Sound as a Pound

Although it was a short day's riding we sure expended the calories. You join the dynamic duo back on the south coast to finish what they started last year, that being the various sound mirrors erected up and down the coastline during the first world war, before they'd invented radar. Not too far from our cottage and along lovely puttery roads and a short walk was the first one, standing tall – much taller than you think – in a field at Abbot's Cliff. It's in pretty good condition still, too.

After attempting a series of shunpiker selfies, mostly on my part involving my phone falling over at the critical moment, we carried on towards BigTown. Climbing up the roads around the castle we reached the National Trust White Cliffs of Dover, which has a generous car park (with free motorbike parking that I knew about but didn't spot at first) and a good sized cafe. Changing out of some of our motorbike clobber and bracing ourselves in the strong breeze we took the walking path eastwards towards Fan Bay. There, they do tours of the deep level wartime shelter with groups of up to 15 at a time; hard hats and miners' lamps are de rigeur. What I had casually guessed would be "about a mile" of walking was much longer! And when we reached the designated coordinates we couldn't see our sound mirror anywhere. So instead we walked a short way north to see the Coastal Gun Battery. I'm sure it's very impressive inside but it was all fenced off, meaning only general we-were-here photos. I remarked to BB that if I were building some sort of large acoustic detector I'd do it in the deep natural amphitheatre next to Fan Bay. So back at the main path we walked further on and doubled back to drop down deep into the amphitheater, whereupon we spotted the sound mirror nestled high up in the wall! It was quite a scramble up a dusty, chalky cut path but we reached it ok. It was much the same construction as the last one: a shallow hemispherical dish cast into a large concrete slab. After some more photos we sat nearby to catch our breath, and just then 15 white hard hats appeared from behind the sound mirror – the same tour we watched departing earlier. We joined the huddle from the other side of the fence and listened to the guide explaining how the mirrors worked.

From there we hoofed it back to our bikes, by then quite in need of lunch and my feet quite in need of a rest. Bestie found a few miles away a cliff-top cafe, where again we missed the designated motorbike parking and made do on skiddy gravel. We enjoyed coffee and veggie paninis and sat for a good while.

After our good old tuck in we took a quick look at the Battle of Britain Memorial museum where they have replica Spitfire, Hurricane and Junkers Ju 87 'Stuka' aircraft. But we had one more sound mirror to find, along at Hythe and up the hill from the Royal Military Canal. The path was through a field of big boy cows with horns so we waited until they ambled some distance away, and then we hiked up the hill, saying hello to the sheep higher up. It was quite a climb in motorbike boots and clothes! This sound mirror was quite different, being almost a full hemisphere, cast as a bowl with metal reinforcement and an outer frame that is gradually rusting away. The dish itself is also coming to bits with its thin layers of concrete spalling in several places. It's fenced off and probably with good reason. Amongst the clutches of nettles I found two chairs that had been dumped, so I retrieved them and we enjoyed a very breezy and rather incongruous hilltop rest and a drink.

Back to the bikes we headed off in search of sustenance: petrol for Biscuit and Sensei Africa Twin, and stir fry ingredients for us, which took us through the remainder of the evening, and a jolly lovely day it was.