Up, Up and Away

More of our Kent photos today!  Are you bored yet? hehe

Please remember that these pics are just pulled straight from the camera - they'll be better once Hubby has brightened and smartened them up a bit!

Anyway, it was his birthday on the Saturday, a beautiful, blue skies day (at least to start with - see photos of the sky in Deal on my last post for enlightenment!).  As as Walmer, Deal and various other EH places are still closed at this time of the year (which is a bit of a pain tbh),  I'd phoned ahead and  arranged a private tour of Walmer Castle (we were staying in the Greenhouse Apartment there) for Saturday morning.  By luck it was the lovely lady from Deal Castle who came over to help the Walmer EH warden out while we were there - well, you've got to take your chances, haven't you? And if you don't ask, you don't get so I asked if there was any chance of seeing inside Deal Castle too - so in the end we had tours of both castles - which was so fab - we learned so much - and of course there was no one in the way when we took our photos!

For Hubby's birthday pressie I went a little bit crazy and organised a special treat.  

I chartered a helicopter (and pilot, of course) for an hour so that we could see some of Kent's castles and other interesting places from the air.  Ok so maybe I was a bit optimistic thinking the weather  in the middle of February would be nice for such a jaunt, but hey, sometimes we have beautiful, clear blue skies at this time of year (don't we?) - we did on Saturday so I was feeling optimistic that Monday would also be like that!

Wrong.

It was chucking it down and our flight was postponed till Tuesday and we went to Dover Castle instead (lots of indoor bits, you know!)

It was chucking it down on Tuesday too.

"I'll ring you later this afternoon once we've more idea about tomorrow" they said.

It poured all day Tuesday, but the phone call came and we were told that Wednesday afternoon the forecast was for better weather and the flight was duly booked for 2pm. We looked out of the window and shrugged.

Wednesday morning it was......raining.  We thought we'd head in the direction of Manston airport anyway and see what Sandwich has to offer.

Sandwich is LOVELY - even in the drizzle.

We went into a cafe for a sandwich, well, when in Sandwich...

We sat near the window and suddenly realised that we were squinting - because...the sun was shining!  There was even some blue in the sky!  eat lunch quickly, dash around taking same photos again, this time with blue sky background!  Jump in car, go the wrong way, get back on right road arrive at airport just in time!

Up we went.

Here are some photos, click on them if you'd like a bigger version!

The Reculver Towers  

Canterbury

Leeds Castle

Channel Tunnel terminus

 

Sissinghurst Castle Gardens

 

 Westenhanger Castle

 Dover Castle 

 

 Dover/White Cliffs

 

Deal Castle

Walmer Castle

(The Greenhouse Apartment" is above the greenhouses in the buildings to the left of the castle, the second EH holiday let is the cottage at the left of the greenhouses)

 

"Our" Helicopter

  

 Richborough Roman Fort

A week later I still can't quite believe we actually managed to get this flight done - a couple of hours after landing it was raining again and in the evening we had thunder and lightning!  A minor miracle really, and it means we don't need to rearrange it all - and face sitting in those queues at the Dartford crossing tolls - no idea what's going on there atm but both ways it was nightmare busy with 5 mile queues just to reach the toll booths and clear straight after p maybe they need to get some more booths, it's certainly not working atm

We've got photos of the wonderful new rooms that have been created in the Great Tower at Dover Castle, I'll post them if you're interested.  You may have seen the Time Team Special about how they were created that was on TV a month or two back.

Ooops, nearly forgot my WOYWW

Here it is, complete with the leftover stuff from something I was making yesterday - that'll be on here tomorrow!

 

Catch you soon