What to do in Kent?

It was on the Beeb news this morning. Blink and you would miss it, but it showed footage of a fire at Hankley common. not that far (as the crow flies) from the M25 and M3 motorways. That solved the mystery of all that smoke yesterday.

Did I mention the fan we bought a couple of days ago? Small and compact with 4 fan speeds, it was just the ticket for MB. On the slow speed it was almost quiet but for last night's humidity we cranked it up another setting. Oh, it was wonderful and that gentle hum got me off to sleep in no time. Ian on the other hand said it kept him awake! This is the man that can sleep through raucous noise from youths, high winds causing the skylight covers to rattle annoyingly and torrential rain but is kept awake by the reassuring and soft drone of a fan motor. I just don't get it!!

Nothing was planned for today, other than go into Tunbridge Wells and drop off my camera. The zoom motor makes a hell of a noise every time I use it and I do so want it right for when we head off to the other side of the World in October.  Safely handed over to the repairers, clutching an estamate of 3 fiquers, we sat in their car park looking through all the English Heritage houses/castles and then the NT places in Kent. Sissinghurst Castle Gardens sounded nice, unfortunately we read it wrong, thought it said Castle and Gardens so slightly disappointed on arrival to find it was just the gardens with a possible tour of the South Cottage. This from the website.

The South Cottage was the intimate retreat of famous residents Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West. Visitors now have the chance to explore this little-known private space of one of the most influential couples in literary history, including Harold’s book room where he carried out much of his writing.

 By the time we arrived only a few slots left on the tour and that was for late afternoon. It was decided to forgo the tour and walk the grounds instead. 

The gardens had definitely seen better days, probably due to the time of year as most of the blooms had 'gone over' creating seeds instead of colourful flowers. I don't suppose the drought helped and a decided absence of maintenance was sadly lacking. Grass was left to grow long, weeds were present and only the formal areas had any work done at all. Still it passed a couple of hours and of course for us as members it was free to park and enter the grounds.

 

 You may have noticed the difference to the look of the photos in this post. I'm back to using the old Panasonic Lumix FZ72. It's not a patch on the FZ2000, I haven't the zoom capabilities that camera has for a start so the wildlife photos may only appear on my posts if the subjects are very close.  Saying that these were taken with the FZ72, I was only a few feet away from them and this camera is pretty good on that score.