Accept it - don't fight it

If  I’ve done the math correctly – as our American friends would say, we’re now halfway through the twelfth week of the so-called “lockdown;” a word we can thank our friends from across the Atlantic for. Like “social-distancing,” “lockdown” is a word we’ve heard far too much of recently and is yet another Americanism I’ve come to dislike.

But, as the wise-man said, “we are where we are” and it’s not much use complaining about a situation that few could have foreseen or, indeed have had to deal with before. Sure us humans have been beset by pandemics before, but it’s a hundred years since we’ve faced anything on this scale.

I don’t want to dwell too much on the whys and wherefores; although I might throw in a few of my own thoughts as to where this situation is going, at the end. Instead I wanted to suggest a few coping mechanisms which may help those who are slowly going crazy from being imprisoned in their own homes and not allowed to visit family loved ones or friends.

Confinement affects individuals in different ways and is especially hard on those used to doing their own thing. If, like me and many readers of this blog, you like to visit and explore different places, or enjoy having new experiences, then this unprecedented clampdown and restriction of our civil liberties has probably hit you quite hard.

I’m sure there are plenty amongst you who have seen holiday cancelled and other plans put on hold. We’ve had a cruise to Hamburg  that’s been cancelled plus a short break in the Czech Republic that’s now been put back until next year. Travel seems out of the question at the moment, even within the UK, although with luck that could change before too long.

Annoying as it is having to put travel plans on hold, it is not the end of the world and cancelled holidays can be re-booked and undertaken once this pandemic is over. Before you argue that it might never be over, just remember that every plague or pestilence that has occurred throughout history has always ended eventually.

With this in mind it’s worth taking a step back and reflecting that unless you or your loved ones have been adversely affected by Corona virus, this is a situation where patience and acceptance go a long way to mitigating the worst effects of the restrictions that have been imposed on us.

Before looking at these two qualities in greater detail, it’s worth reflecting on the stoicism shown by past generations as they faced two devastating world wars. The last of those conflicts in particular, meant six years of hardship and deprivation for the people of these islands, and for those involved in the fighting, the ever-present threat of death or serious injury. Civilians too were not immune from these threats, given the bombing raids conducted over many of our towns and cities.

When viewed from this angle, being confined to our own homes isn’t quite so bad, particularly now that some of the restrictions are gradually being lifted.  Without wishing to sound too clichéd, things could have been a hell of a lot worse.

I’ve been able to carry on in my job since virtually the start of  the emergency and whilst I did attempt a week and a bit  working from home, I found it much easier and more relaxing too, making the short journey into the office. With only around half of our normal compliment of staff in, I’ve been able to get a lot of things done whilst working in an environment that is largely free from interruptions.

I still find myself getting frustrated and, whist I appreciate it is necessary, I really dislike having to sidestep people I meet coming in the opposite direction from me and not getting too close to work colleagues or others I might meet in the course of a typical working day.

Not being able to jump on a train and head off for a day in London or, as my son and I did almost exactly a year ago, a day by the sea in Brighton. With pubs, restaurants and cafés closed, there’s not much point in these trips anyway and, as the same applies to hotels and guesthouses, it’s impossible to spend a night away from home.

I’m itching to recommence my stalled walk along the North Downs Way, but with no overnight accommodation available, it’s looking very difficult at present. As I may have mentioned in a previous post, Mrs PBT’s isn’t keen on me using public transport either, although now that the wearing of masks on buses and trains is to be made compulsory, she might well relent.

I keep telling her that an off-peak train, with just a handful of occupants, poses far less risk than a trip to the supermarket. Why am I so keen to travel on buses and trains? The answer is there are sections of the NDW I can easily cover, it there are public transport connections at either end.

Once again it all boils down to a little patience. We’ve only had three months of Corona-related restrictions, so why the hurry? I think, if truth be known, like almost everyone on planet Earth, there’s a deep-seated longing for things to get back to normal, as soon as possible. None of us like change, especially when it’s being forced on us, and patterns of behaviour acquired over decades, along with thousands of years of humans living together in complex societies, have left us with habits and patterns that are hard to break – even if we want to.

