Scotney Castle and Gardens UK
Bodium Castle UKSubject: A quacking good time.
We have been away all weekend. Here is a description of our travels.
First to Bodium Castle in Sussex. A typical storybook style of medieval
castle,sitting in a moat full of ducks and big catfish that compete for the
bread we threw to them.
I enjoyed watching the ducks being jolted up on the swirling fish who dash
about opened mouthed.
The Castle is a 4 towers square design like a child's sandcastle topped with
Battlements.
Sissinghurst Castle and Garden was next (my favourite and the third time
have been ) I always get so blissed out there.
The surrounding countryside is a rolling green pasture with oaks and
hedgerows.
Vita Sackville West devoted her life to this garden design. It is a magical
feast of colour, texture and great taste.
I love it.
Fish and chips in the cute olde worde port of Rye; beside the river where
the tide was out and the fishing boats lay at drunken angles on the silty
mud waiting for their next job.
We left it late to park the van for the night. It was difficult to judge the
best spot in the dark. We chose the gateway of a farm in Sussex in the hills
above Hastings.
Louise Crump was our" house guest" and bravely squeezed under our bed.
To make the bed up we need to swivel the passengers seat around to face
backwards and push the drivers seat up against the steering wheel.
Anxious that the farmer would tell us off in the morning we settled down to
sleep giggling about various senarios that might confront us in the middle
of the night if we tried to drive the van away in haste.
We woke to birdsong and a cloudy but warmish day.
I marvelled at the woodland spring flowers -so dainty. The bluebells are not
quite out, but sweet little white bells carpet the woods with some pink
bells and tiny yellow stars.
First call was Scotney Castle garden. A softly muted version of the blaze
that azaelias will create in the next few weeks.
It is Alvin's favourite garden . He took great shots with the video but
missed one opportunity.
We were standing on the drawbridge of the castle moat watching the ducks ;
like balcony seats at the opera.
Louise and I were amused by witnessing a duck and drake's courtship.
The drake nodded the duck nodded . He pushed her head under the water, she
smiled and it ended with a duck f....k .
Alvin fudged his videoing.
He only captured the duck rinsing her feathers in the pond with a quick head
dive, and as she stretched up and flapped her wings she poised on her orange
flippers to accept applause from Louise.
Next stop Knole House, a giant of an estate in Kent. The current Lord
Sackville has the National Trust look after his family's collection of
ancient royal furniture in a rambling mansion with secret corridors opening
out of the panels in the walls so that the servants in the 1600's could go
about the duties unobtrusively.
Mentally fatigued we arrived back at Catford. Someone had thrown a pretty
good carpet in the skip so we fashioned a mat for our van flloor and used an
abandoned supermarket trolley to cart our belongings up in the lift to the
flat.
Bev
