[Illustration: _Photo: J. White, Littlehampton._ ARUNDEL CASTLE (_p. 11_).] About two miles below Canterbury is the village of Fordwich, on the opposite bank of the Stour. As the tide in old days reached thither, it ranked as a Cinque Port. According to Izaak Walton, the old name of Fordwich was "Fordidge," and as such he immortalised it in the "Compleat Angler" as the home of the Fordidge trout, about which there was some mystery, until in the present century it was proved to be one of the migratory salmonidæ. An occasional specimen is now found. This fish does now and then run into some of our south-east rivers, and no doubt at the time when the Thames was a salmon river and the waters were unpolluted, it was common in the Stour, which throughout is an excellent trout stream. [Illustration: _Photo: Poulton & Son, Lee._ SANDWICH: THE OLD BRIDGE AND BARBICAN (_p. 7_).] Below Canterbury, where the water becomes brackish and the conditions prosaic, the trout gives place to the ordinary coarse fish of our streams. Grove Ferry is one of the favourite holiday resorts of the citizens. At Sarr, a few miles from Fordwich, the ferry which now plies at Grove Ferry was formerly the means of communication with the Isle of Thanet. This historic island is formed by the Stour separating right and left, the arm to the north finding the sea a little east of the Reculvers; while the branch flowing in the opposite direction marks the boundary of the promontory which includes the watering-places of Ramsgate, Broadstairs, Margate, and Birchington, and has for the extreme tip of its snout the lonely North Foreland. This divergence, which, on a smaller scale, corresponds with the curious right-angled course of the brooks at the source, used to have a name of its own: it was called the Wantsum, with a well-known ford at St. Nicholas-at-Wade; and no doubt this channel was once an arm of the sea. The lesser Stour, of which something will presently be said, falls into the navigable portion of the parent river below Sarr. The lower branch runs through marshes by Minster, which is a deservedly popular village to tourists exploring Kent who are specially on the lookout for interesting relics of the past. King Egbert, one of the Christian kings of Kent, founded a nunnery here by way of atonement for the murder of a couple of princely cousins, and he agreed to endow it with as much land as a hind would cover in one course. The Danes had their will of the place. The restored church in its present form has a Norman nave, with Early English transepts and choir. Minster is a favourite ramble for seaside visitors to Ramsgate; it is well situated, and its high ground affords views of distant Canterbury, the ruins of Richborough Castle, the coast country about Deal, and a proper expanse of marsh. The Stour, when nearly opposite the point of coast where it eventually falls into the Straits of Dover, takes a turn to the east, calling, as it were, at the