We went to Dover the last weekend of September. Which was also my nephew’s first birthday: Happy Birthday, Kaiden! I was so sad to miss his first birthday. 😦
We were up early to board the bus to Dover. The bus left at 8am for a 2 1/2 hour drive. We went with another couple (the same one that picked up up from the airport), which was nice. We had a long day of exploring the castle and grounds. I don’t think I expected the grounds to be so extensive! We probably had 6 hours to look around, and we didn’t even get to see everything.
Heading into the main gateLooking down on the city of Dover
I really enjoyed the Anglo-Saxon church on the grounds. It was built before the castle was even here.
St. Mary-in-Castro Church
The church has been heavily restored over time.
The part of the castle open to the public have been set up to reflect the appearance it would have had under King Henry II’s rule in the High Middle Ages.
September 24: the day I finally decided to get behind the wheel of a British car!
Watch Out!
I only drove a little ways… we checked out the local auction area. They have an auction every Saturday. We found some interesting items there (we were more interested in the antiques than the modern things), but we haven’t been back to participate in an auction yet.
I made Andrew drive to Bury St. Edmunds. I was NOT ready for that! It wasn’t really the driving there that worried me, it was entering the town and navigating the roundabouts. Our main reason for going was to check out the outdoor market area. Most of the towns here have outdoor markets at least once a week, even small towns! The best part (to us) is the local produce. The prices are pretty good, and if you go at the end of the day, you can get really good deals on items that the vendors just don’t want to pack up.
We went to Harriet’s, a tea room designed to look like an old tearoom from the early 1900s.
Even the servers dressed in old-fashioned outfits! The food was very good, and we tried a new type of tea: smoked. It definitely had a smoky taste to it, and I didn’t particularly like it. It just wasn’t refreshing or anything to me.
We perused a few more areas before heading home. I had very sore feet (I always seem to value cuteness over comfort), so I was a little crabby. I wanted to rest my feet back at the hotel for awhile, but by then it was about dinnertime. We were pretty sick of eating on base, so I found a restaurant in Icklingham to check out.
The restaurant we planned to go to turned out to be closed until further notice. Darn it! But we had driven past another restaurant that looked good called The Red Lion.
This is a very old building that has been around for hundreds of years. Now it’s a family-run restaurant. The family lives above the restaurant.
We had to wait for a table since we hadn’t made a reservation. It sounds like they are staffed for the number of reservations made in a night. Lucky for us, one of the parties didn’t show up, so we were seated before 8pm. We didn’t mind waiting: we were just going to drink pints of beer until we got seated! 🙂
Our food ended up being amazing! Andrew & I both ordered salads before our main courses. His had apples and walnuts, and mine had black pudding and goat cheese. So good! My main course was bacon-wrapped chicken in a tasty whole grain mustard sauce. Andrew had seafood crepes. We then shared raspberry sorbet in sugar-spun bowls.
What a delicious meal! We still need to go back sometime, and I’m sure our next meal will be as good as our first!
First of all, yes, they spell whisky without an ‘e’ here. 🙂
During the week after our trip to the windmill, I decided to find something that Andrew would enjoy a lot. Not that he didn’t enjoy our other little excursions… I just wanted to find something very “Andrew.” Then I found out something wonderful: England’s ONLY whisky distillery is in our neck of the woods! It’s only about 45 minutes away. I was so excited to tell him!
We got there with no issues (sometimes I, as navigator, miss a turn here or there), and got a full tour of the distillery. It’s a very young distillery, having only been open since 2006. They had their stills made by Scotch distillers:
They use old barrels, which contained a variety of things before (sherry, port, etc.), giving the whisky subtle flavors from the wood.
We tasted different whiskies and liquors after the tour. Even I, not a whisky drinker, enjoyed the tasting. I didn’t really like it, but I could taste differences in the ages of the whisky and between the peated and unpeated versions. Andrew got himself a set of two whiskies (Chapter 6 & Chapter 9) that came with 2 glasses. He also got me some of their blackberry liquor — yum!
And here’s a picture of Andrew as we were leaving the distillery:
The part of the castle open to the public have been set up to reflect the appearance it would have had under King Henry II’s rule in the High Middle Ages.
On An Even Kiel 