Endings and beginnings

Last week I stayed with family in Kent. I was brought up in that county on a farm on the edge of a village with my two brothers and two sisters. My sisters have returned to live in the village, and the rest of us visit as often as we can.
 
Kent is known as the Garden of England because of its fruit orchards and I have vivid memories of my mother buying us lucky children a crate of cherries from a local grower and us working our way through them, having spitting competitions with the stones.
 
On Friday however when I went for a walk it looked more like the Mediterranean. I believe it has the hottest (in summer), driest climate in the country. My sister’s lawn was too parched and prickly to walk on with bare feet

My sister's lawn

and the view from the hill was more brown than green.
 

The view from the hill

 
The village lies in the North Downs, a chalk ridge designated a National Landscape (as I read on the internet). I think that means it’s special. Well, I’ve always thought so, anyway. There are footpaths everywhere, lots of trees and loveliness round every corner.

Looking towards the hills and their beechwoods

Our farm – which I remember as being mostly grazed by cows whom we dodged in order to climb the trees that dotted the fields and who ate the underneath of the giant horse chestnut visible from the house and kept it neat - is now a vineyard.
 

Rows and rows of vines

 
The vineyard is open to the public and has a shop and restaurant – a vast glass edifice built over the concrete yard where I used to play hopscotch with a friend. The whole place, I'm told, is an extremely popular day out for people from nearby London. Fields have been turned into carparks, and information boards explain the farming business.
 

An overflow carpark

An information board on a neighbouring field, the other side of the footpath

A chalk stream flows through the village and I remember spending hours with my siblings and friends trying (and failing) to catch fish with twigs and string, paddling in it, falling in it and crawling through it under the road.
 
Chalk streams (I read) are globally rare and important because they support so many species. They are fed by underground water which percolates up through the chalk. This is full of minerals, very pure and clear, and of a consistent temperature (cold!).
 
In a wood I pass some tributaries of the main river, a welcome feature on a broiling day and somewhere my sister’s spaniel spends as much time as she is allowed.
 

Welcome streams and shade

I skirt the cricket pitch where a brother and I used to take charge of the scoreboard, and I helped the ladies making the teas in the hope that I would be able to eat some of the delicious food. They were so deft with their knives, whipping up squishy butter from a large plastic tub and sweeping it over sliced white bread. I still think of them every time I make a sandwich.
 
From the cricket pitch there is a view of a cross cut into the chalk. This commemorates those killed in the First World War.
 

The cricket pitch and the cross

 
Finally, I make my way through the graveyard next to the church, where I pause at the newly filled grave of a sister-in-law’s brother, whose funeral was the reason for my visit. He was the same age as me and had lived in the village all his life.
 

This morning on my second day back at home, I realised that I need to commit to my life in Devon. I feel divided between Kent and Devon but I don’t want to go and live in Kent. I love it in Kent and I love it here, but I have a very big family and at times they overwhelm me. Here, on my own without Frog, is where I am at last finding myself.