“There can be no progress, no achievement, without sacrifice," the philosopher James Allen once said. He could have been talking about Kent when the Channel Tunnel was being built.

For anyone who was living in the county as the 1980s morphed into the 1990s, progress and achievement certainly came at a high price.

The Channel Tunnel was a project the size and scale and impact of which we may never again see in our lifetime. A remarkable engineering feat, it has transformed cross-Channel travel; making it quick and easy. But it wasn't just the ruddy big hole under the sea linking us with our French cousins which caused such shockwaves at the time. It was the infrastructure work which sliced through the county to support it.

A high-speed rail service linking London to Paris which carved its way through our countryside, redefining our landscapes, disrupting industry, changing things forever. It's hard to imagine now, given we are all so used to it, the enormity of the project at the time. Kent has never been the same since.

Growing up in Ashford, the town and its surroundings were hit hard.

It was a challenging time for the population - the promise of a brighter future was clearly there; the town had, after all, been selected to be the location of the an international terminal. The carrot of direct services to Europe, and faster routes to London, opening up business and leisure trip potential dangled at the end of very long stick.

Just that for many years, it was all stick and no carrot for residents.

We lost our town centre cinema - bulldozed to make way for the international railway station. The popular town centre cattle market - which on Saturdays would host sprawling market stalls offering everything from school bags to cheap clothes and which sat close to the existing rail line, was another victim.

Family homes, lying on the proposed route were subject to compulsory orders. Yes, they may have got a figure above market rates in compensation, but those living there were also faced with ripping up roots.

Surrounding areas changed too.

Along with many thousands of others, I can remember visiting the Eurotunnel Exhibition Centre - now a business centre sat alongside the M20 and just behind the Tesco supermarket at Cheriton.

With a huge drilling machine outside, there were models of what it would all look like when complete.

You could climb a viewing tower and watch the countryside turn from green to concrete before your very eyes. It was quite a sobering time. But exciting too in many ways. This was progress in the making.

The nearby Mucky Duck pub at Sellindge - once a popular haunt - found itself in the centre of an expansion of the road leading to the Eurotunnel terminal. The 18th century pub stood no chance against progress and, like many a Mafia enemy over the years, ended up under a concrete flyover.

Driving to Maidstone along the M20 once treated you to views of rolling hills and majestic trees. Now it's a railway route - where motorists can catch glimpses of domestic and international services whipping back and forth.

As the Channel Tunnel's swift, easy to use, non-weather dependant service opened, the ferry companies which were once so treasured began to falter. They couldn't compete. When I was a teenager, I had a part-time job for Sealink in Ashford's Charter House building. It dominated much of the building - a huge customer service team (of which I was once one) booking cars and caravans on its fleet of ships sailing to France, Spain, Northern Ireland and Larne.

Today Charter House - which only its mother would deny was an ugly building - is a block of flats. A key employer long since sailed off into the sunset.

But, as James Allen said: "There can be no progress, no achievement, without sacrifice."

And the achievement was certainly impressive.

From a - pardon the pun - pipe dream to reality, the creation of the Channel Tunnel may have changed communities forever, but it brought with it transport links which many of us have come upon to rely. A little over half an hour from Ashford to London? Dramatically reduced commute times for many other towns in the county? We may pay a hefty price for it - both financially and historically - but we'd be up in arms if it went.

And, of course, it created thousands of jobs during its construction and subsequently.

Except, of course, a large element of that carrot I mentioned earlier has subsequently been removed.

Just as we'd all got used to chomping on it and that all important economic benefit of having an international terminal which opened up the continent, we were told to regurgitate it.

Knocked off the rails, metaphorically, by Covid, Eurostar has not returned to stopping in the county, nor is there any realistic hope of it doing so again for another few years.

Instead of boarding international services at Ebbsfleet or Ashford, they simply blast through - benefitting the good folk of London and many of Europe's major cities - but not us in Kent. We're back to just being a 'drive-through' county.

The big question now is for all those sacrifice Kent, as a county, made - and the loss of homes, pubs, markets, cinemas and fields which came with it - was it all really worth it?