Project 365 day 172: Walmer seafront

I love walking by the sea at Walmer. We should do it more often. The seafront walk and cycleway runs east to Deal, with its long, high pier, and west to Kingsdown and Saint Margaret's Bay. The Walmer and Deal stretch is perfect for wheelchairs, a nice smooth surface and plenty of space for people to overtake dawdling photographers. We walked west this time, where it's quieter. There is a wide strip of shingle beach alongside the path, which, in the absence of a harbour, is home to many small boats and little huts, from some of which freshly caught fish or seafood is sold earlier in the day. It's very much a working area, full of bright crates, ropes and reels, bits of wood and metal, peeling paint and small, improvised boardwalks. It's bright and interesting to look because of, not despite, its workaday messiness. There's a steep bank down to the sea, which is visible only as a distant horizon. We passed the lifeboat station and the bandstand. Further along the path the shingle has been densely colonised by wild flowers, bushes and low trees. Red Valerian was blooming profusely, mostly more pink than red but with occasional red or white patches. Wild mallow was in flower alongside the path, along with tall blue spikes of Viper's Bugloss, which I had to look up but is apparently common in this kind of environment; it's a type of borrage, though quite different in shape to the borrage I know. There were also a lot of stocky trees which P thinks are a type of myrtle. To our right I enjoyed the quirky architectural features and pastel paint of a row of very varied nineteenth century houses, and then the walls, tower and cannons of Walmer Castle, built by Henry VIII and later part of Kent's extensive coastal defences against Napoleon's armies; Walmer remained a garrison town until the late twentieth century. Looking back along the shoreline to the east, we could see the long, high pier at Deal and the tall white cliffs at Ramsgate. Sometimes it's so frustrating to choose just one photo!