Diagonal Walking

by Nick Corble

  I chose my eating place well, other than having my ears and most of my other sensibilities assaulted by one of those men who don’t appreciate just how loud their voice is. Maybe he couldn’t do anything about that, but football songs? Seriously? I needed to move as far away as possible, where I sat next to a family of three I’d seen earlier. I presumed they’d left; whereas there’d merely had the same problem. As I passed the top of Earl Street on the way back to my billet I passed the Deliveroo posse, and weaving my way back through the town it struck me that Maidstone was missing something. Homeless people. The first town of any size I’d been to other than WGC where this had been so. They must be doing something right.

  Funnily enough, the main headline on the BBC the next day was a plan to end rough sleeping. This was due to be announced by the Communities Secretary, the aptly named James Brokenshire. Seriously, you couldn’t make this stuff up. Give him any job but Communities Secretary. I got on my way. I was due to meet up with my younger sister, Sue. She was going to walk with me for two days and I needed to make our meeting point outside of town.

  Although we made our rendezvous without mishap, Sue was keen to find a loo. I could see she was going to need breaking in to the ways of diagonal walking. Within minutes, we were back into open countryside, following footpaths that took us through small Kentish villages such as Otham and Langley Heath, with their half-timbered houses (except with tan-coloured walls rather than the more traditional white) as well as converted oast houses to die for, although there was often very little else in these places, not even a pub or a school. Or even a church. Sue remarked how it was exactly these scenes that people probably conjured up when imagining a typical English village, although I had seen equally iconic sights elsewhere, notably in what I’d labelled Middle England.

  It didn’t take long before it became clear what the area did have. Fruit. And lots of it. Our first encounter with commercial cultivation was a nursery specialising in trees. We couldn’t work out what they were, so we asked a man sitting on a hay bale about thirty yards away.

  ‘Dick holes!’ he yelled back.

  It had been a perfectly civil question. Perhaps we’d misheard him.

  ‘Dick holes!’ he repeated.

  I smiled benignly. A later sign revealed them to be Farm Trees. How he got to Dick Holes from there we didn’t know.

  Farm trees are grown to provide firewood, fence posts or even raw material for furniture, and typically involve the use of hazel, chestnut or ash trees. What we’d seen were rows of saplings being reared for later planting. A long-term business if ever there was one. A profusion of hedgerow fruits, sloes, blackberries and elderberries followed before we hit pay dirt. First, a series of polytunnels, under which rows of strawberries, still being grown in pots, stood at waist height, still bearing fruit. Second, and more significantly for half our party, there was a portaloo. Some people are just born lucky. Reassuringly, beside the portaloo there was a water trough with taps, together with a sign saying ‘Now Wash Your Hands’ translated into seven other languages using a variety of scripts.

  We were now firmly in the Garden of England. Although only a third of the way into the county from east to west, we were also firmly in Kentish Man or Maid territory. This was in contrast to Men or Maid of Kent territory, with the Kentish Man or Maid used to designate those born west of the Medway and Men or Maid of Kent for those born east of the river. There, I hope that’s clear, and no, I’m afraid there’s no provision for those confused about their gender.

  The strawberries we could see were labelled as sustainable, which meant they were grown to minimise their impact on water usage (there were thin-tubed irrigation systems along the rows) as well as on the environment, through minimal use of chemicals. Strawberries are synonymous with Wimbledon of course, and apparently they’ve served only sustainable strawberries since 2012. Top fact. Sue couldn’t resist trying one, spotting only after she swallowed it that there was a notice next to it which included the word ‘Bioscience’, which is rarely a good thing. We wondered whether she’d undergo some kind of transformation overnight, like Violet Beauregarde from Willy Wonka.

