Saturday 28th January 2023

The last weekend of the month, and the first after pay day, which means I could order some socks. And at Tesco I could replenish the wine stocks with a box of 3l of te cheapest red.

Being the end of January, it is now getting light when we set off for Tesco, the neon lights of the retail park at Whitfield as daylight grows stronger. Somehow we had used double the fuel as last week, with only an half hour's drive to Stodmarsh last week being the extra driving we did.

Tesco has Valentine's cards, presents and also Easter eggs and other stuff celebrating days in the forthcoming months.

We had a list of stuff to get, not just beer and wine, and lots of vegetables as we are having Jen, Mike and his new girlfriend over for lunch on Sunday.

If I remember to get the chicken out of the freezer, of course.

That all done, and somehow, ten quid cheaper than last week even with wine and Belgian beer, we headed home for first breakfast, coffee, then bacon butties and more brews once we had put the shopping away.

At ten we went out, only for a warning light to come on as the engine turned over. It seems a bulb in the headlight had gone, but the car knew which one it was. On the way to Lyminge, there is a Halfords, now that the one on Dover closed over the pandemic, so we tootled along the A20, over the top of Shakespeare Down and into town.

Jools found the bulb and a nice young lady fitted it for us, getting access from the wheelarch via a small panel. All done in ten minutes for fifteen quid.

And road legal again.

Back onto the motorway for the one junction before taking the turning for the back road to Hythe, though we headed inland through Etchinghill to Lyminge. And I realised it was years since we had driven this road, as we have been coming to the orchid fields through Barham usually, not from Folkestone.

The road climbs and turns round the foot of the downs before levelling out as it approaches Lyminge.

We go through the village, past the rows of the parked cars, and the small library in the building of the village railway station once the line from Folkestone to Canterbury closed at the end of the 50s.

The village of Lyminge stretches along the main road and around the former station, but the church is situated a short way along Church Street (of course), on a low mound, from under which the largest winterbourne, The Nailbourne, rises. It has been a site of worship since Roman times, maybe even before then.

We were here because in 2019, major excavations revealed the remains of the 7th century chapel of Queen Ethelburga. It was uncovered under the path that now leads under the single flying buttress to the porch, and since the dig ended, the path relaid, but with the outline of the chapel clearly showing in different colour tarmac.

I photographed the stained glass, as the ongoing plan to revisit churches already done, but with the big lens as I always seem to find something new to do in them. This time the glass through the big glass of the zoom lens.

Before leaving we walk down to the Well to revisit the source of the Nailbourne, some twenty feet below the road, the clear and cold waters of the bourne come bubbling out of the ground before meandering across the verdant meadow.

We set the sat nav for home, and it leads us down to the bottom of the valley and up the other side through Acris. The bed of the Nailbourne was already dry, despite it being just a mile from the source, because the water table isn't high enough, and the water seeps through the chalk bedrock instead.

We travel down lanes that got ever narrower, with grass growing between the wheeltracks. The road much less travelled for sure.

At Swingfield, we were greeted by the sweep of a hedge made of native dogwood, its new shoots showing starkly red in the sunshine against the clear blue sky. We stop to take shots.

We get home in time for a brew and a chocolate bar before the football was going to start. But I had other plans, as I made tagine for our early dinner. Which, we ate before four as it smelled so darned good bubbling away in the oven.

Some flavoured couscous to go with it, and a glass of red vin out of the box.

Lovely.

Scully and I sit on the sofa until half seven in the evening, either listening to the reports of the three o'clock games, or watching the evening kick off.