Could not resist a bag of the white stuff...

Now we have covered more than our fair share of the Kent countryside, in fact we often joke we are studying the knowledge of Kent rather than the urban version pawed over by every Black Cab driver, but today we stumbled upon a real gem, Sandgate...more of that in a mo.
The purpose of our adventure today was to get down to Crabble Corn Water Mill and take a look at the stone grinding in action and sample some of their product to see if it can add to our artisan bread flavours. As usual we avoided motorways and headed across the Kent Downs into River, just outside Dover.  A beautiful spot on the river, with a mill pond and the most stately looking of Mill houses right on the road with its majestic water wheel turning at a fair old lick when we arrived.

Not only can you explore all 6 floors without interruption from school parties or a mass of overseas tourists pushing to the front, but they have also provided a really comprehensive soundtrack on each floor which you can listen to at the press of a button whilst you stumble around trying to avoid falling through the multitude of hatches cut into the floors for a range of reasons known only to the master miller.  This we thought was brilliant, informative and full of quaint antique tools and machines of the day, but then to our surprise the guy that works the place who I mistakenly called "Windy Miller" when helping him into his milling coat...soon corrected to "Walter Miller"...wanted to show us the mill grinding and the flour being made.  Having crawled on all fours through the smallest door in the land to the gear house he clunked and chocked a few things into place then crawled back out to crank the sluice gate open once again and the Mill rocked groaned and rolled with the turning of time as we were swept back to 1870 and the dust rose and flour poured down the chute into the rather too modern paper sack tied to the bottom.  The smell, taste and feel of this wholemeal product was a triumph to this old guy keeping part of yesteryear alive and kicking today.  Well done him.


We could not resist a bag of the white stuff, which whilst assured they no longer cut it with chalk as they did to bulk it out and make more profit in the 1870s, we were advised that if you make your bread with it using tap water you will create a bowling ball, but use lemonade and its a good tasty loaf you'll be rewarded with.  Tomorrow we will test that theory and be sure to let you know the outcome.

Anyway after having given the Mill a considerable coat of looking at we went off in search of lunch and in our usual follow your nose to the coast style we headed to the sea in search of great fish food.  This is where we not only discovered that Folkestone has a rather splendid side to it which can rival any foreign riviera but we also chanced upon Sandgate which has a lovely "Little Fish Shop", great name serving up tasty straight form the sea dishes and offering a beach walk right across the road.