An eventful weekend

Last weekend was a rather eventful one! Here goes...

On Friday night (28th March), I went to Cathy's bridal shower in north London. Cathy is the one we had the wedding planning girls' night for a couple of months back. Her wedding to Deva was yesterday, so the bridal shower was 8 days before the big day. Before I arrived at the Indian restaurant where the party was held, I only knew two of the other attendees: Cathy, and Mel, who organised it! Anyway, it was great to meet some new people - some had travelled from overseas for the wedding - and we had a fun, girly night of games, gifts, good food, and great company! :D

That night Ben and I stayed nearby at a cheap (for London) guesthouse, as the following morning we would be continuing north to Cambridge... for Malcolm and Esther's wedding! (Yes, a very wedding-related weekend for me!) In the morning, after having breakfast, getting dressed for the wedding, and getting packed up, Ben went downstairs to load our gear into the car... only to discover that our car was not there!!!

As it turned out, we had been towed away... not for parking in the wrong place at the wrong time as we'd been worried about the previous night, but for parking with our left wheels on the footpath - an English habit we've picked up to take up less of the road! So, getting our car back involved Ben running to the nearby police station, finding out where our car had been taken, calling a taxi to take him there, and parting with £250 to get our car back (£50 fine and £200 recovery fee). Yep, that's AUD $545 on last week's exchange rate. :Z To make this hurt even more, the only other parking fine we've had in England was earlier that same week... £30 when we were in Hastings with Dotti - and we'd thought THAT was expensive!!

Thankfully, we'd been organised enough to start with that we still made it to the wedding on time. The ceremony had already taken place with just a few guests (as you can't just get married anywhere over here the way you can in Australia), but the reception was in Little Thetford, which is just north of Cambridge. It was beautiful! Malc and Est looked gorgeous and they were just SO visibly happy! We had a delicious lunch, enjoyed some excellent music by a string quartet and also a lady who sang a few songs, and then had great fun watching the kids (and Malc and Est) trying to break open a colourful piñata. Esther is Mexican and had made it herself - it was so well-made that it took ages to break open! It was a wonderful day!

That evening we wandered around Cambridge, an amazing old city with a university dating back to 1200. We stayed overnight at a nice B&B in the city. Thankfully we made it back there for some more exploring the following afternoon, when it was daylight and we could see the incredible buildings properly and take photos, so I'll tell you more about Cambridge later!

The next morning we went to the meeting in a nearby town, and afterwards went back to some friends' place for lunch - Steve and Rach and their two little boys, whom Trev and Sharon were staying with. Unfortunately, as our three cars were travelling in convoy en route to Steve and Rach's, Trev and Sharon were rear-ended by a hit and run drunk driver right in front of us... :S Thankfully they were ok - although some whiplash later manifested itself - and Trev even managed to catch the guy and get his insurance details. But it was a big shock and a dramatic few minutes. Anyway, their car wasn't driveable, so they left it there and we gave them a lift home that night.

After all of that, we continued on to Steve and Rach's where we had a lovely lunch. That afternoon, Trev, Sharon, Ben and I went into Cambridge for a few hours of sightseeing. It was a really lovely afternoon - nice sunny weather, and lots of people out enjoying the parks and riverside. We walked along beside the River Cam and saw lots of lived-in canal boats moored at the edges, and people making their way along the river in hired punts. Punts are little flat-bottomed boats that are propelled along the canal by someone standing on the back of them pushing against the riverbed with a long pole.



Realising that no visit to Cambridge is complete without going punting, of course we didn't stay spectators for long! We did a 45-minute tour with a young guy on his gap year doing all the hard work, and we learnt all about the history of the university as we passed its amazing old buildings all along the river. We even saw a guy - who was self-punting his female friends in a hired boat, something we'd elected not to do - fall into the river and leave his pole floating behind as he clambered back in - Ben passed it to him as we went past! Punting was very relaxing and peaceful (except if you fall into the river, of course) - highly recommended! We've decided that Cambridge is our new favourite town/city in England. :)



Afterwards, we spent some time walking around the city admiring the old buildings, and had dinner at a noodle bar. Then it was time to drive the couple of hours home, and that was our weekend - like I said, eventful!!!

Smugglers Adventure and Pevensey Castle

On Easter Monday, the three of us set off from Geoff and Eunie's to explore Hastings, an old coastal town in East Sussex with a population of around 90000. We parked right near the beach and set off on foot, following the signs to Smugglers Adventure, which was to be our first stop. On the way, we got sidetracked by a great little second hand bookshop in an alley just off the esplanade, and emerged some time later with a book or three each.

After a bit more of a wander around, we took a short funicular railway (the West Hill Lift) up to the top of the West Hill, which rose steeply a street back from the esplanade. At the top were a couple of restaurants, large grassy areas, a lookout over a cliff with some rocks to clamber on if you're game (see photos from later in the day), the ruins of Hastings Castle, and our destination: the old smugglers' caves extending deep into the hillside! The view of the town (note the beach's manmade shape) from on top of the hill was excellent - see photos below...

