A stroll along the promendade and through the High Street on one of the better days of 2012's summer was a delight. Deal is one of the more pleasant, genteel seaside towns of Kent. The interior shot of the 'Deal Beach Parlour' reveals a fine little café to grab a pensive cuppa (or an ice cream) and watch the world go by before a breezy walk to the end of the pier and 'Jasin's bar-restaurant'; you may even see the local rod men catch some fish on your way.
On this fourteenth day of June, six dogfish had been snagged by a chap I met called Pete using squid as bait, although I have seen a line of seven silvery striped mackerel hooked from a shoal not fifty metres from the seafront. On rare days, looking southeast into the distance, one can see France and the ferries which ply the Strait of Dover.
The shingle beach, where Julius Caesar landed in 55BC (see favonius.com/romans for commemorative plinth), is steeply shelved and stretches south past Walmer to Kingsdown and north into Sandwich Bay. It has summer displays of wild flowers; I came across the colour polymorphic red valerian (and pink, white and purple variants), the yellow flowered black mustard, edible sea kale, lilac mallow and the feathery fronds of wild fennel amongst others.
