What a difference a day makes. Bright skies, lovely spring temperatures and a stroll down memory lane. What could be better.
Last night it didn’t take long to decide to eat in the nearby pub – The Old Gate Inn. As soon as we found that they welcomed dogs, we were in. While we were quaffing pints of good English ale, or halves of Cider in Sarah’s case, we got chatting to another couple of motorhomers staying on the Canterbury aire. They were keen “Funsters” (members of the Motorhome Fun forum) and had made the same journey as us, albeit from Sheffield. We felt much better about our journey when they told us that they had remained on the M25 and it had taken 3 hours for them to cross the Dartford Bridge!
When we woke up this morning we saw that tomorrow’s weather looked awful, with an Arctic blast bringing temperatures down to near freezing. So we decided we would tackle our old haunt of Whitstable today – the place where Sarah and I, both at University in Canterbury, first became romantically involved.
Basil parked on the Whitstable seafront
The promenade was much busier than we expected, but we finally managed to squeeze Basil’s ample posterior into a parking space and off we set along the seafront to relive our yesterdays. We found that we just about remembered the town’s layout and soon found the house in which Sarah used to live as a student. While we were taking a photo an old lady passed by and said “everyone seems to take a photo of that house”. So we explained that, back in the 1970s it was a student house and we surmised that many old university students had made the same journey and taken the same photograph as we were now.
Sarah’s student house
Tim’s digs
The Sovereign public house, now two private houses!
We progressed to my old student digs and the adjacent Sovereigh pub, now converted into a house, where we had spent far too many happy hours.
When we lived in the town it was a bit of a down at heel fishing port, famous for its oysters and not much else. Now it is a trendy little seaside resort popular with Londoners for second homes and retirement. As a result much of the town’s landmarks had changed or been gentrified. The few things that remained recognisable were the many pubs which had been the landmarks of my student life.
After lunch I took Sarah to a place along the coast called Reculver, which I remembered from a sunny afternoon 40 years ago. In those days it was a romantic abandoned abbey on the clifftops, with very little else around it. It is still a lovely spot, but caravan parks and large car parks have grown up around the tumbledown, originally Saxon, abbey and I expect in the summer it is very busy. As we wandered around the remains it was so warm I was down to my t-shirt.
Remains of Reculver Abbey
We also found out that the abbey had been built on the site of a major Roman fort and the village of Reculver had been a large and thriving settlement in the middle ages. Unfortunately coastal erosion had claimed most of the buildings and it is now an ongoing struggle to save the abbey ruins.
Finally we beat a retreat back to the motorhome aire at Canterbury (51.261540, 1.100013), which at £3 a day, including free buses into Canterbury, is a bargain. We plan to visit the city tomorrow, but with snow predicted who knows whether the buses will be running.