  We continued on the footpaths, dipping in and out of further polytunnel nurseries and lines of fruit trees, or more accurately bushes, being trained to espalier along wires stretching down the hillsides, like French grape vines. Along the way, we bumped into various people, although none of them were that keen to engage with us. Smiling was on offer, but not any exchange of words. Initially dismissing this as unfriendliness, it took us a ridiculous amount of time to clock that they couldn’t speak English. These were the pickers, by and large practically invisible, lost in the acres and acres of fruit. Only on one occasion did we spot them in a group, and even then they were at least a hundred yards away, huddled in a cluster like refugees. One or two had drifted towards the point where our footpath sent us through some trees attempting to get a signal on their phones. We offered a friendly greeting, but received only suspicious looks in return. The obvious question about who would do this work in a post-Brexit world was left unstated.

  As the day went on, as well as strawberries, we saw raspberries, loganberries, blueberries, blackberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants, red apples, green apples, crab apples, plums, pears and cherries being cultivated. And hops of course. It was Kent after all. It was cultivation on an industrial scale, enough to make a Waitrose buyer’s mouth water. Even a prison we passed had its own market garden.

  For once, the weather forecasters had got things right, even if the expected rain did come a little earlier than promised. Luckily, we were passing a children’s playground at the time and could take shelter under a climbing frame, before reverting to the more traditional ‘hide under a big tree’ method when the shower, for shower it was, gained momentum.

  Our route led us onto the hundred-plus-mile Greensand Way, which follows a ridge of greensand rock east to west across Surrey and Kent, and is not to be confused with the Greensand Ridge Walk I’d followed earlier in Bedfordshire. Walking along the top of the ridge, we were regularly rewarded with wide open views, so much so that we became almost blasé about them. The paths were easy to follow, although there was the occasional hiccup, which Pathwatch was able to extricate us from. The local landowners maintained the paths well and welcomed walkers, even if not all welcomed dogs. One sign we passed announced ‘Your dog could be shot if found amongst sheep,’ although it was unclear whether the sheep actually packed heat.

  The Greensand Way took us to Liverton Street, just outside Platt’s Heath, where we’d arranged to meet up with Sue’s husband, my brother-in-law, Tim, who was driving us back to their house for the night. Just before we got there, we passed an abandoned orchard. It seemed no longer fit for modern purpose, superceded by lines of apple bushes presumably much easier to pick, possibly by machine, which might be one response to any future manpower shortage. We also passed a recently ploughed field, its soil ruby red. A grubbed-up strawberry patch or tunnel, we reasoned; sustainable no longer it appeared.

  Taken together, these offered a fitting end to a fruit-themed day.

  15

  Back to the Sea

  We hoped the weather forecasters were on a roll, as they were predicting good weather all day, with highs of around 26°C and eleven hours of sunshine. We should have known better. Even though the day started well it soon clouded over, and at one point even threatened to rain. This was my second day’s walking with Sue and, once reunited with the point where we’d left off the previous day, we said our goodbyes to Tim and slipped into a hedge with all the ease of Lucy, Edmund, Peter and Susan disappearing into Narnia.

  We were immediately rewarded with a fantastic view south-west over the Weald of Kent beyond the wonderfully named Grafty Green. In the distance we could see what looked like oases. Earlier on the walk I’d have had them down as solar arrays, but here in Kent they were polytunnels, acres of them. We wandered th
rough the equally well-named Broughton Malherbe, a small hamlet with a big church, still staying with the Greensand Way and now on a determinedly south-east trajectory, bringing me ever closer to my end point. Just outside Egerton, we walked beside the magnificent white-fronted Georgian façade of Egerton House, a nine-bedroomed, four-bathroomed, six-receptioned pile dating back to medieval times. A lottery winner’s dream, and better still it was for sale, a snip at only £1.5 million. This included over ten acres of land, some of which we’d just got lost on.

  Acres of blush red apples covered the hillside, drawing the eye into yet another great view of the Weald below. Crab apples were planted in between the apple bushes, presumably for efficiency, or possibly for a companion planting benefit, I didn’t know. What I did know was that as we approached the rear of Egerton’s church, Sue managed to spot a patch of alpine strawberries on the ground beneath us. We gathered a handful together and put them in our mouths. Sue hadn’t transformed into a giant strawberry overnight and had adopted a devil-may-care attitude. Expecting ultra-sweet lusciousness, we were disappointed. They turned out dry and tasteless. Perhaps they weren’t ready yet, or simply not meant to be eaten? We turned our attention to the church. Another big one, and dating back to the thirteenth century, it reminded us both of somewhere, Norfolk as it turned out.

