6 miles walked today
482.5 miles walked in
total (average 12.37)
This morning, we were walking at about 10.30 am
along the creek at Queenborough, past a car plant and out to the roads through Blue Town
From Tescos at Sheerness, we were back out on the
sea wall to Minster – proper seaside at last!
I got rather over excited, I’m afraid – I’m so fed up with riverside and
estuary walking. I really wanted to have
a paddle, but didn’t dare tell Vicky in case she had me committed! Besides, it was blinking cold – Sheerness is
so bracing!
At Minster, we gave up. It was very sunny and we found a sheltered
spot from the sea breezes to sit down.
For an hour unfortunately, which meant we lost all enthusiasm. However, it was lovely to sit and watch the
people on the beach, the windsurfers tacking back and forth and just to natter
and put the world to rights. Perfect!
We did a bit of exploring of the shells and stones
on the beach. Vicky found a jellyfish
and poked it with rather a short stick to see if it was alive. I pointed out that, as Vicky is a first aider
and I’m not, she would have to talk me through the treatment if she’d been
stung. Apparently, this would involve
chopping an arm off, even if the sting was on the leg! Mmmmm.
I think that perhaps the sun had got to Vicky at this stage – this was
confirmed as she was trying out her Karate Kid manoeuvres while standing on a
breakwater.
We had another look at the map to work out a plan
of action and ended up in The Beach pub for a drink! We then had another look at the map for
another plan of action and walked to Minster Abbey to do some sightseeing and
some more sitting down. Our guide book
had mentioned a tomb in the Abbey of Sir Robert de Shurland, Baron of Sheppey
and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports during the
fourteenth century. The carving on his
tomb shows a horse’s head rising from the waves – a local witch had prophesied
that the horse would bring about de Shurland’s death. To prevent this, he cut off its head, but,
some months later, stubbed his foot on its skeleton (rather carelessly left
lying about, I thought), developed gangrene and died. Unfortunately we couldn’t get in to see the
tomb as a christening was in progress.
The Abbey was founded in the seventh century by
Sexburga, widow of a Saxon king and the nuns of the Abbey seemed to have lived
a good life. When excavating around the
area, thousands of oyster shells and deer and wild boar bones were found. The Abbey well is now housed in a garden of
one of the local residents, but is open to the public on request. It’s a fertility shrine and apparently has a
100 per cent pregnancy success rate.
Vicky and I decided not to visit.
Although still quite early, we decided to call it
a day and get a taxi back to the car.
Vicky spotted a cab in the road and went to get the number, which didn’t
show an area code. We dialled the number
with the Gillingham code (which turned out to
be wrong) and managed to get through to the Control Centre of Kingsnorth Power
Station!
It’s been a brilliant weekend – obviously not too
many miles today, but the weather’s been glorious and it’s just good to bum
around in the sunshine.
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