Samphire Hoe

It was a perfect morning for a walk at Samphire Hoe: intense, periwinkle blue sky, pearlescent turquoise blue sea, and the iconic chalky white cliffs. There were rock pipits hopping on the rocks and skylarks singing in the sky. I blipped about Samphire Hoe last year: it's an  artificial undercliff created from spoil from the construction of the Channel Tunnel, which is now a peaceful and pleasant nature reserve.  We walked down the relatively steep path to the sea wall (because it's too hard to push J up that way!), then the length of the wall to the edge of the beach, where the main photo was taken, looking west towards Folkestone. The tiny figures on the beach give some idea of the scale of the cliffs. Like most large concrete structures, the sea wall offers great scope for abstract photography, with lots of joins, shadows, bits of wear, textures and subtle colour variations - but my family would not cope well with me spending an hour taking photos of bits of concrete, so I restrained my enthusiasm to a single abstract photo, telling myself I've taken quite a lot there in the past. We returned via the gentler gradient of the path across the grassland nature reserve below the cliffs, which is manageable with two of us pushing. The extra shows the view to the east, with the pier of the the cruise ship mooring at the port of Dover. The blue wooden tower contains a sound installation, and reminds me of something from the Moomins, and observant UK blippers will notice that two P&O ships, probably ferries, are moored at the cruise terminal, following the announcement of 800 redundancies of ferry staff to be replaced with cheaper agency workers, and cancelled sailings for the next week or more. There were demonstrations at Dover today, but unless the company's actions can be shown to be illegal, I can't see the current government wanting to intervene.

We came home via the business parks on the edge of Folkestone, where P had ordered replacement glass for the greenhouse and I picked up a click and collect order from Homebase - compost, and a replacement curtain rail for the one smashed by three trees. It's only the second time I've set foot in a shop in two years; click and collect is a good compromise.