  In Egerton itself, we were to be treated to the full House of Fraser retail experience. Not the Sports Direct version, but a small village shop and post office run by a tall lady in a flowing purple gown called Fraser. Neither a Maid of Kent or a Kentish Maid, she described herself as a transplanted Welshie. The shop was for sale, and there was an effort to get the community to buy it by purchasing shares so it could continue. As I was familiar with this model from the community purchase of the pub where we used to live, we got into conversation. It was on sale for £550,000, but as the village only has three-hundred households this meant that on average every household would need to buy three to four £500 shares to make the deal work. It looked like a tall order. The village itself, meanwhile, looked well maintained, with a range of architectural styles on display, from the modern to the local red brick with plain tile roofing, including Yeoman Houses and Kentish Barns along the way.

  Fraser was a mine of information and indomitably upbeat. I asked about how the area gained the wealth to justify such a large church. Sheep, she replied, which explained the Norfolk comparison. It wasn’t just industries that came and went, but also how rural areas earned their keep. Once it was sheep, now it was fruit, although as the day went on it became clear that the fruit theme was weakening, in favour of … sheep. Fraser also explained the difference between the Low Weald, which consisted mainly of clay, and the High Weald, which consisted of a mix of clay and ironstone. The Weald is a name given to a stretch of land that stretches from the marshes of Kent to the New Forest in Hampshire. This was to be a full Encounter of the Third Kind, namely when someone approached me (I was wearing a Diagonal Walking T-shirt), conducted under the protection of the Glebe Oak outside Fraser’s shop on the other side of the road. We swapped stories and took pictures of each other, and before the day was out, Fraser had featured us on her store’s Facebook page.

  If fruit had dominated Sue’s first day of Diagonal Walking, the second was to be defined by the Weald. Oast houses kept popping up, including a beautiful one set up for weddings at Elvey Farm. The grass was definitely greening now, and sheep could safely graze once more. We entered the village of Pluckley just as lunchtime was approaching, and I could feel a pint of shandy coming on, even if the cloud cover didn’t justify a pint of water as well. On entering the Black Horse, which claims to be the most haunted pub in Kent (it was unclear whether this was seen as an asset), out of a mix of politeness and curiosity I asked if they did any food. I could have just gone a good ploughman’s. It was a naïve enquiry: their kitchen was undergoing refurbishment.

  So it was that we sat outside with our drinks and the sandwiches we’d brought with us just in case. While waiting for the drinks, I’d perused the pictures inside the pub. One featured the damage done by a V1 strike in 1944, a useful reminder of how close we now were to the coast. Others majored on shots taken during the filming of The Darling Buds of May, an early 1990s TV series based upon the books by H.E. Bates. The series portrayed a sort of bucolic rural idyll with David Jason as Pa Larkin, a countryside chancer. The book, and series, were set in Kent, with the Black Horse featuring as the Hare and Hounds. As a location, it was perfect, or perhaps I should say ‘perfick’. Very little had probably changed between the time the books were written in the late fifties and when the TV series was filmed, or indeed now.

  Houses in and around Pluckley sported an arched window effect, something attributable to the Dering family, who acquired the parish in the fifteenth century and introduced the style on all their buildings during Victorian times. Imagine having the power to impose an architectural style. Ever since early on in the walk, I’d been collecting photos of houses named ‘The Old Something’. I’d got lots of Old Bakeries, Old Post Offices and Old Rectories, but in Pluckley I managed to grab the rare ‘The Old Newsagent’. What was next I wondered, the ‘The Old Cyber Café’?

  The Black Horse’s claim to be the most haunted pub in Kent wasn’t an idle one. Pluckley has a claim to be the most haunted village in England. It was awarded this title by no less an authority than the Guinness Book of Records way back in 1989, which registered no fewer than twelve ghosts, not bad for somewhere with a population of around a thousand. My favourite was the Watercress Woman, who was supposed to sit by Pluckley Bridge smoking her pipe, drinking gin and selling watercress she gathered from the stream. An unusual combination in itself, the woman in question went that one step further and spontaneously combusted due to her gin-soaked state.

