Folk and Stone
A walked line, unlike a drawn line, can never be erased.
One of the loveliest things about my walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats, which I completely failed to anticipate, was that it created a line from one end of the country to the other. In the years since, I will be travelling somewhere for some reason, and unexpectedly cross it, and suddenly think “Oh, I came out of that hedge”.
It’s less likely to happen with this one, unless I jump off cliffs a lot.
More Saxon Shore Way today, which gave some nice views from the top of what are not currently the cliffs, over the plains below. They may well become the cliffs again, as the sea levels rise — I find it easy to imagine us doing lots of work to build sea defences, once it happens, but I find it much harder to imagine us doing enough to prevent it.
In the distance on this photo you can see Dungeness Nuclear Power station. Opinions vary on nuclear power, but I am very much in favour — it’s fossil-free technology we could deploy right now, if we had the political will, rather than hoping that some of the things we’re developing will come to fruition in time.
But we won’t have the political will, in the UK, which is why we’re building electricity cables to France (like the one I saw planning permission for earlier) so that we can buy their nuclear energy instead.
I stopped for second breakfast at an unexpected fancy cafe. Two people were leaving as I entered, one of them saying “I’m not paying eight quid for some fancy eggs on toast”. I had shakshuka, which was completely different (it was fancy eggs with toast), but I luckily got an extra large piece of fruit cake, so I didn’t feel bad about the value. And I need the calories.
Get Edward Hibbert’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
After a little more Royal Military Canal, I coasted along to Folkestone. I’m staying tonight in the Creative Quarter, where fancy art galleries are fighting a bitter street battle with betting shops and party bars.
It’s too soon to call.
One of the projects in the Creative Quarter has folk painting around 50,000 stones taken from the beach, to make poppies on the beach. The paint is eco-friendly. I’m bad at painting, but I did a Freegle logo, a very poor image of a stick man walking, and Freegle’s tagline (“Don’t throw it away, give it away”).
Then I looked at where I’d put them. The walking man is directly under a thundercloud. No need to check the weather forecast, then.
If you’ve read this far, please consider sponsoring a mile of my walk for Freegle. Click here to do that or see my route.
