The first last walk, though I didn’t know it, was ‘Over the Golf Course’. We went at the time when all the children were leaving school making the roads busy, ribbons of students along the pavements. The streets full of life. We parked in our usual place and onto the former Golf Course, Cosmo always skips through the metal gateway and I always go over it. Inside it is empty and tranquil considering only a few hundred yards away the housing estate is bustling with people moving about…only birds in here. The putting greens are unrecognizable and two of them in the section I call the meadow have rabbit holes dug into them now.
So first of our check list of tasks is to have a look at the graffiti. There has been a lot of reworking the graffiti in the foot tunnel under the A229 since our last visit. New graffiti in styles I don’t recognise, these must be new people covering the work of people I have got to recognise. These were ‘Eliza’ who I can see no trace of now and ‘Loner’ who has focused on working at the tunnel entrance.
I have to say that Loner’s graffiti is more like an abstract painting on the wall using paint brushed on with not so much of the spray can as you would expect. I think Eliza may have stopped graffiti now, but looking at the dates inscribed over the years I have been looking at this stuff, I think Eliza may have up to 10 years of work on these walls….all covered over now with a new style and new ideas. I wonder if Eliza ever kept a sketch book or took a photo record of the work? We check the horse, who still has no stable, with the charred remains still piled up against the fence. The horse has a muddy coat on and he has spent the winter with no shelter. The next on our check list is the new excavations. These are still two ponds and I tentatively walk in to test how deep they might be and can tell that they would very easily go over the top of my wellies. We find a broken piece of 2×2 timber, with black felt pen says: 1.2m dig to pond centre from edge.
I kick a golf ball I just found about 200 yards to a putting green and left it there, at the place I guess I planted some wild flower seeds years ago which never did germinate.
Before we go I decide to have a look at the driving range as I notice the chain link fence and green netting has gone. I climb over a wire broken wire fence and have to leave Cosmo behind as he can’t get over. I scrabble up the bank and look all the way down the range to the sheltered end where you would have smashed your bucket of balls from. There was a white van and a small car parked there now!
We walk back to the car now through some snowdrops.
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Our next last walk was along the beach to see the Horses Head Stone. This is a walk we have been doing for what must be over nine years. It has a public bench I made for Canterbury City Council on this walk. The bench was inspired by walks with Cosmo along the coast line and the carvings on the bench record things we have seen and the local landmarks we visited together. It is called the groyne wood bench made from groyne timbers supplied by the council..
The horses head stone is not visible if the tide is in, but we are lucky today and the tide is right out as far as it will go and there is a strange feel as it is quite hard to see where the sea finishes and the sky starts. The wind farm is faintly hanging in space as the horizon is difficult to make out. So is the horses head stone I can’t see it in the strange light conditions.
No, it’s not this far along, we have walked passed it, and I turn back and to retrace my steps. Missed it again…. its usually easy to see as it one the highest stones sticking out of the beach. It’s too big to carry off, I say to myself. And who would anyway, probably only me. But I can’t believe that I I’m unable to find it and I have to systematically traverse the area in lines to locate it.
It has slid over and come to rest wedged under a large neighbouring stone, a little tucked away. I am quite shocked at this as it is so unexpected. The action of the sea has washed the beach away lower and lower revealing more of the Horse Head features as the pebbles get washed away. I have recorded this changing process since Aug 2008 and have several dozen photos of the stone going through various transformations. The last photo I have was Nov14 so over the winter the beach has got lower and it has eventually undermined it.
I am so surprised, I had not anticipated this and I have a powerful sense of missing it happen. After all these years I should be able to pinpoint the event much closer than a 3month window. It has affected me and I can’t stop thinking about it for the rest of our walk. I once asked a local writing group months ago to try and create some kind of prehistory myth around the theme of the creation stones and the horses head. I had hoped that their text would inspire me to make some kind of narrative around the stone. It did not float anyone’s boat so to speak and I only have one or two drawings of it. A whole body of work was on my to do list, but somehow I have not done it…and now it’s fallen over and any creation myths have to change with it. If there were any! The world is different in some way now.
Cosmo is up the gully and on the cliff top already, waiting for me to climb
up.
