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The Pleasures & Miseries Of London

September 1, 2024
by the gentle author

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Written anonymously and published in 1820, The Tour of Dr Syntax Through the Pleasures & Miseries of London was one of a popular series of comedies featuring the idiosyncratic Dr Syntax, a character originated by William Coombe and drawn by Thomas Rowlandson. These plates are believed to be the work of Robert Cruikshank, father of George Cruikshank.

Dr Syntax & his Spouse plan their trip to London

Setting out for London

Arriving in London

Robbed in St Giles High St

A Promenade in Hyde Park

A Flutter at a Gaming House

At an Exhibition at the Royal Academy

At a Masquerade

In St Paul’s Churchyard on a Wet & Windy Day

Inspecting the Bank of England

Presented to the King at Court

A Night at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens

A Visit to the House of Commons

A Trip behind the Scenes at the Opera

A Lecture at the London Institution

Going to Richmond on a Steam Boat

Reading his Play in the Green Room

Overshoots London Bridge & pops overboard into the Thames

Images courtesy of Bishopsgate Institute

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At Aldgate Pump

August 31, 2024
by the gentle author

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See these people come and go at the junction of Fenchurch St and Leadenhall St in the City of London in 1927. Observe the boy idling in the flat cap. They all seem unaware they are in the presence of the notorious “Pump of Death” – that switched to mains supply fifty years earlier in 1876, when the water began to taste strange and was found to contain liquid human remains which had seeped into the underground stream from cemeteries.

Several hundred people died in the resultant Aldgate Pump Epidemic as a result of drinking polluted water – though this was obviously a distant memory by the nineteen twenties when Whittard’s tea merchants used to “always get the kettles filled at the Aldgate Pump so that only the purest water was used for tea tasting.”

Yet before it transferred to a supply from the New River Company of Islington, the spring water of the Aldgate Pump was appreciated by many for its abundant health-giving mineral salts, until – in an unexpectedly horrific development – it was discovered that the calcium in the water had leached from human bones.

This bizarre phenomenon quickly entered popular lore, so that a bouncing cheque was referred to as “a draught upon Aldgate Pump,” and in rhyming slang “Aldgate Pump” meant to be annoyed – “to get the hump.” The terrible revelation confirmed widespread morbid prejudice about the East End, of which Aldgate Pump was a landmark defining the beginning of the territory. The “Pump of Death” became emblematic of the perceived degradation of life in East London and it was once declared with superlative partiality that “East of Aldgate Pump, people cared for nothing but drink, vice and crime.”

Today this sturdy late-eighteenth century stone pump stands sentinel as the battered reminder of a former world, no longer functional, and lost amongst the traffic and recent developments of the modern City. No-one notices it anymore and its fearsome history is almost forgotten, despite the impressive provenance of this dignified ancient landmark, where all mileages East of London are calculated. Even in the old photographs you can trace how the venerable pump became marginalised, cut down and ultimately ignored.

Aldgate Well was first mentioned in the thirteenth century – in the reign of King John – and referred to by sixteenth century historian, John Stowe, who described the execution of the Bailiff of Romford on the gibbet “near the well within Aldgate.” In “The Uncommercial Traveller,” Charles Dickens wrote, “My day’s business beckoned me to the East End of London, I had turned my face to that part of the compass… and had got past Aldgate Pump.” And before the “Pump of Death” incident, Music Hall composer Edgar Bateman nicknamed “The Shakespeare of Aldgate Pump,” wrote a comic song in celebration of Aldgate Pump – including the lyric line “I never shall forget the gal I met near Aldgate Pump…”

The pump was first installed upon the well head in the sixteenth century, and subsequently replaced in the eighteenth century by the gracefully tapered and rusticated Portland stone obelisk that stands today with a nineteenth century gabled capping. The most remarkable detail to survive to our day is the elegant brass spout in the form of a wolf’s head – still snarling ferociously in a vain attempt to maintain its “Pump of Death” reputation – put there to signify the last of these creatures to be shot outside the City of London.

