Hever Castle

Today Emelia and I went to Hever Castle, which is in Hever, about an hour north of Hailsham. It is one of the 3 Kent Castles, and it is the childhood home of Anne Boleyn, King Henry VIII's second wife, and the mother of Elizabeth I. (King Henry VIII was the one with six wives)

It was absolutely pouring down, but the weather forecast had said sunny, so we went ahead with our plans. It was raining all the way there, and when we got there.

We got there at 10, and found that the place only opened at 10.30. Keen beans lol. Then I remembered how last night I did tell Emelia that it only opened at 10.30, but then I was really tired and so I forgot that the reason I told her that was to make sure we didn't get there before 10. Uhhh fail.

So we just walked into the church across the road to pass the time.

At 10.30 we got our tickets and went to check out the gardens. It was still raining. So we were just clutching our umbrellas. On another note, I realised why trench coats were made. In Melbourne I didn't really get it cos if it's raining it's usually also cold and so you gotta wear a bazillion layers underneath your trench coat to keep warm, so it's really not worth it, even though trench coats are amazing. Here it rains like anything even though it's hot.

At 11 the castle opened, so we went in so we wouldn't get wet. It was quite pretty. It's pretty much just a big museum now, with relics, paintings, dresses and other stuff. It's a pretty small castle, but it's really cute and it's decorated really well.

When we got out at 12, the sun had come out, just as the weather man had said! We were super hungry so we sat down on a bench and ate our packed lunches consisting of a ham and cheese roll, Doritos and some fruit :)

The Castle is surrounded by like 12 acres of gardens, which were all really well manicured. There was a water maze (for kids), an Italian garden, a little nursery, a rose garden, and just lots of pretty green grass. We pretty much just walked around, enjoyed the scenery and took pictures.

We finished by walking into the little souvenir shop, which also had a little exhibition of models of typical castle-type rooms over different periods of British history. It was really cute. They even had little fireplaces with little glowing red lights underneath it.

That was a good three and half hours.

On the way home I was craving sponge cake with jam and cream, so we dropped by the supermarket to get ingredients. They don't sell plain sponge cakes. All their sponge cakes already have jam and cream in it. Ugh. In the end Emelia called home to ask if there was jam, and Adriana happened to mention that the Pinningtons, who came from Canford with Bo Poh, brought some cake with them.

So I had an amazing afternoon tea of butter/sponge cake, with strawberrry jam and whipped cream. (I couldn't really figure out what it was. It wasn't rich enough to be butter cake, but not light enough to be sponge cake. Anyway it was yummy)

Tonight Bo Poh has made chicken rice for dinner.

Why does my life revolve around food. (Tienyi, I'm thinking of you)