Easter in Kent and Sussex - April 2007 (by Adam)

Good Friday

We picked up our hire-car (very conveniently, from a Hertz located about 200m from our place, up Edgware Road) and thanks to Cat's fantastic navigation skills, we were soon on the M25, bound for Kent. First stop was Leeds Castle, which was increadibly beautiful, all the more so because of the stunning weather.

We spent a couple of hours walking through the Castle and its surrounding grounds...

Given our fascination with all things vermin, we particularly enjoyed two of the exhibits at the Castle. Firstly, an 18th century rat trap...

And secondly, an exhibit about the endangered water vole...

... which included a quite forceful claim that "Ratty", from "The Wind in the Willows", was in fact a water vole, and not a rat...

This is just some of the stuff that you can learn at Leeds Castle - clearly, it's not just a pretty face.

We left Leeds Castle and made our way along some beautiful country roads into Sussex, stopping for lunch at a great little pub called "The King's Head". Unfortunately, I can't recall the name of the town in which this pub was located, but I do remember that they were trying to recruit patrons for the annual tug-of-war against another pub which was located a couple of hundred metres up the road... called "The Queen's Head". I had a really tasty lamb and apricot pie, and Cat had a jacket potato with beans - good pub food. I didn't get a photo of the pub, but Cat, in true Cat style, did manage to get a photo of the pub cat, who was lucky enough to get a few lamb scraps from my pie.

We then headed onto Rye, and eventually found our B&B - the Benson Hotel (http://www.bensonhotel.co.uk)- after about 5 laps of the Old Town (I should point out that this was not Cat's fault - lots of one way streets made navigation very difficult). We had a lovely little room overlooking Romney Marsh.

We dropped off our bags and walked the beautiful streets of the Old Town for a couple of hours...

That night, we had a drink at "The Mermaid Inn", followed by dinner at a not-so-great Italian place down by the River Rother. Still, it was lovely to walk the streets of the Old Town at night, free from the hordes of tourists who invade it while the sun is up.

Easter Saturday

After a delicious cooked breakfast, served in our room at a table drenched in sunshine, looking out over Romney Marsh, we headed off to the little village of Northbourne, winding our way up the Kent coast, through the Cinque Port towns.

We spent an hour or so walking the grounds of the school at which I spent my gap year in 1995 (and where I had spent another week in 2000), Northbourne Park School (http://www.northbournepark.com). Other than a new boarding house (for Brad's benefit, up near the tennis courts), and a fence around the swimming pool, nothing much else appeared to have changed, which I must admit I was glad about.

Below is a photo of me at the top of the school's Dutch Gardens (my mum and dad and Brad will no doubt recall similar ones taken when my mum and dad visited me there in 1995, and when they visited Brad there in 1997)...

... and one of Cat in front of the main school building...

... and a couple of others of the main school building...

... and one of the school playing fields...

... and one of the school church, Betteshanger Church...

... and finally, one of me underneath my old room (which had been a hay store above some stables in the 19th and early 20th centuries)....

We had lunch out in the beer garden of my "local" during my time at NPS, "The Hare and Hounds" (http://www.thehareandhounds.net). We then spent a couple of hours driving around the area, including a visit to my old cricket club near the village of Eastry (thatched pavillion and all) and the nearby towns of Sandwich, Ham and Ripple. We tried to visit Dover Castle on our way home, but we were too late, so headed back to Rye.

We had dinner that night at an Indian restaurant in the Old Town, which was really good.

Easter Sunday

We again enjoyed a delicious cooked breakfast in our room (although this one was preceeded by an easter egg entre), before checking out and heading onto Canterbury. We had lunch with some old friends of mine, Lynn and Geoff (Lynn was the matron at NPS while I was there in 1995, and was fantastic to me), at their house in the beautiful little village of Chiltern, just out of Canterbury. We went for a walk with them in the surrounding countryside, which included a glimpse of a house owned by Jane Austen's brother, which, not surprisingly, was very Jane Austen-like.

We then went into Canterbury with Lynn and Geoff, and they showed us around the unbelievable grounds of Kings College, where Lynn now works - it was a brilliant guided tour. After a coffee with them in Canterbury, we checked into our hotel, the Canterbury Cathedral Lodge (http://www.canterburycisc.org), which was in the grounds of the Cathedral. Below is a photo of the view from our room...

We had dinner that night at a nearby Wagamama restaurant, before returning to our room to watch the final round of the US Masters from Augusta (sadly, Stuart Appelby could not maintain his lead).

Easter Monday

We got up fairly early, and tried to do the walled walk around Canterbury, but with me as the navigator, we struggled. We returned to the hotel for some breakfast, then spent some time in and around the Cathedral...

Then it was back to London, via an enormous Ikea near the Dartford Tunnel, where we stocked up on some much-needed household stuff.

It had been a great few days, and I was thrilled to have been able to show Cat some of the places that I had so enjoyed during my previous time in the UK.