Onward from Walmer Castle, along the beach to the “Ville and Hamlet of Kingsdown,” we come at length to the end of the coastwise road. Kingsdown is a fishing village on a very wide bank of shingle-beach, with scattered shanties built on it, and old windlasses and a very abandon of quaint seashore properties. It is perhaps possible at low tide to scramble along under the lofty cliffs all the three miles or less to St. Margaret’s Bay but it is dangerous, and there is no means of climbing its cliffs. Old people still talk of a road that once ran all the way; but encroachment of the sea has long destroyed it. It is therefore necessary to climb the exceedingly steep and very pretty leafy lane from Kingsdown to the high road and the grim bare downs. Against the sky, as you proceed, is the tower of Ringwould church, crested with its Dutch-like cupola. Looking backwards you see, peering over the verge of the naked fields, the little bell-turret of Kingsdown church, seeming pitiably insignificant; the church so small, the sea out beyond so immeasurable, and such an aching void. Passing the beautiful woods of Oxney Court, in a sharp dip of the road, and coming up to the cross roads called “Martin Cross,” the village of St. Margaret-at-Cliffe is one mile to the left. It has a particularly fine Norman church with lofty interior and an enriched western doorway. Here the curfew-bell is still rung in the winter months; but this is not the genuine curfew of Norman times; dating only from 1696, when the income from five roods of land was bequeathed by a shepherd for this purpose. By the chance ringing of this bell he had been saved from walking over the cliff in the dark. [Illustration: WALMER CASTLE, FROM THE SEA.] From this windy cliff-top village of St. Margaret-at-Cliffe whose inhabitants appear to live by selling picture-postcards to the stranger and each other, an amazingly steep road zigzags down four hundred feet through the chalk and flint to the beach of St. Margaret’s Bay. I envy the explorer his first discovery of this exquisite little spot, that rare, nay, almost phenomenal thing along the crowded, over-exploited coast of Kent--a sequestered and little-known place! Well do I remember my own first discovery of it; the more delightful inasmuch it was unexpected. This is the purest joy of journeying without a guide-book: that you have no certain expectations, and commit yourself in a complete ignorance to absolute chance. Every explorer knows that it is sometimes the most joyous thing to wend your way uninformed beforehand, without map or description. On the other hand, to fare in this fashion may bring you the most harrowing adventures. Try it both ways, and see what fortune sends you! [Illustration: ST. MARGARET’S BAY.]