England Trip Day Five–Journal
Quite amazing day. We slept in late and then went to J & J’s room where we brunched on fruit, cheese, hummus, and muffin. KK down-loaded all our pictures to her laptop. Then we started walking down Hever Road. It was a little scary because some places in the road had no shoulder. It was a beautiful roadside–brook, horses, sheep, old Tudor-syle homes. We enjoyed the gift shop at Hever Castle and saw wonderful miniatures of homes during various periods of English history. We also found a raincoat and wellies for Carla Molina, but we didn’t buy them. We also toured the castle. It was where Anne Boleyn lived when she was young. Probably she was born there. We learned a lot about her family and Henry VIII and his six wives. There were wax figures in period costumes. The Astor family owned the estate for a while so we learned about that period, too.
Then we went all over the grounds and gardens. Some flowers were in bloom–lots of daffodils and one beautiful garden of hyacinths, gorgeous lake and Italian garden. It was cold and cloudy but that was good weather for photography. We ate at a pub across the road called Henry VIII. Jerome had some ale which I shared. We had a salad with warm goat cheese and walnuts, whitebait with garlic mayonnaise (we didn’t really know what it was before we ordered it on the barkeep’s recommendation, but when the french-fried whole little fish came out, we just ignored their little eyes and ate them anyway), salmon and haddock fishcakes with chips and salad, mushroom stroganoff with rice and beans and peas, lamb shank with carrots and mashed potatoes. We got to see a beautiful black lab and a Welch corgi in the pub. That made me miss Greg.
As we were leaving, we noticed people going into St. Peter’s Church where Anne Boleyn’s father, Thomas Bullen is buried. They were walking to the church from around the village with their torches (flashlights). The church has impressive brass plates that would have made really interesting rubbings. We said complines (night prayers) with the people from the village. Afterward the priest talked to us, and then the rector told us the history of the church. He said that Anne changed her name from Bullen to Boleyn after she had gone to France to study and had “gotten airs.” It was very informative, but unfortunately it was really dark when we came out, and we had to walk back to Hever Hotel, so that was pretty terrifying. We prayed our Lord Michaels on the way.
When we got back, we had tea at J&J’s and watched a program on Tourette’s syndrome and its connection to creativity (we think maybe Janet has a little bit of it because she counts things a lot 🙂 🙂 ). Then KK and I came home and watched CSI–Miami.