In the photo from 1927,  you can see two metal drinking cups that have gone now, leaving just the stubs where the chains attaching them were fixed. Tantalisingly, the brass button that controls the water outlet is still there, yet, although it is irresistible to press it, the water ceased flowing in the last century. A drain remains beneath the spout where the stone is weathered from the action of water over centuries and there is an elegant wrought iron pump handle – enough details to convince me that the water might return one day.

Looking towards Aldgate.

The water head, reputed to be an image of the last wolf shot in London.

The pump was closed in 1876 and the outlet switched to mains water supply.

Archive photographs copyright © Bishopsgate Institute

At Walton On The Naze

August 30, 2024
by the gentle author

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All this time, Walton on the Naze has been awaiting me, nestling like a forgotten jewel cast up on the Essex coast, and less than an hour and a half from Liverpool St Station.

Families with buckets and spades joined the train at every stop, as we made our way eastwards to the point where Essex crumbles into the North Sea at the rate of two metres a year. Yet all this erosion, while reminding us of the force of the mighty elements, also delivers a perfect sandy beach – the colour of Cheddar cheese – that is ideal for sand castles and digging. Stepping from the small train amongst the flurry of pushchairs and picnic bags, at once the sea air transports you and the hazy resort atmosphere enfolds you. Unable to contain yourself, you hurry through the sparse streets of peeling nineteenth century villas and shabby weather-boarded cottages to arrive at a rise overlooking Britain’s third longest pier, begun in 1830.

In spite of the majestic pier, this is a seaside resort on a domestic scale. You will not find any foreign tourists here because Walton on the Naze is a closely guarded secret, it is kept by the good people of Essex for their sole use. At Walton on the Naze everyone is local. You see Essex families running around as if they owned the place, playing upon the beach in flagrant carefree abandon, as if it were their own back yard – which, in a sense, it is.

This sense of ownership is manifest in the culture of the beach huts that line the seafront, layers deep, in higgledy-piggledy terraces receding from the shore. These little wooden sheds are ideal for everyone to indulge their play house and dolls’ house fantasies – painting them in fanciful colours, giving them names like “Ava Rest,” and furnishing the interiors with gas cookers and garish curtains. At the seaside, all are licenced to pursue the fulfilment of residual childhood yearning in harmless whimsy. The seaside offers a place charged with potent emotional memory that we can return to each Summer. It is not simply that people get nostalgic for seaside resorts, but that these seasonal towns become the location of nostalgia itself – because the sea never changes and we revisit our former selves when we come back to the beach.

Walton Pier curls to one side like a great tongue taking a greedy lick from an ocean of ice cream, and the beach curves away in a crooked smile that leads your eye to the “Naze,” or “nose” to give its modern spelling. This bulbous proboscis extends from the profile of Essex as if from a vain patient seeking plastic surgery, provided in the form of relentless abrasion from the sea.

With so many attractions, the first thing to do is to sit down at the tables upon the beach outside Sunray’s Kiosk which serves the best fish & chips in Walton on the Naze. Every single order is battered and cooked separately in this tiny establishment, that also sells paper flags for sandcastles and shrimping nets and all essential beach paraphernalia. From here a path leads past a long parade of beach huts permitting you the opportunity to spy upon these domestic theatres, each with their proud owners lounging outside while their children run back and forth, vacillating between their haven of security and the irresistible wonder of the waves crashing at the shoreline.

Here I joined some girls, excitedly fishing for crabs with hooks and lines off a small jetty. They all screamed when one pulled out a much larger specimen than the tiddlers they had in their buckets, only to be reassured by the woman who was overseeing their endeavour. “Don’t be frightened – it’s just the Mummy!” she declared with a wicked smile, as she held up the struggling creature by a claw. From this jetty, I could see the eighty foot tower built upon the Naze in 1720 as a marker for ships entering the port of Harwich and after a gentle climb up a cliff path, and a strenuous ascent up a spiral staircase, I reached the top. Like a fly perched upon the nose of Essex, I could look North across the estuary of the Orwell towards Suffolk on the far shore and South to the Thames estuary with Kent beyond – while inland I could see the maze of inlets, appealingly known as the Twizzle.

