From the bay at Freshwater, we strike out purposefully for the Downs - Big John explains that the chalk ridge we are walking up is the same one that makes up the white cliffs of Dover in the east and the Bournemouth in the west.
The view is striking and on such a clear beautiful day, you can see the new Spinnaker Tower in Pompey, Sway Tower (tradition has it that if you can see Sway Tower from the Downs, it's going to rain, and if you can't see it, it is raining) and Bournemouth. It puts one in mind of those lines by Brooke;
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there is some corner of a foreign field,
That is forever England.
If I die abroad - then I wouldn't mind it being this slab of England that is planted in that foreign field. Terribly trite I'm afraid, but we only learned war poetry or romantic poetry at school and I was smoking behind the biksheds while Mr Kirby wittered on about that fag Byron.
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