St. Mary the Virgin and All Saints Church, Boxley

Hull down in a grove of trees with a sea of dandelions in front St Mary's Church tower stands proudly in the village against the backdrop of the steep slopes and chalk cliffs of the North Downs.

Adjacent to the Pilgrims Way, which has featured regularly in blips over recent week, a church has stood on this site since the 12th century and has parish records going back to the 1500s. Boxley is an ancient settlement having been mentioned in the Doomsday Book. Now the village is split asunder by a busy rat run between the Medway Towns and Maidstone.

This was another new walk for us, made possible by the greatly reduced traffic on the main roads which meant we could walk to the Boxley Road in relative comfort. We followed many new footpaths from Penenden Health through Boxley and onto the Pilgrims Way with good views over Maidstone and an extensive new vineyard that has just been planted on the gentler south-facing slopes below the scarp.

Glorious weather again, bright sunshine with a refreshing breeze made this a grand walk. The weather is due to change this week with heavy rain forecast for Tuesday, not before time either.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon relaxing over lunch and coffee.I called my brother who is self-isolating with his wife in Hayfield in Derbyshire. It looks as if he's settled in for the long run as both he and his wife have long term health issues that need shielding.

It was their youngest son's (my nephew) 18th birthday today so we were able to wish him all the very best. Not a time to have a landmark birthday nor a time to be in your last year at school. He's waiting to see what his A level results will be like as he wants to do Sports Science at Loughborough - which is demanding high grades. Rather fortuitously he deferred his entry for a year before the present pandemic began. He was hoping to go to Australia for a year's cricket. That's in doubt too.