I love visiting old churches and one of the first things I usually do having started a new booking is visit the local church; they are rich repositories of history.
You will inevitably find beautiful interiors, occassionally you will find remnants of prior Saxon or Norman churches and if you’re lucky enough there many even be enough to feast your eyes upon. The stained glass windows are always wonderful and sometimes you may be lucky enough to find remnants of painted glass windows.
There has been a church on this same site for more than 900 years. The first record of a church here dates from 1154 in the rolls of a tithe dispute. Apart from the tower, construction of which began in 1440, the present church building dates from the late Victorian period, having been rebuilt in 1880–1 by Sir Arthur Blomfield.
Thankfully the doors were open, so mask on, hands suitably sterilised I entered. There were only 2 people in the church; the minister and possibly a secretary.
I quietly went about my business and enjoyed the tranquil atmosphere. Here are some images of the exterior and interior of the church and a couple of the churchyard
Don’t you think they’re the perfect flower for a graveyard? Forget me not.💙💙💙💚
I’m finishing off at this booking today and heading home for 10 days before I go back to the Devon booking for 2 weeks. I’m SOOOO looking forward to seeing my grandson and spending time with my daughter.
It’s a cold rainy day in greater London, so travelling is going to be challenging ☔☔☔☔🤪🤪
Have a fab day folks, catch you on the other side. Hopefully I’ll be able to get my Thames Path posts completed while I’m home, I’m making progress but time is limited.
Not Just a Granny 
Wow, that is a beautiful church – love those windows. And yes, I also thought the forget-me-nots were the perfect flower at the right place 😊.
Oh, enjoy your time with your loved-ones and happy walking!
Thank you ☺☺ its always lovely to go home
I have a reasonable working knowledge of London although Fulham is a place I do not know particularly well even though I used to go to watch football at Craven Cottage some years ago.
I love the church, I must start trying to get out more but travelling on public tranposrt with one of those damned masks on just does not appeal.
Oh God, its awful. I had the blessed mask on for 1.5 hours between Putney and St. Pancras . Took it off as soon as I got on the train.
London is just mad crowded again. I literally can’t bear it.
Do you not have to wear a mask on trains now? That is mostly what is putting me off travelling, even an hour and a bit on a train down the Broadstairs is what puts me off. I was talking to my friend down there yesterday and she wants me to go down and see her but I didn’t fancy all that time on a train with a mask on.
I haven’t been beyond the Regent’s Canal yet so I had no idea what London was like. I suppose everyone is just so glad to get out again. Stand by for the third wave!
Yup. 3rd wave for sure. But I reckon its going to continue. Just as long as I can do my walks…if Bozo puts another lockdown, I’m going to have a fit.
As for the mask on the trains, yes we’re meant to wear them, but I lean forward over the tray and slip the mask below my chin. I hate them. I can’t breathe. So, I’m clear and I know I’m not going to pass it on. I usually sit away from anyone else and the highspeed is usually quite empty…so I keep my head down, work on my phone and leave the mask off. 😝😝
I know how you feel.
I am not at all claustrophobic as that was not an option in my “previous life” but I really feel like I cannot breathe in those things even though the rational part of my brain (if such exists) tells me that I can. I am tearing the thing off whilst approaching the door of the shop when I go to buy food.
I’m glad the HST is quiet as that is what I will use to get back down in August if not before, my mate Sarah wants me to come down to visit before then.
I do so hope you can manage a day at Folk Week for a number of reasons. Firstly, I would really like to meet you, I think we could have a decent chat.
Secondly, they are going to need all the help they can get in terms of numbers in what are going to be very odd circumstances. They are relying on Arts Council handouts now as there was obviously no revenue last year and they really do live hand to mouth being a charity.
Lastly, I would so love to tie in two aspects of my life that may, at first sight, appear a little disconnected. I love my travel and travel writing and I love playing.
