Snorting exhaust fumes out of our noses from the busy road out of Dover we clamber up the steep path to the top of the first cliff.

Greeted by the sight of people bent double over their allotment patches we tip toe past. Startled by the quiet approach of a hang glider over my shoulder I scrabble frantically for my camera and catch the next one swishing past.

Five minutes later and the peace is shattered by a group of off road motorbikes roaring around the clifftop tracks. Surely they shouldn’t be here? Someone calls the police. A quick visit to a memorial site and a Churchill speech “The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, goes out to the British airmen

who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the world war by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

And then a stroll across the clifftops down to the bobbing boats in the harbour and squealing of excited children on the beach at Folkestone.

Distance: 8 miles