  Needless to say, we saw no evidence of the supernatural and picked up our path, now heading due south, losing the Greensand Way in a quest to regain the diagonal, which had drifted away from us. The sun was an occasional visitor, but a reluctant one, popping out for a few seconds before popping back in again.

  The fields contained more livestock here, some cattle, but mainly sheep. Outside the appropriately named Lambden, we needed to scrabble through a hedge on our hands and knees into a field of white woolly things. They weren’t happy. Bleating as if their life depended upon it, they gathered around us in protest. Normally, sheep don’t represent that much of a challenge, but when you’re on their level on all fours, let me tell you, they can be a different proposition. We tried to shoo them away, but they were having none of it, and as we strode on regardless, a line of them gathered behind Sue, as if she was a sort of ovine Pied Piper. It wasn’t until we reached the field edge that we realised we’d gone wrong. Either we’d got distracted by the sheep or they’d been trying to tell us something.

  On the final stretch in we spotted a horse and Shetland pony tethered to a large metal spike on a grass verge, left without hay or water. The horse looked emaciated, and it was our guess, fairly or unfairly, that they’d been left there by Travellers. This is a practice known as illegal grazing or fly grazing, something now subject to the Control of Horses Act of 2015, and a particular problem in Kent. Whoever was responsible, it was a cruel practice and quite distressing.

  As our time together was coming to an end, I recorded a podcast interview with Sue. A key feature of our chat was how, when walking, you gained a much deeper appreciation of the variety of each day and, I added, of each county. My mind went back to the reflections I’d been having on the ridge overlooking the bouncy castle a couple of days before. Maybe it was because the walk was coming towards its end that I was feeling so reflective, but it was reassuring to find out that others felt the same way too. Our two days together had been very different. It had been wonderful to be able to spend this quality time, usually so rationed, together.

  The podcast complete, our path emerged onto a churchyard, where two women were playing with a power
washer amongst the graves, while a solitary man tried to unravel a hose and an electricity extension cord. What they were up to was anyone’s guess, but they greeted us cheerily and said we could join in if we wanted.

  ‘With what?’ we asked.

  ‘Cleaning these chairs for the fête.’

  First, there were no chairs in sight. Second, a large banner looking out onto the road announced the date of the fête as the end of September. It was August 14th. They clearly had a lot of chairs. Somewhere. We declined and wished them luck.

  We emerged into Bethersden, a pretty village with a small run of shops (two beauty salons, one was required to keep up appearances in Bethersden) and a pub, as well as a butchers, complete with an ornamental butcher’s bike outside. I went into the general store, as I felt a craving for chocolate coming on. A number of packets of Munchies were on the counter. I hadn’t had a Munchie for years, so I said I’d take a pack.

  ‘Oh, bless you,’ the shopkeeper said, as if I was a repented sinner. ‘I’m about to mark them down, they’re only good until September.’

  What was it with September for these people? Had we entered some kind of time warp? Had that hedge in Liverton Street been some kind of portal? ‘Don’t worry, they’ll be long gone by then,’ I reassured her.

  ‘Oh, bless you,’ she repeated.

  I munched on my Munchies and Tim duly turned up on time. As we pulled out of the village, I noticed that the sign for the village fête was a recycled one. This year’s fête was on the Bank Holiday. Even so, two weeks to clean some chairs?

  *

  Commitments elsewhere temporarily removed me from Kent, and when I returned to Bethersden shortly after the fête there was no sign of the chairs. As it happened, the Bank Holiday had been a washout, a sign that the English weather dial was now switched back to ‘Normal’. The desert-like heat of the summer was only a memory now, and the evenings offered a hint of autumn, with dew-damp mornings and colder evenings. Lawns had regained much of their familiar green, even if closer inspection showed this coming as much from dandelion leaves as grass, and fields were being ploughed in readiness for fresh sowing.