There is very little surface water in East Kent. Not only is it one of the driest parts of the country, but also any rain that we do get soaks down into the porous chalk rather than running off the land as rivers. Since there are so few water courses, we like to celebrate the ones that we do have and, on Good Friday, we decided to go on a quest to chase the Elham Nailbourne up to its source.

The Nailbourne bubbles up as a spring at St Ethelburga’s Well at Lyminge in the North Downs and then runs north down the Elham Valley for several miles until it joins the Little Stour just before Littlebourne. It’s a very intriguing river because the middle section of the river between Elham and Bishopsbourne is ephemeral and only flows above ground about once every seven years.

We started our Easter quest at the very end of the Nailbourne’s journey where it joins the Little Stour near Littlebourne. The water meadows here were doing a good job of holding some of the surplus water after a winter of rain:

It all gets a bit complicated where the Nailbourne and the Little Stour meet. The Nailbourne arrives from the south and joins the Little Stour very close to its source:

There is no access to the point where the two rivers actually converge, but we walked up river to see both of them as they make their final approach. The Nailbourne was very boisterous after the wet winter we have had:

But the Little Stour, which only arises a short distance from this bridge, was serenely drifting along and was very clear and appealing:

We really liked the Little Stour and walked a bit further to investigate its source:

It seems that I was not alone in feeling the specialness of the spring – close by are the ruins of the medieval Well Chapel:

Once we felt that we understood what was going on at the end of the Nailbourne, we got back in the car and started chasing it back to its source.

We saw a lot of oast houses on our Easter quest, all now no longer drying hops but converted into residential properties. This one was in Littlebourne:

Our first stop as we travelled up the Nailbourne was at Patrixbourne. A road crossed the river at a ford here but it has had to be closed because of the high water level:

Our attention was temporarily diverted by Patrixbourne’s ancient Church:

The carving around the entrance door was amazing:

We tried to go inside the church to see some special stained glass there but a Good Friday service was going on and so we will return another time. Our next stop was at Bridge where the Nailbourne was merrily cantering through the village:

We should have then gone to Bishopsbourne but we were getting tired and decided to miss that stop – we had visited there in January 2021 when the Nailbourne was also running. It seems that these days the Nailbourne might run more often than once every seven years.

Upstream of Bishopsbourne, we were now travelling along the section of the river that is usually a grassy ditch. At Barham:

Once we got to Elham, we were again in a section where the water is always above ground. However there was noticeably less flow here:

We then arrived at our final destination – the source of the Nailbourne at Lyminge. St Ethelburga’s well-house was built over the spring in 1898:

The spring supplied the village with its water until a mains supply arrived in 1905:

The young river trickles its way out of St Ethelburga’s Well at Lyminge and begins its journey down to meet the Little Stour at Littlebourne:

We really enjoyed our mini-expedition on Good Friday and now have a much better understanding of how the Nailbourne works. We would like to return in the summer and see how different things are then.

One day this week the buzzard was hunting in the first meadow, quite close to the house. I took this photo with my camera….

…and then we set up the birding scope with a phone attached to it to get some better photos of the magnificent bird:

It has also been hunting from the haypile:

A tawny owl heads off towards the moon:

The blackthorn is out in wonderful blossom in the hedgerows:

It is really uplifting in the Easter sunshine:

Like small, white explosions:

The cowslips are also out:

A new group of foxes has arrived over the winter and they are really bold:

The pale vixen on the right is very tame indeed and comes right up to me. She looks alright from the front but unfortunately she doesn’t look so good from the rear:

Over in the wood, the young Easter bunny is still living down the burrow:

A tawny owl takes a drink:

Two pond skaters feast on a drowned bumble bee:

And I was surprised to see how many squirrels are currently living in the tawny owl box:

Easter has been early this year but, even so, we have been treated with lovely weather and what a difference that makes. Of course I’ve eaten far too much chocolate and I’m regretting that now. It’s definitely time to get back on track as we continue to appreciate this lovely spring.