The Pilgrim's Hand

My brother couldn't face another day of tortuous commuting up to London today - last week he'd had more than enough of late, cancelled and delayed trains with the added delight of no toilets. He checked his work e-mails and there was no work outstanding so he phoned in and booked the day off as unpaid leave (he'd already had to use up the last of his actual holiday entitlement due to the train strikes).
To cheer him up I said I would take him for a pint at The Black Horse at Thurnham in the foothills of the North Downs. We got there just as it opened and sat at a table right next to the glowing embers of an open fire. I ordered a couple of pints of Erdinger which came to the princely sum of £13.00 (!) but it was more than worth it to see the smile on my brother's face. He just looked so relaxed and happy to have avoided the drudgery of yet another challenging commute.
The Black Horse actually sits on the Pilgrims' Way, which is the historical route supposedly taken by pilgrims from Winchester in Hampshire to Canterbury in Kent.
The Pilgrims' Way is a comparatively recent name that is applied to a pre-existing trackway dated by archaeological finds to 600 - 450 BC, but probably in existence since the Stone Age. The prehistoric route followed the natural causeway east to west on the southern slopes of the North Downs.
The course was dictated by the natural geography as it took advantage of the contours to avoid the sticky clay of the land below but also the thinner overlaying clay with flints of the summits and would have varied with the seasons but it would not drop below the line of cultivation.
The trackway ran the entire length of the North Downs, leading to and from Folkestone with the pilgrims having to turn away from it, north along the valley of the Great Stour, near Chilham to reach Canterbury.
Today's image was taken in the churchyard of St Mary The Virgin at Thurnham on the way home from The Black Horse. My brother pushed open the gate so I could get a shot of this commemorative stone to the Pilgrims Way set in the wall of the churchyard and it made me wonder how many hundreds of previous generations had passed along this ancient route.