Saturday 19th November 2022

The weekend.

At last.

And for the weekend, Saturday was to bring sunshine, but Sunday would bring wind and rain.

But, as always, no one told Mother Nature, and Saturday was graced with thick and dark cloud.

But first: shopping.10% of our weekly shop goes on stuff for the local foodbank. Such things should not be needed, but it is.Around the store, just about everything is well stocked, except the fresh fruit which like it has been most of the year, thin on the ground.

Back home to put our goodies away, the to have two breakfasts, forst one of fruit, then followed by bacon.

Same every week.

And then: time to go out.

I am posting my top 50 Kent churches on Twitter, or until that site crashes, and I realise I needed to go back to a couple: Newnham and Wychling. Which meant on the way I could stop to look at Stone Chapel beside what used to be Watling Street, now the old A2, between Faversham and Sittingbourne.

A half hour run up the A2, through Faversham. Jools dropped me off at the junction opposite the chapel, and I have to scamper across the main road.

That done.

I have wanted to visit Stone Chapel just outside of Faversham for some while, but parking here is very difficult.

Yesterday, with the plan to visit Newnham and Doddington, it seemed too good an opportunity to visit the ruin.

You can see the remains from the old A2, Watling Street, and doesn't look that much, but worth visiting for the project, I thought.

In fact, close up it appears to be part Roman or made with Roman remains, the nave walls on both side have layers of clearly Roman tiles.

I am currently reading an archaeological paper which doubts the conclusions reached on the English Heritage site.

It is a less travelled path across the fields to the copse with the ruins in front. The field had been left fallow, so was full of Annual Mercury, Common Groundsel and a few Shepherd's Purse.

Straight away the courses of red Roman tiles were obvious, and even to me, seemed to form a square. The rest of the church was built of flint, and is crumbling still. Not bad for ruins of a building abandoned in the 1530s.

Ferns grow out of the mortar, quite a rare ecosystem here in Kent.

The stone altar is still in situ in the Chancel, or what remains of it. A step leads down into the nave, and was worn with steps of nearly a thousand years of use.

An amazing an mysterious place.

I walk back over the field, wait to cross the road and join Jools back in the car. From here it was a ten minute drive to Newnham where I was pretty sure the church would be open.

Outside, you can't tell how dull and gloomy it is, but inside a church, then you can tell. In the church, it was dark, almost night, but the camera found things to focus on until I found the lightswitches.

The church has no stained glass, and few memorials, but otherwie a few things to see. But good to have visited the first church and it was open.

Next up it was one of my favourites: Doddington.

A couple of miles further on, and up the hill is the gruesomely dedicated The Beheading of St John the Baptist, though named for the feast day rather than the even itself.

A walk over the litter-strewn and narrow lane, and into the churchyard, where the low clapboarded tower is wonderful in itself.

But inside an unusual double squint, wall paintings of St Francis and St John the Baptist, a couple of fresh looking hatchings, a realy excentric roal coat of arms of an unknown monarch, but remarkable. In the churchyard, the wardens have worked with Plantlife to create fine wildflower meadows in the churchyard, turning God's Acre into something to support our native flora and fauna.

I take 150 or so shots, then walk back to the car, and take Jools to the next target: Wychling.

Wychling is a remote church, pretty much without a village, but the chuch lays back from the road, through a meadow and then through the bare churchyard, the chuch with its tower hidden by mature trees.

The website said it would be open, but I had my doubts, and I was proven right as the porch door was locked.

So, it was a long walk back to the car where Jools was waiting.

Our final call was to be Hollingbourne, which I seem to remember my last visit was cut short.

So, it was just a five mile trip over the downs, so set the sat nav, and off we went. Thing is, roads round there are narrow, and partially flooded after the week of rain, so it was quite the adventure, and a couple of times we said, "NZ Tony would love this", as we went down another road barely wider than the car.

The other thing I should mention is that there was a fire at one of the oldest pubs in Kent, in the village. Not that I thought that would be a problem.

But it was, as the road past the hotel is closed while they try to secure the building.

No matter, if we could get to the M20, turn off at Leeds, then there was another way into the village there.

So, down gravel strewn lanes, and others so covered in fallen leaves they were not really roads at all. To the A249, down the hill and onto the motorway for one junction.

We turned off and went under the motorway and HS1, only to find the road through the village closed, for different reasons, this side too. Looking at the map, the chuch and a few houses sit isolated in the middle of the two closed roads. Nowhere to park.

I gave up, and we decded to drive home.

Back to the motorway, and cruise back to the coast through Ashford, Hythe and Folkestone.

No firebombing this time, though.

Back in time for the second half of the League 1 game featuring the Old Farm Enemy, Ipswich. I turned it on as Town scored their second goal, and so turned it off again.

That's not how its supposed to happen.

And due to the world cup cancelling out a month of Prem and Championship football, there was no commentary on the radio, nor no videoprinter.

All a bit dull.

We have dinner: tacos and home made spiced chicken tenders and salsa.

It was spicy, but not too spicy.

And after that, no football to watch on the tellybox, so we just have Craig on the wireless, playing funk and soul.

Jools beats me at crib.

And that was it.

Phew.