In the “good old days” of VT I actually had one or two people come down to see me play, people I had only previously known online and it always worked out brilliantly, it would be so lovely to do that again although I am still not sure how much playing I shall be able to do this year.
I am no longer in a “formal” band that they can put on at the much reduced main site up by the station this year and I earned my corn by flying wingman for my dear friend Paul and running sessions, some organised but mostly impromptu, wherever the landlord let us play. I usually don’t pay for a drink all week and they give me a pass!
In years past we had a lunchtime session in the George where Dave and Bev looked after us brilliantly. I once counted over 30 musicians in there for the playaround but that is a non-starter this year.
I was talking to Sarah yesterday, she is on the Committee now, and we were trying to work out how to do sessions, which are such an integral part of the whole gig but their problem is that they cannot announce anything as they just do not know what the weekly changing regulations are going to be in August.
Will we be allowed to play sessions in the few venues that have outdoor areas? There are not many. The Bradstow has a cracking outdoor area, the Albion Hotel has a great garden and the Pav the same, the Crown has a tiny “smoking area” out the back which is lovely but probably too small, the Dickens has that little bit of road they close off but it is not big. I could go on but you get the idea.
The poor sods trying to organise what was until 2019 the biggest Folk Festival in UK (I don’t count Cambridge any more even though I have played it, it is a pop festival now) are literally flying blind.
What happens if there is another spike in late July and all travel / assembly / opening of venues is re-introduced? They are literally up the creek without a paddle.
Whatever happens, I would love to meet you, I think we can swap a few road stories and it doesn’t matter if you don’t get to hear me knocking out my same three chords with Paul doing all the hard work.
I don’t know if you’ve seen us playing on Youtube but that might give you an idea of what Folk Week was like in the good times, there are clips on there of me playing with Tim Edey, Steve Mulhern, Emma Scarr, Sam Sloan etc. etc.
I hope you brought ice-cream for the “wee man” this evening and had a lovely time.
Speak soon.
Yup. I’m not usually claustrophobic and have slathered around caves on my belly before, so no issues, but ugh…these masks. Horrible. I also start ripping mine off by the time I reach the door. Yes, I’ve found HST is mostly very quiet.
I’m going to try my very best to visit at least for one day. It sounds like they’re having a rough time trying to set it up, and yes, you just don’t know what you can proceed with, especially if money is involved.
I look forward to catching up and swapping adventure stories, and definitely to hear you play…if that’s possible at the time. Ugh. This virus. People must stop eating so much meat, and we humans absolutely have to stop destroying our forests…this is not going to be the last virus. The health organisations have managed to control some of the others like HIV and Ebola to name two, but even so, those are still around and will never be cured…they just keep popping up the more we expand and destroy the planet.
I didn’t buy him an icecream yesterday, but hopefully Deal is sunny so I can get him one today.
Oh and London is insane.
Well, just another reason to stay indoors or go to Thanet whenever I can. Central London was great when I was 30 and I lived it to the full, I even lived in Soho for 18 months which was “interesting”. Now I’ll give it a swerve, thank you.
Yes, I used to love spending hours meandering around the city, but now its just crazy…although a tad quieter in some areas due to the virus issues of course
I don’t know as this unnecessary Chinese virus (let’s call it what it actually is and political correctness be damned) has effectively paralysed me.
I actually feel uneasy going out of my front door now, a totally alien concept to me and totally ridiculous as I have had both jabs, have had the Chinese virus etc.
I fear the world’s mindset has been reset, I know mine certainly has. You are lucky, you get to Devon, interesting parts of London and have a world of opportunity on your doorstep.
