Dover to Deal (10 miles) Dover is a town most people pass through, a swirl of traffic converging on a mighty seaport, but also a historic town in its own right primed for national defence. I was merely passing through, launching off through the more ordinary side of town where residents buy vapes and 10% of the high street shops are empty. Ducking beneath the dual carriageway brings you to the so-called beach, still lapped by waves despite being inside the harbour, its promenade overlooked by faded Victorian grandeur and an artful curve of postwar flats. If you're heading for the heights rather than the continent you need the backstreet which eventually leads to Dame Vera Lynn Way, an inclined footpath which skims under the A2 viaduct and whose sign confirms "...To The White Cliffs of Dover". And won't you look at that! Far better to continue along the prescribed path To The Lighthouse. It's a bit like crossing Beachy Head but not as high, and a bit like crossing the Seven Sisters but nowhere near as up and down, and all with the aid of an all-weather chalk path which neither of those enjoy. A skirt around Langford Hole provides an undulating vista with the sheer chalk face of the upcoming headland rising bright above a rock-strewn coastal shelf. These are the white cliffs that welcome you home from the deck of a ferry, a true national emblem, and here you are striding across the top of them amid billowing grassland dotted with stunted trees and gorse bushes. I swear I head a skylark at one point. The next five miles are previously unblogged, kicking off with a steady descent into the amazing hideaway of St Margaret's Bay. The original village is safely inland but a separate settlement grew up on the steep slopes above the bay, a string of residential fingers clinging to the contours along which decades of incomers built their dream homes. Some are classic detached, others more ostentatious or resolutely postmodern with a price tag to match. A large central dip contains The Pines Garden, an ornamental treasure which I suspect peaks in summer because the spring blooms were quite muted. Alongside is a tearoom which doubles up as St Margaret's Museum, all free to explore but you might find yourself having to edge round a table of patrons enjoying afternoon tea while trying to learn about wartime gun emplacements or experimental microwave dishes. The beef and red wine pie smelled divine. I'd been warned this might happen, but while down on the beach at St Margaret's Bay my phone chirped into action with a text message saying "Welcome to France". I checked and sure enough my phone was now connected to 'Orange' rather than EE, no British mast having line of sight over the chalk rim. More worryingly it informed me "While you're here you'll automatically pay £2.59/day to access your UK plan", which after all the hassle I've been having with data back home was almost the last straw. Climbing a few streets brought the ridiculous response "Welcome back to the UK, we hope you had a great trip!", and I hope EE recognise it's impossible to visit France and come back in the space of 18 minutes so don't overcharge me. The path ahead crosses undulating downland, again reminiscent of Beachy Head, with adjacent fields of grass rippling in the strong wind. A lot of weekend walkers and daytrippers were striding alongside me, the coast path being understandably popular on a bright spring day, most of them hiking in packs and the majority less than half my age. I let them pass while I scrutinised a tiny patch of purple orchids, although I suspect they'd have overtaken me anyway. And then the houses started, a single track of isolated homes with clifftop out front and farmland out back, one or two of which looked like they must have featured in either Grand Designs or Country Life. This continued for a good half mile before a golf club inevitably intruded, branded The Course On The Cliffs, after which the chalk finally faded away and the path descended to beach level. Walmer has a less exclusive waterfront, and also one of England's busiest lifeboats which RNLI volunteers were keen to show off because their craft has been replaced this very week. The new one goes by the peculiarly inshore name of 'Hounslow Branch' in memory of Lorna Newman, a former resident of Heston in west London who left her entire estate to the charity. A plaque in Upper Walmer marks the supposed location of the first Roman invasion of Britain, i.e. Julius Caesar was here, and when you look at how easy it would have been to lay up a war fleet on the shingle beach it all makes perfect sense. Alas he arrived two millennia too early to enjoy a pizza from Roman's Retreat or "cakes, baps and offensively large Scotch Eggs" from Hut 55. Previous local bloggage: Dover, Deal/Walmer, Dover, Dover, Betteshanger, Ham Sandwich

The person who holds the world record for basketball free throws shot over 2,000 consecutive baskets in a row. But if you put them in a stadium and a tight score between the teams, they might not have been able to shoot two. The main difference between playing basketball in a rec league and playing […] The post Professionalism and pressure appeared first on Herbert Lui.

After waking up yesterday I checked my router in case my broadband had restarted overnight. Still red, so no. "We wanted you to know that the fault you reported to us is now fixed. Please turn your router off and on, and your service should be fully restored." Ho-bloody-rah. Which was odd because the BT Service Status Checker now thought everything was now fixed. I re-reported the fault and they sent me another text message. "We can see that the line from our network to your home is working so let's take a look at the connection in your home. The good news is that these issues can often be fixed quickly and easily with a few simple checks. You can check find assistance on our website at [link] to guide you through what to look for. Let's see if that fixes the problem." This was their list of things to try. 1. Use the BT Broadband troubleshooter 2. Make a call on your landline 3. Restart your Hub 4. Check the lights on your hub 5. Power cycle your modem 6. Try your test socket I now had no broadband but BT didn't think I had a problem, This was even less ideal. There really was a fault, nothing had been fixed and they didn't know how long it might take to solve. I was back to square one. But I have no idea how long this is going to last - it could be only a few more hours or it could be another fortnight. Also trying to contact BT is easy but speaking to a human is hard. Every path through their customer service telephone portal seems to lead to a text message or a website and them ringing off, thinking their job is done. "We're working on it" is all very well, but by Day Six you really want to know more than that. i) offering up useful advice ii) advising me to do something I'm already doing iii) mitigation I have no intention of pursuing iv) a suggestion someone else has already suggested v) explaining how best to complain vi) recounting how it all went wrong for you vii) telling me I'm foolish for not having done something viii) detailing a separate problem you have ix) claiming BT are the spawn of the devil x) frenetic spleen Generally the nearer to the top of that classification the more useful, and the nearer to the bottom the more I roll my eyes. Aim high, ladies and gentlemen. Commentswise I also note that collectively you're far more interested in my broadband woes than say buses through the Silvertown Tunnel, so why struggle to write 1500 words about the suburbs when corporate failure is an easier target? Do please bear with me during this difficult period. Full refunds are available if you don't think you're getting the service you deserve.

This was a lesson one of my bosses shared with me: most people don’t improve consistently every quarter. Instead, progress ebbs and flows.  Sometimes—maybe many times—you might feel like you’re going through a plateau. Many other people would quit. If you remain confident you’re heading in the right direction, then you need to stick with […] The post Progress ebbs and flows appeared first on Herbert Lui.