Tag: Isle of Sheppey

Well Worth The Effort

CLICK ON ANY IMAGE FOR ENLARGEMENT. REPEAT FOR FURTHER DETAIL
Regular readers may have noticed that it is some months since we enjoyed a brunch at The Beach Hut Café on the promenade at Friars Cliff. That is because I have been unable to make the trip down from the clifftop car park.

The first stage, from the car park, is reasonably level, but far enough for me at the moment.

Military communication satellite station plaque

The concrete rings have featured before. This plate explaining their purpose

is screwed to the rock to the right of this path bypassing the rings. The cyclist will slalom round the barriers down

the sloping footpath leading to the beach huts,

and the beach with its clear view of the Isle of Wight and The Needles.

The most difficult part of the descent for me was this very steep incline.

When I ran the fells in Cumbria I would much rather run up than down the slopes. And that was when my knees worked.

Having reached the promenade there is a straight, flat, section between the huts and the benches sited for those who wish to watch the waves;

taking us to the café, which was, as usual, full to bursting both inside and out, although the demography of the patrons is somewhat different from that in the school holidays. In fact, while Jackie joined the lengthy queue for service and I investigated the seating options, the only available possibility was sharing a picnic table with a friendly woman and her unobtrusive dog. Noticing my rather hopeless efforts at jackknifing myself into position, the kind lady offered to seek out a chair for me. She did so. I thanked her and sat down. Jackie then arrived to tell me that there was a free table inside. I thanked my new friend once more and took up a place inside. Shame, really.

The food was definitely well worth the effort. I couldn’t fit my plate containing two rounds of toast and marmalade into the shot.

After this, we had to retrace our steps. The rather bent elderly woman towing her shorn dulux dog kept up a pace neither of us had any hope of emulating.

Jackie had no trouble with the steep slope

but avoided the steps which were my preferred return route.

Our central heating has never really worked upstairs. Knowing weather was about to cool down, we asked Ronan of Tom Sutton Heating to sort out the radiators. He fixed a pressure problem and bled the radiators. A date was arranged for him to fit a new vent to one of them. The next day the boiler stopped working. Fortunately our shower is electric and we have an open fire and a kettle. We limped through until today when Ronan made an emergency visit. I won’t bore people with the technicalities, but we need a whole new system, which is what I expected in the first place. This will take 3/4 days, need bedroom floors taken up, and be expensive.
This evening we dined variously. Jackie chose Tesco’s pulled ham with mashed potato and carrots accompanied by Hoegaarden; my Tesco’s prepared dish was chicken jalfrezi; Elizabeth enjoyed the last of Jackie’s beef pie. My sister and I both drank more of the Pinot Noir.

A Beach Beauty

This afternoon I scanned a batch of colour slides from a holiday at Iwade in August 1972. One has already featured in ‘The Hat’. Here are some of the others:Pebbles on sand 8.72

Becky 8.72

Jackie 8.72 2

Pebbles on the sand at the Isle of Sheppey were quite thinly spread near the water’s edge, but covered the beach further up, where Becky trudged over them undeterred, but with great concentration; and Jackie made use of the car blanket to render the stones a little softer to the touch.Man with pram 8.72

From a cafe in which we took refreshments I noticed a gentleman apparently in charge of a pram on the sea wall. Was the pram occupied? Had he turned his back on it for a purpose?Barrels 8.72

I cannot remember what these rows of stout barrels with rusting hoops were doing in Iwade, apart from providing an interesting subject. I don’t think they ever contained the wallies mentioned below.

Michael and horse 8.72Michael, Matthew and horse 8.72Matthew and horse 8.72

Michael and Matthew, both with a certain trepidation, stopped to feed foliage to a horse in a field. First Mat hid behind his big brother; then joined him; and finally managed the task alone.Canterbury Cathedral 8.72

We took a trip to Canterbury where I photographed the cathedral down a side street in which Becky turns towards me, sporting her crocheted hat.Jackie 8.72 3 - Version 2

Jackie 8.72 3 - Version 3

My final iPhoto project today was to crop a picture of the basking beach beauty and convert it to black and white. Which do you prefer? Jackie had, incidentally, made her own chokers, some of which were to be sold from her ‘Kingston Market Stall’.

Mr Pink provided this evening’s fish and chips, pickled onions and gherkins, with which I drank more of the Teroldego Rotaliano, and Jackie didn’t. Both the onions and the also pickled gherkins are sold in ‘chippies’ from large jars.on the counter. There may also be jars of pickled eggs. A chippy is the colloquial term for a fish and chip shop.  The slang name for a pickled gherkin is a ‘wally’ which according to kgb answers ‘was a London slang corruption of the word “Olive”. When Eastern European immigrants arrived in the late 19th Century they carried a liking for pickled cucumbers which, like olives, were sold from wooden barrels and also began to be referred to as wallies (mostly in the east-end of London).’