lydden.

The plan had been to go to where the orchids can be found each spring, but instead, we stop at the old railway bridge to walk down the bridleway to where we saw the Yellow Birdsnests in the summer. Not that they would be in "flower" now, but it might be interesting to see the desiccated stalks poking through the leaf litter.

The truth is that this lockdown hasn't really affected us so far. I have carried on working, either at home orin Hythe. Jools went shopping and there was no real difference from the week before. Travel for exercise is still allowed, so we parked up, I put the macro lens on my camera, afixed the ring flash too, asfter fitting new batteries, and off we went.

We saw nothing rare or excisiting, but the light walling through the bare branches onto the forest floor, covered with golden carpets of fallen leaves, was rather wonderful.

We did see a few fungi, I snapped much of what we saw. I even saw a few spikes of Broad Leaved Helleborines, heavy with full seed pods, waiting to set the set for future generations. We walk for an hour, then decide as it was near to lunchtime, we went home.

It was warm enough to have the back door open, at leasr until the sun moved further to the west and the back of the house fell into shade. I cook another roast dinner, using the ribs of beef from Sunday's meal again, using the pink cuts from the centre, wrapping those in silver paper to gently be warmed up. I make roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings and steam some veg before making some fresh gravy using the beef stock I made ten days back. It looked pale, but tasted fine.

So, we sat down at just gone one, popped the cork on a bottle of prosecco, poured a foaming glass each and toast ourselves. We eat and drink well, then wash up.

I go to lay down on the sofa to listen to football, and Jools went upstairs to watch a video on her laptop. We both fell asleep. We had slept well that night, but apparently needed some more sleep.

I woke up to hear the commentary be interrupted for a news bulletin. Trump was history.

I went to Twitter to see videos from all over the US showing them rush out to scream with joy and dance as they heard the news too. Seconds later, Norwich score the only goal of the game to win against Swansea.

In a year of unrelenting gloom and despair, this is a chink of sunlight, the world seems a much better place. Sometimes the nice guys do win, and good things do come to those who wait.

For now, I'll take that.

I watch more football, though it is dire stuff as Chelsea sweep Sheffield Utd aside, 4-1. I gave up at half time and put the radio on. We play Uckers, and Jools wins a close game. And that was it.