In the week that summer broke up, I was blessed with one clear day of sunshine for my holiday. And I returned to the narrow streets of Spitalfields for another year with my skin flushed and buffeted by the elements – grateful to have experienced again the thrall of the shoreline, where the land runs out and the great ocean begins.

Sunray’s Kiosk on the beach, for the best fish & chips in Walton on the Naze.

 

“On this promontory is a new sea mark, erected by the Trinity-House men, and at the publick expence, being a round brick tower, near eighty foot high. The sea gains so much upon the land here, by the continual winds at S.W. that within the memory of some of the inhabitants there, they have lost above thirty acres of land in one place.” Daniel Defoe, 1722

 

A Walk Along The Ridgeway

August 29, 2024
by the gentle author

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They say it is the oldest road in Britain, maybe the oldest in Europe. Starting from the highest navigable point of the Thames in prehistoric times, the Ridgeway follows the hilltops to arrive at Salisbury Plain where once wild cattle and horses roamed. When the valleys were forested and impenetrable, the Ridgeway offered a natural route over the downland and into the heart of this island. Centuries of cattle driving wore a trackway that curved across the hillside, traversing the contours of the landscape and unravelling like a ribbon towards the horizon.

Over thousands of years, the Ridgeway became a trading route extending from coast to coast, as far as Lyme Regis in the west and the Wash in the east, with fortresses and monuments along the way. Yet once the valleys became accessible it was defunct, replaced by the Icknield Way – a lower level path that skirted the foot of the hills – and there are burial mounds which traverse the Ridgeway dated to 2000BC, indicating that the highway was no longer in use by then.

In fact, this obsolescence preserved the Ridgeway because it was never incorporated into the modern road network and remains a green path to this day where anyone can set out and walk in the footsteps of our earliest predecessors in this land. Leaving Spitalfields early and taking the hour’s rail journey to Goring & Streatley from Paddington, I was ascending the hill from the river by eleven and onto the upland by midday. In this section, the flinty path of the Ridgeway is bordered with deep hedges of hawthorn, blackthorn and hazel, giving way to the open downland rich with the pink and blue flowers of late summer, knapweed, scabious and harebells.

A quarter of a century has passed since I first passed this way and yet nothing has changed up there. It is the same huge sky and expansive grassy plain undulating into the distance with barely a building in sight. This landscape dwarfs the human figure, inducing a sense of exhilaration at the dramatic effects of light and cloud, sending patterns travelling fast across the vast grassy wind-blown hills. When I first began to write and London grew claustrophobic, I often undertook this walk through the different seasons of the year. I discovered that the sheer exertion of walking all day, buffeted upon the hilltops and sometimes marching doggedly through driving rain, never failed to clear my mind.

As a consequence, the shape of the journey is graven into memory even though, returning eighteen years since my last visit, the landscape was greater than I had fashioned it in recollection. And this is the quality that fascinates me about such epic terrain, which the mind cannot satisfactorily contain and thus each return offers a renewed acquaintance of wonder at the scale and majesty of the natural world.

In those days, I was in thrall to endurance walking and I would continue until I could go no further, either because of exhaustion or nightfall. This vast elevated downland landscape encouraged such excessive behaviour, leading me on and on along the empty path to discover what lay over the brow and engendering a giddy sense of falling forward, walking through the sky – as if you might take flight. I walked until I thought I could walk no more and then I carried on walking until walking became automatic, like breathing. In this state my body was propelled forward of its own volition and my mind was free.

One day’s walk brings you to Uffington and the famous White Horse, carved into the chalk of the downland. Placed perfectly upon the crest of a ridge within a vast fold of the hills, this sparsely drawn Neolithic figure looks out across the arable farmland of Oxfordshire beyond and can be seen for great distances. A mystery now, a representation that may once have been a symbol for a people lost in time, it retains a primeval charisma, and there is such an intensity of delight to reach this figure at the end of a day’s walking. Breathless and weary of limbs, I stumbled over the hill to sit there alone upon the back of the hundred foot White Horse at dusk, before descending to the village of Bishopstone for the night. There, at Prebendal Farm, Jo Selbourne offers a generous welcome and, as well as the usual bed and breakfast, will show you the exquisitely smoothed ceremonial Neolithic axe head found upon the farm.