Well, we spent a couple of hours looking through the caves, which have been turned into quite the tourist attraction and in our opinions were somewhat overdone with lots of arcade-style kids games etc! However, we had expected this after seeing the website but wanted to go anyway! There were also lots of educational displays, videos narrated by “Hairy Jack”, and life-sized mannequins set up in smuggling scenes (unloading boats, watering down alcohol, fighting with the customs men etc) – all inside the caverns and tunnels within the hill! No photos of this as the lighting made it difficult and my camera was almost flat!

The caves themselves were awesome – they are called the St Clements Caves and the earliest written reference to them is from over 200 years ago, when an old couple lived in them. They were used by smugglers in the late 18^th century, when smuggling was at its peak in England due to extremely high import duties. Then, they were re-discovered in the 1820s by a local grocer. In the 1940s, the caves were even used as an air raid shelter and temporarily housed about 600 people!

After we emerged from the caves, we spent a little while enjoying the view from the cliff-top lookout.

Then, after a quick trip back to Geoff and Eunie's to collect Ben's left-behind wedding ring (I never realised we were so forgetful until I started recording it for the blog!!), we set off along the coast to check out Pevensey Castle. It was very close to the beach, and had actually been William the Conqueror's base 17 days before the Battle of Hastings in the year 1066! We didn't end up seeing the parts of the castle that you had to pay to enter, but we had a nice walk around the grounds.

Pevensey Castle is in a fairly ruined state and has set a new record for the oldest built structure Ben and I have ever seen. While the actual castle is about 900 years old, the wall bordering the field around it is estimated to have been built around 290 AD – yes, over 1700 years ago!!! And that's it Ben is walking around on top of in the photo below!

After a hot chocolate at the café next to the castle, we set off for home, having enjoyed a wonderful weekend of history, exploration, and good company. :) Quite different from the sunny weekend of camping and beach activities enjoyed by many of you back home, but it was great to explore some of the places that are so close to where we live! :D Goodnight!

Bodiam Castle and Battle Abbey

Well, I'm getting a bit behind on the blog entries so I'll get straight into it! On the Saturday of Easter weekend, the three of us (Dotti, Ben and I) set off for 1066 country, 1.5 hours away: first stop, Bodiam Castle! This is an amazing old moated castle in a typical medieval style (square-shaped with corner towers), built in 1385 by Sir Edward Dallyngrigge, a former knight of Edward III. It was used in the filming of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

As we walked up to the castle, it started sleeting little balls of ice on us, which continued sporadically all day in between the rain and snow and occasional sunshine. It kind of added to the gone-back-in-time atmosphere though! The castle was incredible and we definitely recommend a visit to anyone who gets the chance! We crossed the moat by footbridge, clambered up steep circular staircases, explored the hexagonal rooms, saw medieval toilets, walked around on the tops of the towers, and watched a video about the castle's interesting history as well as one about making and wearing armour.

Here are some photos – amazing isn't it?!

Afterwards, we had lunch at a pub called The White Hart, and then continued on to the town of Battle, where our destination was Battle Abbey. The Abbey was built between the years 1070 and 1094 by William the Conqueror. It was in memory of the Battle of Hastings in 1066, when King Harold II of England was killed and William, a Norman who had brought his army over from France to fight the English, took the throne. That is why the area is called 1066 country and there are towns called Battle and Hastings there! It is believed that about 5000 English and 3000 Normans died during the Battle of Hastings, which lasted less than a day.

Anyway, Battle Abbey was also fantastic and very interesting. We had headphones with an audio tour, and we walked all around the battlefield, typing in numbers to hear the relevant commentary as we reached signs along the way. We walked down to the bottom of the hill, where the Norman army had assembled, and up the hill where they had advanced towards the English army at the top. It was sleeting and so freezing that our faces were numb – touching my chin felt like I'd just been to the dentist!

Reaching the top of the hill, where the Abbey is, we looked through the rooms on the bottom floor of the ruins, and even stood on the spot where King Harold was killed during the battle. We also walked in a crypt (meaning a basement rather than a tomb) that is all that remains of what was once the Abbey church (destroyed during Henry VIII's reign) – see the photos with daffodils below. There was also a great little ice store (a bunker-looking mound of dirt with a door in it) and a dairy (the little white building below). These days there's a school at the Abbey!

Anyway, visiting these two amazing places had filled up our day, so after a warming hot chocolate at The 1066 across from the Abbey, we set off for Hastings, where we would stay the next two nights (Sat and Sun) with our friends Geoff and Eunie. Here we rested from our sightseeing, enjoying fabulous food and great company, until it was time for Monday's adventures – which I'll tell you about in the next entry! Goodnight!