Fordwich Town Hall

Fordwich is a very small and pretty place on the Great Stour a few miles east of Canterbury. It has a population of a few hundred, but claims to be Britain's smallest town as it received its Merchant Guild Charter in 1184: it was the port for Canterbury in the middle ages and was associated with the Cinq Ports through its links with Sandwich. This is the medieval town hall, seen from the garden; the extra shows the view from the street, with the decorated VW ready for the bride and groom who would soon emerge from their ceremony inside. The town hall website offers a 360 degree view of the splendid timbered council chamber/wedding room.

We had nothing scheduled, as J's PA is away, and the weather was beautiful; after heat and humidity last week, it's now lovely summery warmth, less humid and with temperatures in the low twenties. We took the opportunity for another low key local outing. The drive through the lanes was glorious. It's a while since we had driven along the empty and beautiful Dane Valley, which offers the charm (in good weather) of a gated road where I have to jump out to open and close the gates - apart from a farm at each end there is nothing but pasture, much of it unfenced, the length of the valley. In Marley Lane, which clings to the hillside before descending into Kingston, we saw the blue plaque outside the house where Henry Moore lived from 1934 to 1940, before returning to London as an official war artist to document the people sheltering in the underground during the blitz. P was (again) trying to spot the well concealed earth sheltered house which he knew was there; he's had a long fascination with earth sheltered houses, so when the narrowness of the lane caused us to slow to a snail's pace to pass a dog walker, he wound down the window to ask her about it and discovered that it is her house. A conversation (undisturbed by other traffic) led to an invitation to contact her husband, who she said loves talking to people about the house, and to visit it. Our drive also took us past Howletts animal park and through various pretty villages, including Stodmarsh which has some lovely old buildings to which we will return.

The plan was to stroll around Fordwich, then sit on one of the seats beside the river and sketch. Unfortunately  the wedding in the town hall meant that the riverside garden was about to fill with guests drinking champagne, with a table already set out with glasses, while the seats at the end of the road outside the adjacent pub were hemmed in by guests' parked cars. We resorted to plan B, driving to the edge of Canterbury to park at Toddlers' Cove, where a large, grassy playground and riverside walk have trees, seats and picnic tables. It was getting late, but J and I managed a reasonable attempt at sketching a large willow tree using Krita on the tablet computer before deciding we really must return home for a late lunch.