The second day’s walk leads through the earthen ramparts of Liddington Hill and Barbary Castle, and on either side of the path the fields are punctuated by clumps of trees indicating the myriad ancient burial mounds scattered upon this bare Wiltshire scenery. It is a more expansive land than the fields of Berkshire where I began my journey, here the interventions made in ancient times still hold their own and the evidence of the modernity is sparser. As I made the final descent from the hill towards Avebury, a village within a massive earthwork and stone circle which was the culmination of my journey, I could not resist the feeling that it was all there for me and I had earned it by walking along the old path which for thousands of years had brought people to arrive at this enigmatic location of pilgrimage.

In two days upon the hilltops I had only passed a dozen lone walkers, and now the crowds, the coach parties, the shops and the traffic were a startling sight to behold. And so I knew my journey had fulfilled its purpose – to reacquaint me freshly with the familiar world and restore a sense of proportion. My feet were sore and my face was flushed by the sun. In Berkshire, the ripe fields of corn were standing, in Oxfordshire, they were being harvested and, in Wiltshire, I saw the stubble being ploughed in. It had been a walk to arrive at the end of the summer. It had been a walk through time along the oldest road.

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Goring Mill

“Join it at Streatley, the point where it crosses the Thames, at once it strikes you out and away from the habitable world in a splendid purposeful manner, running along the highest ridge of the downs.” Kenneth Grahame, 1898

A ninety-two year old man told me this year is the worst harvest he could remember. “It doesn’t want to come in the barn,” he lamented.

At East Illsley

“A broad green track runs for many a long mile across the downs, now following the ridges, now winding past at the foot of a grassy slope, then stretching away through cornfield and fallow.” Richard Jefferies, 1879

“A rough way, now wide, now narrow, among the hazel, brier and nettle. Sometimes there was an ash in the hedge and once a line of spindly elms followed it round in a curve.” Edward Thomas, 1910

On White Horse Hill

“The White Horse is, I believe, the earliest hill drawing we have in England. It is a piece of design, in another category from the other chalk figures, for it has the lineaments of a work of art. The horse, which is more of a dragon than a horse, is cut on the top of the down’s crest, so that it can only be seen completely from the air, or at a long view, from the surrounding country – but it was precisely this aspect of the Horse design that I found so significant.” Paul Nash, 1938

The Neolithic axe head found at Prebendal Farm, photo by Rob Selbourne.

At Bishopstone

 

At Barbary Castle

“The origin of the track goes back into the dimmest antiquity: there is evidence that it was a military road when the fierce Dane carried fire and slaughter inland, leaving his nailed bark in the creeks of the rivers, and before that when the Saxons pushed up from the sea. The eagles of old Rome were, perhaps, borne along it and yet earlier the chariots of the Britons may have used it – traces of all have been found: so that for fifteen centuries this track of primitive peoples has maintained its existence through the strange changes of the times, til now in the season the cumbrous steam ploughing engines jolt and strain and pant over the uneven turf.” Richard Jefferies, 1879

Since the man suspected of making crop circles died, his protege has adopted a different style of design.

At Avebury

At Avebury

A Walk From Shoeburyness To Chalkwell

August 28, 2024
by the gentle author

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At Westcliff

At the end of August, I always feel the need to leave the city and go to the sea, taking advantage of the last days of sunshine before the season changes. Admitting that I have spent too much of these last months at my desk in neglect of summer, I found myself on the train out of Fenchurch St Station with the East End receding like a dream.

At Shoeburyness, the ocean lay before me gleaming like a tin roof beneath a flawless azure sky. Surely no-one fails to be surprised by the sea, always more expansive than the image you carry in your mind. I sat upon the warm buttery-yellow sand of East Beach to assimilate this vast landscape before me, humbled by the open space after too long in narrow streets.

