'Borderland walking the East Kent coastline'
by Rod Edmund
Rod Edmond’s talk was taken from his book of the same title, from which he read extracts. He started by saying “Why write a book?” There has to be a reason to do so. What had prompted him to write his book was when he almost drowned whilst playing cricket on the Goodwin Sands!
Cricket on Goodwin Sands, as many of us know, has been a regular re-enactment event for many years and Rod was on the Sands with a BBC TV crew to film a match. He then related an alarming account of the experience when the tide suddenly turned with the sea incoming at great speed on all sides. This gave them little time to scramble to the boat which had become stuck in the sands! The weather turned, the wind got up and the sea became wild.
In due course Rod moved to live on the south east coast and thought he should get to know the area in which he now lived. He did this on a series of walks which over time would take him from Reculver to Folkestone. Each walk he did twice, out and home, to get to see the area from both angles.
He saw many landmarks, remains of Invasion and Defence, from Roman forts at Reculver and Richborough, to castles at Walmer and Dover. There were structures from the Napoleonic War period and the two World Wars. He reminded us of ‘Sound Mirrors’ in Fan Bay, built in WWI to pick up the sound of enemy aircraft before the introduction of radar, and the alternative world of Underground Tunnels that sheltered the inhabitants of Dover Ramsgate and Margate in WWII.
Rob talked about Thanet’s 19th century seaside heyday and read an extract from his book where he quoted Dickens. In Sketches by Boz Dickens talks about the trippers, arriving by rail and steamers to the Thanet resorts and he describes the delights that were waiting there for them. Rob also mentioned the young (later Queen) Victoria’s visits to Ramsgate where she swam in the sea from a bathing machine.
Rod’s final topic was migration, sometimes welcomed and sometimes not. He said that throughout history, in times of European troubles, the Borderland had welcomed refugees in their thousands. But today the many people arriving in inflatable boats are not made as welcome as those in the past because the troubles they are escaping from are in countries far across the world. Internal migration has not whole-heartedly been welcomed either, as was the case when miners from Yorkshire, Scotland and Wales came to work in Kent in the early 20th century in the newly found coalfields.
The first Channel Tunnel was started in the late19th century but excavations were soon stopped over fears of invasion and in WWII troops were sent into the tunnel to check if it could be possible for an army to invade us via this medium.
Rob brought along copies of his book to sell, which were enthusiastically snapped up at the end of his talk.
Report by Tricia Baxter