There are some days when unconnected things go wrong. Left the house at 9.20, got to the 96 bus stop at 9.35. This bus is every 10 minutes. Two 89 came together, two 422 came together, and at Dartford another 96 was behind us Rushed and got to the platform on time to see a train to Gravesend just pulling out. Due to signal failure at Blackheath, my train from Dartford was 25minutes late therefore I arrived an hour late. So left Rye station at 1pm.

Rye Harbour is a village at the of a tradings estate that includes custom bicycle building, petrochemical works, spice Wearhouse and grinders, and motorhomes.

Walking along Winchelsea beach I heard a rumble behind, a convoy of 8 of 30ton earth movers were recycling shingle from the build up at the harbour to Cliff End. These lorries are huge. It felt like a sene from the original Thunderbirds. There, a plough was smoothing out the beach. The convoy does 9 trips a day. Got to the end to find the path on the map is a low tide path. So had to backtrack to the road,an extra mile.

I had brought a new platapus bladder of 3 litre, and my spare 15 litre water bag. Half filled the bag at a toilet and started my monk walk.20 minutes later this seam split. I was left with only my reserve 3 Litre bladder. Will this be enough?

At Fairlight Cove, knocked on a door with a car on the drive, then saw the outside water tap on the front of the house. Perfect. The lady let me fill the bladder. This proved easy to carry. On the Fire Hills I looked for a quiet place to camp. Do dog walkers ever sleep?. It was getting dark and quiet. Started erecting the tent. More dog walkers came by. I carried on. As long as I speak pleasentaries there are no problems. Even later when it was much darker, I am in the tent with my tourch, more dog walkers. I heard them say, ' What is that, it's a tent, we had better check to see if any body is inside.'. My tourch was on and moving. !!! So I had to talk to them from inside the tent. The water bladder worked perfectly. I could hook it up and use the mouth piece to fill the bowls with out spills.

9 miles, GR TQ 860112. Walk total 182 miles.