Seventeen years ago, slogging cross-country to Hythe, trouble with the MOD, the camps and ranges, then overnight on the coast, it was still winter, rain, wind and a black bin liner, more trouble in Lydd, and the last 10 miles with a split boot. That’s another story, an old story.

I still had the map that I used then, OS Landranger 189, reprinted with minor changes 2004. I took it out of the rucksack, it was the map of today’s walk, Ashford to Fairfield, a walk I had not taken before. It was not the journey of Wealden. It was a journey towards Wealden.  An 85-tweet thread that unravelled on Twitter earlier this year, drafted en route to a performance of Wealden by Nancy Gaffield and The Drift in southern Kent, is now regathered (and lightly revised) as a post for the Longbarrow Blog (with accompanying photographs of…