Most of us realise that changing these patterns for a short while, will be worth it in the long run; a sort of “no gain without pain” approach, but it still comes hard and it doesn’t come easy. We can learn from history though, and see how previous pandemics have been eased, and ultimately erased, by the appropriate quarantine and isolation methods. 

So what has, at the moment, become the new “normal” can very rapid fade back into memory, once the pandemic is over, but to arrive at that particular moment in time we need something else apart from patience, and that is acceptance.

Accepting things as they are is the key to a serene and peaceful existence, especially when what you are accepting are realities you can’t change. Accept you cannot force things and that you cannot force change. To do so just creates conflict, inner turmoil and ultimately pain, and believe me these aren’t things you want in your life, especially when everything around you seems to be falling apart.

I know that it’s frustrating not being able to do what we used to do and go wherever we wanted, but this situation is temporary, even if we don’t know how long it will be before normality returns. Don’t try to fight it, as it will make you miserable and leave you feeling un-fulfilled.

By accepting “what is,” you will gain a calmness and inner peace that will not only help you through the situation we all find ourselves in, but it will leave you stronger, wiser and ready to face the post-Corona world we eventually emerge into once all this is over.

This may all sound a bit too philosophical, but it’s helped me overcome my frustration and sense of helplessness. Look forward to the return of the good times; just don’t put a time-frame on when they return. Then, when things are back to normal, promise yourself that you’ll never ever take anything for granted again!

Finally, despite suggesting I was going to throw in a few suggestions as to the possible outcome of this situation, there’s so much speculation and conjecture that it would be pointless for me to add any of my own. Events often have a habit of overtaking us and taking us by surprise, so let’s just go with the flow and see where this one takes us.

A long closed pub and an eagerly awaited re-opening

At the beginning of September last year, I wrote a post entitled Friday in Tonbridge. It was basically a collection of photos, plus a write up of some of the pubs, restaurants and independent shops at the northern end of Tonbridge High Street.

Unsurprisingly, given the highly localised subject matter, the post didn’t attract any comments, but I thought about it again on Sunday afternoon when son Matthew and I took a brief stroll around this part of the town.  This was after we’d been for a brief drive over to Wateringbury – don’t ask me what for, as it’s all rather complicated!

We parked up close to Tonbridge Parish Church, which is dedicated to St Peter & St Paul. It is an attractive building constructed out of local sandstone and is said to date back to Saxon times, although personally I find that hard to believe. The tower was built in the 14^th Century, but most of the church is fairly recent, following restoration and extension work during the late Victorian period. 

Now here comes the confession; during the 35 years that I’ve lived in Tonbridge, I’ve never once set foot in its parish church, but with places of worship closed because of the Covid-19 restrictions, Sunday was not the time to make my first acquaintance. Also sadly closed, and for the same reason, was the Rose & Crown; Tonbridge’s largest and most prestigious hotel.  

I wrote a piece about this historic old inn here and mentioned it’s the hotel of choice amongst our Japanese board members when they come over for meetings. I don’t know when they’ll next be over, but there are rumblings that hotels and guest houses could be allowed to reopen early next month. If this happens it will be welcome news indeed to those of us wanting to spend a few days away from home.

From the Rose & Crown we headed over to Tonbridge’s historic castle. There seemed plenty of visitors spread out across the castle lawn, but all keeping a suitable distance from one another. Matthew then wanted to take a wander around the Slade area of the town, to have a look at one of Tonbridge’s long closed pubs. 

The Stag’s Head in Stafford Road has been shut for the best part of 10 years. The building is still standing, but it looks very sad and un-cared for. The pub was close to the original site of Tonbridge market, and was always particularly busy on market days. The market itself relocated several years before the closure of the Stag’s Head; the traders having accepted an offer to sell their town centre site to a group of developers. 

Houses now occupy the ground where the market traders once plied their wares. The market’s new site is one of the railway car parks and is a rather bleak and windswept location – especially in winter. Footfall and trade are now a fraction of what they were back in the market’s heyday, but such is the price of "progress."

