Why This Is Hell

1 Canadians
I got chatting to a guy from Vancouver on the way back, who'd clearly been to the same nut shop as I and was pretty impressed. Me, I've seen before and - well I was grateful, would have gone there anyway. I don't think I was being chatted up, but it felt close and mayber, under different circumstances it would have been.

I exchanged a few words with a woman on the train from Ashford on the way there, too, but I don't think she was Canadian. But she was worried by the football fans who were already rowdy and a pain in the proverbial.

2 Canines and other animals
There was a fox in broad daylight, sauntering across the railway as if he hadn't a care in the world. Mostly, I guess, I've seen urban foxes - the one that followed us halfway home from the pub, waiting at the pedestrian crossings.

Would it have been welcome in the "tea garden" at Fletcher's? "I'le be a Wolf first", perhaps.

Plenty of birds down by the Rother, undisturbed by the biker rally. Plenty of signs telling us not to feed them - the birds, not the bikers. Gulls, jackdaws, more gulls. I stopped to take a photograph of a particularly murderous looking herring gull, and it hopped from post to post as I walked down river. I listened out for the Bernard Herrmann soundtrack.

Less to be seen in the nature reserve - waders and rabbits, and a curlew, somewhere. Wish I'd had my bins with me. I identified a swan for the Canadian on the train.

3 Castles
Ypres Tower dominates the town from the south, although St Mary's is as visible when taking the roofline in as a whole. Ypres has personal associations for me, and I wonder whether they call it Eep or Wipers. There's a museum inside, but I'll leave that for a later visit; it's small, but has a commanding view of the marshes. If you squint, you can pick out Dungeness in the distance.

I spotted two Martello Towers, in addition to Martello Bookshop - an ivy covered one just outside town, and one down at Rye Harbour. I didn't have time to look too closely.

One gate/bar survives - Landgate Arch - which is pretty big, and a bit of a wall, which I presume defended the town from the north back when it was a port.

As I walked down to Rye Harbour I think I saw Camber Castle - or rather its silohuette - in the distance.

4 Charity Shops
Not much doing, to be fair - a hospice shop, a Sue Ryder and a Help the Aged. Supposedly four second hand bookshops: two in the shadow of John Fletcher on Lion Street, one of which was two shops in one, both uninteresting, and one with all stock at half price, which was not promising. This one offered books by "Jane Austin." Ooops. The Paperback Place divided the books by genre and stacked them horizontally; pretty well everything was three quid including a couple of Rebuses which I left. I found a couple of New Worlds quarterlies. I missed Chapter and Verse, even though I went the length of the High Street - I guess it's gone. No WH Smith - what will they do when they close the Post Office?

5 Cheese and Other Food
The Deli stocks Appleby, a rather nice Double Gloucester-like red cheese made from raw milk (I guess it's a Cheshire), and an initial look didn't reveal other gems, although it was a vast array of Stinking Bishops and Colston Bassetts. Closer look did locate more unpasteurised cheese, although I forget what I bought (some kind of Sussex, which turned out to be less interesting than first thought). In total this came to twelve pounds, and the sales assistant was apologetic. I didn't point out how I end up spend fifty quid with Tom the Cheeseman.

Simon the Pieman was a little disappointing, too, as an array of pies was not that obvous (although cakes were). I settled for a Pork Pie, although I find I prefer Pork Farms Melton Mowbray pies. I sat and watched the blossom and watched people photographing the blossom.

Of course, there was the need for nuts, or rather the search for sultanas, which led me into Julian Graves, so beloved of the Canadian. There's one in Ashford, and Whitstable and I dare say in Hastings, but the local one closed, claiming the stock could be purchased in Whittards. Hollow laff. I took as much advantage of the half-price sale as I could - and now have oodles of dry fruit and replenished the red lentil deficit.

6 Cinque Ports
Rye is a Cinque Port - although not one of the five. It turns out there are anything up to a dozen of them (surely Douze Ports?) - the main five are Dover, Hastings, Hythe, New Romney and Sandwich, which Rye and Wincelsea as ancient towns and Deal, Faversham, Folkestone, Lydd, Margate, Ramsgate and Tenterden as Limbs attached to them, with a further 23 towns associated. In return for tax breaks, the towns had to supply armies to defend the coast. You not in a number of cases struck by the closeness of the sea - Sandwich bought a golf course to act as first line of defence, Faversham started making gunpowder and blowing itself up, and Rye offloaded the sea onto Rye Harbour which itslef is a good two miles from serious wet. I would lay odd that a ship will mever conquer Rye.

7 Creativity

Perhaps this is why James beats Wells (Wells was on the coast at and near Folkestone). It was in Rye that Henry James spent many years - in particular in Lamb House which opens at random hours. E.F. Benson also lived in Lamb House, and turned it into a Map and Lucia location - but it's always sounded to me like Ladies of Leisure do the Charleston and I've avoided it. Then there's Rumer Godden. Quite. Me neither. But then I think of Black Narcissus as a Powell and Pressberger film not a literary adaptation. My bad.

More interesting to me is the John Fletcher house near Simon the Pieman; I seem to be surrounded by Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights such as Marlowe and Arden of Faversham.

And then there is Radclyffe Hall, author of The Well of Loneliness rather than a building. The war artist Paul Nash lived nearby, and Joan Aitken and Spike Milligan are also associated with the town.