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There are worse ways to spend a morning than sitting in a café in Faversham with a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich.

Welcome to Faversham, Then...

...In fact, I can recommend it.

Not necessarily for the bacon sandwich — although that was perfectly respectable — but for the people watching.

Sit still for long enough and Faversham appears to come to you.

First came the bin man.

Bright orange jacket, wheeled trolley in front of him, meandering gently through town with the unhurried air of a man who has seen absolutely everything Faversham has to offer and isn't expecting any surprises before lunchtime.

Then came the mobility scooters.

One lady passed wearing a particularly splendid pair of bright pink trainers.

I liked those.

Shortly afterwards, a fully grown man wandered past dressed in a poncho and a very large hat.

Nobody seemed remotely concerned by this.

This is Faversham.

And actually, I rather like it.

A Proper Kentish Town

Faversham is one of those Kent towns that still feels like a town.

It has its market, old streets, beautiful buildings and enough history to keep you occupied for considerably longer than the average parking restriction allows.

It is also famously the home of Shepherd Neame brewery.

Beer has been part of Faversham for centuries.

Brewing, in fact, seems to have left its mark all over the place.

Even Tesco lives in an old brewery.

And what a Tesco it is.

Instead of the usual enormous tin box beside a roundabout, the supermarket occupies part of a magnificent old red-brick brewery complex. Look upwards and there are great brick elevations, rows of old windows and the unmistakable remains of industrial Faversham.

Look down again and there are shopping trolleys.

Inside are all the goodies you might expect.

Some of them even at prices that cause you to pick them up, look at the label, quietly say “HOW MUCH?” and put them back again.

Which, coincidentally, is much the same experience as looking through an estate agent's window in Faversham.

Lovely little cottage.

Couple of bedrooms.

Tiny garden.

Lots of character.

HOW MUCH?

Welcome to Kent.

And then there's the parking

Tesco kindly gives you an hour's free parking.

That's actually quite useful.

You can arrive, wander into town, buy something, have a cup of tea and generally enjoy Faversham.

Except, of course, you mustn't enjoy it for too long.

Should you require a second hour, matters become more interesting.

Spend at least £5 in Tesco and you receive a voucher at the checkout.

You then take this voucher to a machine outside and validate your parking.

Simple.

Except the machine didn't want to scan the receipt.

So you try again.

And again.

Turn it slightly.

Flatten it.

Present it carefully to the little glowing scanner.

Nothing.

Eventually you discover that the alternative is to type the code manually into a touchscreen.

And it's not exactly 1234.

By the time you've finished entering the seemingly endless collection of characters, you've become emotionally invested in seeing the second hour through to the end.

But my favourite part is the sign.

There's a large blue parking sign explaining the rules.

Or at least I assume it explains the rules.

The important bits are quite readable.

Maximum stay: 2 hours.

Spend £5 in store.

Parking charge: £70.

Then, towards the bottom, comes the small print.

Lots of it.

Unfortunately, much of this small print is mounted about twelve feet in the air.

Presumably the correct procedure is to arrive at Tesco with binoculars.

Or, in my case, a 70–200mm lens.

You could easily spend your entire free hour standing underneath the sign trying to read the conditions, only to discover that your free hour has expired while you were finding out how not to let your free hour expire.

Still, should there be any confusion, I'm sure the answer is contained somewhere in paragraph 17, approximately level with the first-floor windows.

Meanwhile, Back in Faversham...

And that's what I like about places like this.

The grand history is still there.

The breweries, the old buildings, the market and centuries of Kentish life haven't disappeared.

They've simply acquired Tesco trolleys, ANPR cameras and touchscreen parking machines.

Meanwhile, the actual town carries on around them.

The bin man trundles past.

The lady on the mobility scooter wears bright pink trainers.

Children run around Tesco with rather more enthusiasm than some of the older shoppers might ideally prefer.

A man in a poncho and enormous hat wanders through town and nobody bats an eyelid.

Somewhere an estate agent is asking the price of a small Caribbean island for a two-bedroom cottage.

And I sit in the Swan Café, drinking tea and eating a bacon sandwich, watching the whole thing go by.

Nothing extraordinary happened.

That's rather the point.

Sometimes you don't need to travel halfway across Europe looking for a story.

Sometimes you just need to sit down, order breakfast and look out of the window.

Welcome to Faversham then, just remember, pack your binoculars..!