Oh gosh really?? I’m sorry to hear that 😔 I was determined right from the getgo to not allow it to affect me and my life. Virus be damned. I took the necessary precautions to keep my family and clients safe; washing my hands, changing clothes, I wore gloves on public transport till they set up sanitizer stations, I washed down all plastic coming into whatever house I lived in for work, but I didn’t stop going out for walks on my breaks, I continued to visit my family between bookings and saved a lot of money because of lockdown. No cinema, no restaurants, no charity shops etc. I’m not a shopper per se, and hate shopping for anything…including food 😁😁 so I was glad I didn’t have to. I was determined to continue living my life to the full, and although I’m aware of the virus in the back of my head (how can we not be aware with all the bloody reminders everywhere), but it was not going to hold me back. Ours lives are so regulated as it is, that I was not going to let this hold me back. As for where it came from…yes, to hell with political correctness, I don’t have to be diplomatic and I call it as it is. This virus has been released because the Chinese have appalling attitudes towards animals and the environment. They have no values when it comes to animal rights and the treatment of animals. That they’re still, in 2021, when we have so much medical knowledge available and KNOW that monkey testicles and rhino horns are not aphrodisiac or effective for ANY other ailment, is beyond appalling, abhorrent and sickening. Anyone who knows me well, knows my opinion of that particular race. In short…my opinion = 🤬🤬🤬.
My life is only restricted by the things I lawfully cannot get away with 😉 for the rest, I push the boundaries as far as I can. Occassionally they snap back and bite me in the bum, but mostly….hah! Travel, besides my family, is my highest value, and I will continue as much as I possibly can.
I’m afraid it is true.
I was always the joker in the pack, in 2917 I went to meet a friend in Leiden in the Netherlands for four days and had packed a tiny suitcase accordingly. I flew home from Rome over three months later because I had to play Broadstairs! I went to the Philippines in 2012 for five weeks and stayed five months!
Between my travels and my previous experiences I do not scare easily but I genuinely feel uncomfortable going out now. There is no rational reason for this, I have had the Chinese virus with no ill effects (I did not know I had had it until they did a blood test in hospital), I have had my two jabs so it should not be an issue but the misgovernment have instilled a fear in us all (well, nearly all) that is completely disproportionate to the risk posed. You seem to be kicking against it and doing so wonderfully, you are an inspiration.
I suppose I am slightly hampered by the fact that I am a pensioner, I do not actually have to go out the door or do anything. I can just sit at home, as I have done for so many months now, and the cheques keep getting paid into my bank account. I go out about once a week for a food shop, which takes me maybe 600 yards from my front door, I come home and put the food in the fridge and that is me for another week. This just is not how I operate, I always have a project underway, usually a long-distance path, but this nonsense has just stopped me dead in my tracks.
I am glad you are still “doing the do” but I feel that from now on I shall be living my travelling dreams vicariously through people like you and the many other fantastic travellers I have met here. I am really annoyed as I had so many plans for things I wanted to do before I got physically incapable of doing them but the Chinese have screwed that right up.
Apart from Broadstairs, which is going to be so weird this year, I think there might just be one last hurrah left in me. I’d like to do one last “big” trip but I have no idea how it might happen in my lifetime. I do not even know if I am allowed to fly, not because of the virus but my medical issues with embolisms / clots / DVT’s, call then what you will.
You wouldn’t believe it but when I was lying in the Royal London Hospital with more tubes coming out of me than you even want to think of and two gaping and freely bleeding fasciotomy wounds in my left leg, I was trying to work out where I could travel on my computer. That was when the Chinese virus was biting deep and travel was effectively banned. As far as I know it still is but, if I am ever given the opportunity to travel again I want to go for it.
There is one more run in me and it will either prove me correct or kill me. I shall, as always, take inspiration from such wonderful travellers as yourself. I might even send you a postcard!
Postcards are a must 😉
Sorry to hear you’ve had such a rough time and that this virus has gotten under your skin, so to speak. I read something on Instagram today, written by Ben Fogle that really summed it…yes, we have been brainwashed into being fearful and afraid and I know that there are a heck of a lot of people who feel the same way as you. As for me, I’m just badass stubborn and if I can kick off against the government and get away with it, I will do my utmost 😁😁 especially this current government…despicable bunch.