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Welcome to the “Georgia Wasp…”
This blog is modeled on the Carolina Israelite. That was an old-time newspaper – more like a personal newsletter – written and published by Harry Golden. Back in the 1950s, people called Harry a “voice of sanity amid the braying of jackals.” (For his work on the Israelite.)
That’s now my goal as well. To be a “voice of sanity amid the braying of jackals.”
For more on the blog-name connection, see the notes below.
In the meantime:
February 14, 2026 – The last post told of we three American hiker-pilgrims leaving our day-off lodging in Dunton Green – a small village in the Sevenoaks District of Kent – and ending up at The Tanyard, in West Malling. (Part of our multi-day, 130-plus-mile hike on the Canterbury Trail.) The next day, August 23, 2026, we hiked the 11.3 miles to Campbells Crib, in Maidstone.
About this time on the hike I stopped taking as many notes, either in cursive or on Facebook. (I’ve said in the past that if Hemingway was here today he probably wouldn’t scribble in a pocket notebook as he described in “A Moveable Feast.” He’d post notes and pictures on Facebook like I do, both to make the folks back home jealous and to use those notes for future books.)
Then again, I may have been too focused on just making it to the end of the hike.
In the meantime, the Tanyard was a two-minute walk southeast of Trottiscliffe, “colloquially known as Trosley.” And from there the Canterbury Trail heads way northeast to Upper Halling, only to then turn back south-southeast to Aylesford. That seemed like a lot of wasted effort, so we chose to go off the Trail and head more or less straight east on to Campbells Crib, Kent, using the London Road. Which led to an interesting lunch at the Fields at Aylesford. (A mile and a half southeast of Aylesford proper.) There we lucked on to the first WiFi since the Dunton Green guesthouse on August 20th, but there was a catch. You had to put in your date of birth.
Up came a calendar, for the month of August 2025. Turns out I had to scroll back 74 years, one slow thumb-month at a time, ALL the way back to 1951. That was one mind-bending experience, seeing all those months and eventually years scroll by, ever so slowly, one month at a time. Graduations, girlfriends, breakups, marriages, challenges, Yada Yada Yada. Actually, I should say it was kind of a psychedelic experience, watching all those months and years roll by backwards, the 74 long years it took to get back to my date of birth.
Or, thinking back maybe it was more like seeing your life flash before your eyes in one of those NDEs, where “the meaning of their life is presented to them, but also how their life affected other people.” (Talk about travel broadening the mind.) But in due course lunch arrived, and I had their Sunshine Salad and a pint of Estrella. (A Spanish beer popular in the UK.)
That calmed my nerves a bit after scrolling through all those long-past memories.
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Back to the hike. We got off the Trail partly wanting to shortcut a bit, but also from a dearth of suitable lodging on the guidebook route. (On that first, we didn’t want to hike way up northeast only to head way back southeast.) So, we ended up on mostly a suburb route, through towns with zooming cars whizzing by. But there were a lot of good sidewalks, and at one bus stop I saw a five-foot tall poster, huge baked beans all close-up, with the blurb, “It had to be toast.” A reminder that a classic Full English Breakfast includes baked beans on toast. (A treat I chose to forego all during my time in the UK, both on the Canterbury Trail and that mid-May “Recon.”)
Anyway, thanks to those nice, smooth and level sidewalks we made it in good time to Maidstone, a cute little college town sitting astride the River Medway:
Crossing over the Medway bridge, we saw two paddle-boarders enjoying the Saturday afternoon. Tomorrow – if my calculations are correct – we should get back on the Pilgrim’s Way to Canterbury, somewhere in the neighborhood of Hollingbourne.
The Campbells Crib apartment was quite comfortable, long and narrow with two bedrooms up front near the entrance, a substantial spread-out kitchen in the middle and a combo room at the far end, with a TV, dinette table, L-shaped couch – and eventually a mattress. I took a photo that night showing the edge of the sofa on the left side and the small dining table with one of three chairs stacked on top. It’s dark out through the back twin doors that led out onto the patio, and to the right was one of the twin mattresses dragged out from a bedroom up front. That’s where I slept. (We three take turns, and it was my turn to sleep on the floor.)
On the morrow, Sunday August 24, we would hike the 12 miles to The Dog & Bear Hotel (and pub), Lenham. Built in 1602, The Dog & Bear “offers cozy log fires, a courtyard terrace and cooked breakfasts… The cozy bedrooms at Dog and Bear were visited by Queen Anne in 1704, and feature a private bathroom and tea and coffee facilities.”
The popular pub restaurant serves a traditional British menu and seasonal specials using fresh local produce. With exposed beams and open fires, the historic bar offers a selection of beverages and real ales… The coast at Folkestone is a 25-minute drive from the hotel.
I hadn’t realized how close we ‘d be to that resort with great communications to Europe, “home of the Eurotunnel passenger terminal taking freight vehicles and cars via the Channel Tunnel to Calais/Coquelles.” But from the Dog & Bear we would be a mere three days and 26.5 miles to our final destination, Canterbury Cathedral. Meanwhile, something to look forward to.
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The upper image is courtesy of Maidstone Bridge Uk Images – Image Results.
Re: Life flashing before your eyes. The actual link is to When Life Flashes Before Our Eyes – Psychology Today. See also Life review – Wikipedia.
“Yada, yada, yada.” I knew the phrase from a Seinfeld episode, but the meaning has expanded. See Yada Yada Yada – Meaning, Origin and Usage – English-Grammar, on the way to skip over details, using an expression “meaning that you’re skipping over irrelevant details that no one cares about or needs to know.” But see also What Does “Yada Yada Yada” Mean in Hebrew? – vocesdeldesierto.com, which first notes that there the word “yada” in Hebrew means to know, and that “the repetition of ‘yada’ would imply a deepening of knowledge, a more profound understanding … with a stronger emphasis on the personal and experiential nature of knowledge.” Which is something I myself did not know, and why I love blogging. You keep on learning new things – if you do your research.
Re: Travel. See The Transformative Effects of Travel on the Brain.
I first acquired a taste for Estrella Damm, Mediterranean Beer hiking in Spain on various Caminos de Santiago. But it turned out to be quite popular in Britain as well.
Hollingbourne is a village and civil parish in the borough of Maidstone in Kent, England. The parish is located on the southward slope of the North Downs four miles east of Maidstone. The parish population is around 900. Also from Wikipedia:
The North Downs Way National Trail passes through the village, as does the Pilgrims’ Way, an ancient trackway historically associated with pilgrimage routes to Canterbury. The village has two large public houses.
Re: Folkestone. See Folkestone Terminal – Routes, Directions [and] Services.
The lower image is courtesy of The Dog And Bear Hotel Lenham … Image Results.
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Re: The Israelite. Harry Golden grew up in the Jewish ghetto of New York City, but eventually moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. Thus the “Carolina Israelite.” I on the other hand am a “classic 74-year-old “WASP” – White Anglo-Saxon Protestant – and live in north Georgia. Thus the “Georgia Wasp.”
Anyway, in North Carolina Harry wrote and published the “israelite” from the 1940s through the 1960s. He was a “cigar-smoking, bourbon-loving raconteur.” (He told good stories.) That also means if he was around today, the “Israelite would be done as a blog.” But what made Harry special was his positive outlook on life. As he got older but didn’t turn sour, like many do today. He still got a kick out of life. For more on the blog-name connection, see “Wasp” and/or The blog.
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