Dear Residents,
Why do we do it? Why, Oh why do we do it. Our elders have advised against it, our doctors have advised against it, yet we still go along to the Highways England Consultations to listen to the endless spew of meaningless drivel that HE experts embarrassingly describe as an answer to our questions. If it wasn't for the fact that this proposal would be a 'life changer' for local residents it would be funny. But it isn't.
On visiting the Lympne Village Hall today, we heard that the fire hydrant system serving the proposed Lorry park would be a combination of potable water being used to fill a bowser to extinguish a lorry fire. My mind quickly flashed back to a Dads Army scene with Godfrey fumbling to fill a tanker whilst the fire raged on. I struggled to comprehend what Pablo (the HE expert) was telling me. For the sake of my health, I had to walk away.
So please take a little time to escape and read just one page from Bill Brysons' The Road to Little Dribbling. It reduces the pulse rate, restores a little to your soul and confirms to us all just why we are fighting so hard to preserve what we have left in this corner of Kent. Bless you all for your hard work.
S&DRA
This is where England gets really old. The Ridgeway has been a thoroughfare for at least ten thousand years. For a long time, nobody could say just how old the White Horse is, but now with a procedure of optical stimulated luminescence it is known that it has been there, galloping across its hillside, for three thousand years. So it is older than England, older than the English language. For all those centuries it has been continuously maintained. If people didn't climb up the hill and tend it, grass would grow over the chalk and the White Horse would disappear. The White Horse is a magnificent creation but its preservation and continuous maintenance over three thousand years is perhaps more magnificent still.
You can't actually see the horse from the Ridgeway. You have to go partway down the hill to see it at all, and even then you can't tell what it is because of its immense size. But if you can't see the horse from White Horse Hill, you can see the countryside for miles around and that is awfully fine, too. I have said it many times before, but it really can't be stated too often; there isn't a landscape in the world that is more artfully worked, more lovely to behold, more comfortable to be in, than the countryside of Great Britain. It is the world's largest park, its most perfect accidental garden. I think it may be the British nation's most glorious achievement.
All we have to do is look after it. I hope that's not too much to ask.