Returning to the Stag’s Head for a few moments, it’s sad to see this once thriving pub now empty and falling into disrepair. Rumour has it the former landlord is still living there, having shut up shop following the death of his wife. I’m not sure how true this story is, but I have fond memories of the Stag. Back in the day it was the first pub in Tonbridge to stock Timothy Taylor’s beer and rather unusually, it was Best Bitter that was stocked, rather than the much more common Landlord.

I’m sure the pub could still be saved, given enough cash and a pair of

sympathetic hands. There are plenty of attractive Victorian cottages in the Slade area, many of them renovated to a high standard, so there would be no shortage of customers. Instead, the local punters will probably gravitate to the Ivy House which, when I wrote my piece last September, was undergoing an extensive renovation.

A look at the Ivy House was next on our agenda. The pub’s new owners had originally planned to open at Easter, until that nasty little virus threw a spanner in the works. The Ivy is now open, but only for people

to collect pre-ordered take-away food. We walked past and could see through the open door that the place had been refurbished to a high standard. The on-line take-away offering looks good too, especially the burgers.

The Ivy House is one of the oldest pubs in Tonbridge and in recent years has had rather a chequered history combined with lots of different owners.  It will be good if the new people make a go of it and I’m pretty certain they will, given their proven track-record elsewhere in the area. I’m looking forward to having a drink there, once the current restrictions are lifted, and finding out for myself.

More small steps along the North Downs Way

I took Friday off from work; only the second day’s annual leave I have taken this financial year. I felt in need of a break as, despite not many of us being in, it’s been pretty much non-stop at work. A couple of weeks ago, we finally received our revised ISO and CE certification, after a frenetic 14-month period.


Our application and transition to our new accreditation body involved a considerable amount of work, and whilst I wasn’t involved at the sharp end, I still played a major role in terms of preparing documentation and other paperwork necessary for our transfer.

Our new notified body is TÜV Sud, a highly respected testing and accreditation organisation, based in Munich, Bavaria. This means, we are now subject to German law, in respect of our dealings with our new NB – so much for “taking back control!”

TÜV Sud didn’t leave us hanging about, as on Wednesday they conducted the first of a series of agreed surveillance audits. Because of the pandemic, the audit was conducted remotely using Skype, and although I wasn’t called in for the closing meeting, it appears to have gone well.

So, with this major hurdle now cleared, the idea of a day off was even more appealing than usual. Apart from a day spent getting my car serviced in mid-April, my previous day’s leave was at the end of the first week in March, when I travelled up to Britain’s brewing capital – Burton-on-Trent, to enjoy a “Proper Day Out” in the company of the “real pub men” of the Beer & Pubs Forum.

That day out seems like a lifetime away, and a visit to any pub now is unfortunately out of the question, but what was feasible was knocking off another section of the North Down’s Way. Son Matthew was keen to accompany me, as he’s been going stir-crazy these past ten weeks of lock-down, so it was just a case of which section to go for, and where to start from.

I’d been looking at the map and had noticed a free car park and viewing area on the crest of Blue Bell Hill, close to the A229 – M2 junction. The NDW passes close by, so we’d be able to pick up the trail and head in either direction. My plan was to walk in a westerly direction, towards the River Medway. It was just over 4 miles to where the route crosses the river, by means of a footway on the viaduct carrying the M2 motorway and high-speed rail-link high across the Medway, just to the south of Rochester.

It seemed quite doable, even though it meant retracing our steps and walking a further four miles back to the car. We left home shortly after 10 am. Traffic wasn’t too heavy, even on the stretch of the M20 motorway that bypasses Maidstone. We reached the top of Blue Bell Hill and, despite getting slightly lost in the maze of side roads just below the summit, found the car park we were looking for.

There was just one problem, it was closed due to guess what? the Corona-virus pandemic.  I wasn’t best pleased. The car park is owned and maintained by the Kent Wildlife Trust, and I’d made a point of checking on their website about opening times and accessibility. I double checked when we got home, again nothing about the place being closed. The only reason we could think of was, as the site was un-manned, it was closed to prevent access and occupation by so-called “travellers.”