Military fences obstructed my intention of walking east across open land towards the River Roach, so instead I turned west, following the coast path through a wildlife reserve embellished with abandoned structures of warfare now being appropriated by nature. Local myth speaks of an ancient settlement lost beneath the sands and archaeology has revealed an Iron Age camp, confirming the strategic importance of this site overlooking the estuary where Shoebury Garrison was established in 1854. Wild fennel, sea holly, coltstfoot and stonecrop grow freely upon the sea wall, where the works of man are sublimated by greater forces. It came as no surprise to encounter a religious service enacted upon the shingle here, with priests in white robes and red sashes presiding, like their Celtic predecessors, upon unyielding waves lapping at the beach.

Then, in a sudden change of atmosphere, leaving the reserve and crossing a road brought me to Thorpe Bay with its regimented lines of cabins that serve to domesticate the shoreline. Yet even on this baking Saturday in August, just a few lone sun worshippers were setting out their deck chairs and upholding their secular rituals beneath the glassy sky. Meanwhile, an equal languor prevailed below the tideline where yachts sat marooned and inert upon the glistening mud.

The long pier and white towers upon the horizon led me on, absorbed now in walking, even if the featureless esplanade offered no sense of progress until, turning a shallow corner, I found myself in the midst of the throng of Southend with its endless diversions and hullabaloo. Extended family groups clung together, laden with bags and babies, and huddling as if they were refugees caught in the middle of a battle, while my own attention danced and darted, drawn by amusement arcades, crazy golf, souvenir and novelty shops, and pleasure parks. In the event, I took a nap in the shade of a pine tree upon the cliff overlooking Adventure Island, where fellow day-trippers were screaming in terror while being flung around on white-knuckle rides that looped and twisted for their enjoyment.

Walking on, the frenzied action relented as the sedate charms of Westcliff made themselves apparent in the form of elaborate nineteenth-century balconied villas. The tide had retreated still further and the declining sun reflected golden off the pools where lonely beach-comers strayed. A stone obelisk upon the strand indicated the boundary of the Thames and its estuary, and beyond lay a causeway across the mud banks where a long procession of curious ramblers were walking out to the horizon.

In overt contrast to the demonstrative thrill-seekers of Southend, I spied bowls played upon lawns discreetly screened by well-kept privet hedges in Chalkwell. Here my walk ended and I took the opportunity of reflection upon the day’s journey, stringing together the disparate locations that comprise this stretch of coast. Dozing on the train, I awoke in Fenchurch St Station and as I wandered back through the familiar deserted City, it could have been as if my adventure had been but a fantasy – if it were not for the residual sensation of sunshine and wind upon my skin that was evidence I had been somewhere else.

At Sandwich

August 27, 2024
by the gentle author

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“There’s always something going on in Sandwich,” I was reliably informed by the guide who welcomed me to an old stone church, and the evidence was all around us in this ancient borough which has acquired so many layers of history over the last thousand years.

If you prefer your architecture irregular in form and mellow with age, this is your place – for Sandwich is one of England’s least-altered medieval towns. Yet the appeal lies not in how it has been preserved but in how it has changed, since every building has been melded over time to suit the evolving needs of its occupants, and the charismatic blend of timber with stonework and stonework with brickwork is sublime.

As I wandered through the quiet streets, I thought about the paradoxical nature of the guide’s comment since Sandwich unquestionably defines the notion of ‘sleepy town,’ even if that afternoon there was a concert in the grounds of the Lutyens house by the river and a fete at the quay. Yet in a more profound sense this has been a location of ceaseless activity since Roman times.

Contrary to popular opinion, ‘Sandwich’ means ‘a settlement built on the sand.’ First recorded in the seventh century, a thriving port and fishing industry grew up here on a sandbank in the days when the river was wider than it is today and the sea came right up to the town. A defensive wall with gates was built around this wealthy trading post and storm tides sometimes surrounded Sandwich, isolating it from the land. One of the pre-eminent ‘Cinque Ports,’ the fleet here offered nautical military service to the Crown in return for trading without taxation. Thus merchants from Venice brought their goods direct to Sandwich and even the King came to buy exotic luxury imports.

