Month: June 2019

The End of Our Trip to England and Wales

Kent – A Day of Coincidences

Jill was feeling a little better so we decided to head off and see some more of this area. She has always wanted to see the White Cliffs of Dover, so we headed down the road to Dover to see if we could get a view of these famous cliffs. After a bit of exploring, […]

Sissinghurst Garden and Castle

Jill was feeling a bit better this morning and was out of bed (slowly) for the first time in three days. She thought that she would be comfortable enough to go for a drive in the car, so after a late morning start we decided to go to see the famous Sissinghurst Gardens – about […]

Rainy Kent

It’s Saturday today and we had a sleep-in, at least by the hotel timetable as breakfast continues until 11.00 am on weekends. Last Wednesday,, we drove the ninety-mile distance from Colchester south to Ashford. It rained all day. We had a few places on the list to visit but gave them away early on because […]

Exploring Some National Trust Properties

Over the last two days, we have spent some time visiting National Trust properties around Colchester. All of these properties are well maintained. They all have a visitors centre with a cafe, shops and toilets and, as such, are a very reliable places to visit. We get free entry on a reciprocal basis with our […]

Lunch With Friends in Lavenham

We didn’t drive far today – just a few miles up the road to the historic town of Lavenham to meet friends for lunch I took a few photos of charming houses on the way. My favourite form of photography is landscape photography but this area is so flat, there isn’t really many long distance […]

More Village Visits

Yesterday, we drove though a few more villages in Sussex and Essex (to the north and east of Colchester). Ajll were very quaint and we enjoyed pottering around them. It was raining during the morning and  our visit to Cavendish was wet but the houses that looked on to the village green were very attractive. […]

Exploring Sussex

Our plan of slecting two or three places to visit each day worked really well for us today. Some of our visits were to villages in Suffolk ands others were across the border in Essex. To us, they are so close so that whichever county they are in doesn’t really matter. After a slow start, […]

Visiting the Happisburgh Owls

Our day yesterday was a simple one – a visit to Happisburgh Owls and then a drive to Colchester, our base for the next six days. Happisburgh Owls is a privately owned collection of different owls and owned by Sandy Delzell. She is a delightful lady and very enthusiastic about these birds. She has kept […]

Bardwell Family Connections

Today, we filled in some more gaps in our family history. We had already found about my family who were illiterate tin miners in Cornwall and we caught up with Jill’s paternal side once before in the little village of Kragero in Norway. Today we sought the origin of Jill’s maternal side at Bardwell in […]

Visiting Royalty at Sandringham

I have visited royalty before – the Duke of York and Prince of Wales when I had a beer at some of the inner city pubs back in Melbourne. Yesterday, we travelled to Sandringham to see the Royal House where the Queen spends Christmas each year.. I had half expected Her Majesty to be there; […]