It was time to put plan B into action which involved a drive west, along the M20 and M26 as far as Wrotham. There we parked up, in a quiet street, just down from the recreation ground and a couple of hundred yards away from where the NDW passes through the village.

It seemed strange to be back in a place that I’d last set foot in five months ago. Back in January I’d walked there from Otford, following the route of the NDW. I’d ended my journey with a celebratory pint in Wrotham’s Bull Hotel, but with all pubs in the village firmly closed, there would be no welcoming pint of beer at the end of this walk. Matthew and I had each brought a packed lunch, so at least there would be the chance of a sandwich or two. Not quite the same, but sometimes we have to compromise.

 

We found the spot where the NDW passes through the village and quickly joined the A227. We followed the road as it passes over the M20 motorway, before heading off in an easterly direction along the rather narrow Pilgrims Way. This narrow road then veers off to the north-east, following the base of the North Downs escarpment, and there were several “off-road” sections were the trail diverges off into grassy fields.

The latter were full of grazing sheep, but fortunately nothing larger, or fiercer and we made good progress towards Hognore Wood, where we knew we would have to climb to the top of the escarpment. To our right we could see across to the Medway gap in the distance, whilst just the other side of the Pilgrims Way, there were several fields of poppies – all looking resplendent under the rather cloudy skies.

It was quite a climb up through the woods, and the stony track, which was hard going underfoot, seemed to go on forever. We met a fellow walker, descending the slope with his two dogs, but apart from two ladies – also with a dog, plus alone cyclist, there was no-one else out and about. The woodland is known as Wrotham Water; a Site of Special Scientific Interest, owned by the National Trust and manged on their behalf by the Woodland Trust. 

It’s a shame then, that some brainless individual had chosen to dump a pile of household rubbish there! This type of vandalism is unfortunately becoming all too common in rural areas, particularly after council tips were closed due to lock-down restrictions. Eventually we reached the summit and level ground, but not before we’d passed a lengthy brick wall enclosing a garden that appeared to be part of a much larger property.

 

We carried on until we emerged back onto the A227, a short distance long from the now sadly closed Vigo Inn.  This attractive old pub closed several years before the current crisis; its loss being sadly lamented by all who love traditional pubs. For years the Vigo was the only pub where customers could play "Dadlums"; a form of table skittles, peculiar to this part of north-west Kent. The photo below, taken in the mid 1980’s, shows me plus a group of CAMRA friends, gathered around the pub’s Dadlums table.

The pub is named after the battle of Vigo Bay, a naval encounter which took place in 1702, during the War of the Spanish Succession, but prior to that it was known as the Upper Drover. Although the pub is sadly no more, its name lives on as that of the nearby Vigo Village; a modern settlement built in the mid-20th century, on a site that once housed an army camp during World War II. 

For pedants, the area around both pub and village is known as Fairseat, which itself is a hamlet in the parish of Stanstead. It was here that we did an about turn, but not before noting the position of the bus stop. Once this virus situation is properly under control, and a sense of normality returns, I can take a bus from Sevenoaks, to the stop opposite the former Vigo Inn, and resume the North Downs Way. 

From the Vigo, it is an eight mile walk to Cuxton, a village on the west bank of the Medway and in the shadow of the Medway Bridges. Cuxton will be an ideal end point for that stretch, as it has its own railway station, on the Medway Valley line. From there, I can get a train back home to Tonbridge. 

That’s all in the future, but to conclude our walk, Matthew and I followed more or less the same route back to Wrotham, although once at the bottom of the escarpment, we stuck to the tarmacked Pilgrims Way. It had started to rain, as we approached the village; nothing substantial, just a little annoying, but it was wet enough to prevent us from sitting out in the recreation ground to enjoy our sandwiches. Instead, we sat and ate them in the car.

Our walk was just over five miles in total, which means another two and a half miles knocked off from the NDW total. Small steps in the general scheme of things, but still nice to get away from work and regulatory matters and instead, get out and enjoy the glorious Kent countryside.