“You can easily get lost in Sandwich,” I was cautioned unexpectedly by the attendant at the Museum as I bought my copy of the Civic guide to study the history. It was an unlikely observation that the attendant uttered, since Sandwich is a tiny place, but let me confirm that you can quickly lose your sense of direction, strolling in the maze of small streets and lanes with names like Holy Ghost Alley, Three Kings Yard and Love Lane. An afternoon can fly away once you begin to study the glorious detail and rich idiosyncrasy of eight hundred years of vernacular architecture that is manifest to behold in Sandwich.

If your imagination is set on fire by winding streets of crooked old houses and ancient worn churches paved with medieval tiles and roofed with spectacular wooden vaults, then Sandwich is the destination for you. You really can lose yourself in it and there is always something going on.

St Peter’s Church

The King’s Lodging

Demon of 1592 on the corner of the Kings Arms

St Mary’s Church

St Mary’s Church

Tower of St Mary’s Church

Mermaid at the corner of Delf St

January 1601

The Delf stream was channelled to bring freshwater to Sandwich in the thirteenth century

Horse Pond Sluice

St Clement’s Church has an eleventh  century Norman tower

In St Clement’s Church

Fisher Gate with the old Customs House on the right

Fourteenth century Fisher Gate

A Walk From Dover To Folkestone

August 26, 2024
by the gentle author

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Dover Castle

In Dover’s Market Sq, a plaque informs the visitor that ‘while searching for his aunt Betsey Trotwood, David Copperfield rested on this doorstep and ate a loaf of bread he had just bought.’ He set out to walk east from here, as I did previously when I walked over the white cliffs to Deal, but this time I turned right on Dover Beach and walked west to Folkestone.

It was no simple matter to find the way and I found myself negotiating works for the rebuilding of the west harbour before I could ascend a thundering motorway to commence the coastal path. The urge to escape the hubbub is a powerful motivation to walk, striding upwards along the cliff until the drama of the sea and the sky fills your consciousness. I am always delighted how – even in our small country – it is remarkably easy to discover solitude in the landscape. The intense physical experience of walking along the cliff top combined with the spectacle of a vast sparkling expanse of ocean quickly induces a vertiginous euphoric reverie.

Before long, you encounter sobering reminders that this was formerly a site of conflict. The turf undulates where earthworks were once constructed to defend against any potential invasion and the cliff edge is punctuated by concrete defence posts. Most surreal was to come upon a tall concave disc of concrete pointed towards the sea at Abbott’s Cliff, as ethereal and mysterious as a sculpture by Ben Nicholson or Barbara Hepworth. This was a sound mirror from the First World War which permitted an operator to sit with an ear trumpet and hear the sound of enemy aircraft before they became visible. Within twenty-five years it became obsolete once aircraft speeds increased and radar was invented.

Yet on a warm afternoon in late summer the history of conflict feels mercifully remote as you walk determinedly onward along the narrow path bordered by wild thyme and scabious. Lone birds of prey hover overhead, escorting you on your way. Only a few miles after Dover Harbour has retreated into the distance, Folkestone comes into view – a town spilling out from the coast into a golden sea in the late afternoon sun. Your feet have grown weary by then and you discover your destination is further away than it looks and a brief refreshment at the Lighthouse Inn at Capel-Le-Ferne is necessary before you commence your descent into Folkestone.

Much of this last section of the path is overarched by sea-blown hedges where shafts of bright sunlight descend into the cool shadow, until finally you emerge into the open with Folkestone spread out beneath you. A vista of cliffs to the east testifies to your eight mile walk, as you tread the soft municipal grass of the golf course and then follow a line of suburban villas to arrive at the harbour where a well-earned supper of fish and chips awaits you.

A serenade at Dover

Dover Harbour Board 1606

The ascent from Dover

Looking back towards Dover

A sound mirror from World War One at Abbott’s Cliff

Statue of an airman commemorating the Battle of Britain

Spitfire at the Battle of Britain memorial

Birdwatchers at the Clifftop Cafe

Looking down towards Folkestone

Travellers’ joy

Folkestone seen from the cliff path

Bowls at Folkestone in the shadow of the Martello Tower

Bell installed on the beach by Norwegian artist A.K Dolven

Children fishing for crabs at Folkestone Harbour