Okay, actually it was a walk in a number of English gardens, all part of the grounds around Sissinghurst Castle near -- yes, you guessed it -- Sissinghurst. Which is about 40 miles from Rye. Which required a road trip. But first we had to move out of Cyprus Cottage, located at 2 Cyprus Place, and into Regent Motel, located directly on Cinque Ports Street in "downtown" Rye.
So... the relocation. Well, here's the thing... there are four of us, and we each started this adventure with one checked bag, one carry-on, and a small handheld bag of some sort. Getting all of us and all of our bags into the rental car at Heathrow was a bit of a puzzle in the first place. Then we settled into the cottage, with lots of room to spread out. And we bought things. And then we bought some MORE things. (We are doing our part to help out the English economy.) And then we had to figure out how to get it all packed up and moved to someplace else. So...
I made two trips. First we got all the luggage downstairs at Cyprus Cottage. (Okay, well, I got most of it downstairs, and no, I did not THROW it downstairs either.) And then we loaded the first load into the car. I took all the big bags and a half dozen of the smaller things over to the Regent on Trip #1. At the front desk, I asked if I could bring the bags in and leave them in the lobby before going back to collect Mom, Dorie, and Catch, and the woman said sure, no problem. On about my third trip bringing bags in, she said, "Oh my, you DO have quite a few bags, don't you?" Then I went back and picked up the others and the remaining bags for Trip #2, and we bid farewell to Cyprus Cottage. It was a bit wrenching; I had grown VERY fond of the bathtub. Anyway...
At Regent, I checked in first and then began carrying bags UPstairs. A couple of things stayed in the car boot (also known as the car trunk), but most everything came upstairs here. By way of the STEPS. There is no lift here. So... when we'd gotten all the luggage upstairs and got back in the car to head off to Sissinghurst, the others may have needed their jackets but I needed the air conditioning.
On the road to Sissinghurst (same road we first traveled to Rye back on the 19th; how I ever managed it then, given how tired I was, I do not know) we passed some interesting-to-see things. Like a thatched roof house. That only had thatch on the front of the house. Where people might see it. And we saw a windmill near several oasthouses. (Oasthouses are where hops are dried before they are turned into things like ale and lager.) We went around roundabouts and suggestion-of-roundabouts (the little ones painted on the road that people kinda sorta curve around but mostly drive over). We drove through Hawkhurst, home of the notorious Hawkhurst Gang, a band of free-traders (read: smugglers) that roamed the land in the 1700s, challenging the authorities, who would tax or hang them, and intimidating the locals, who either turned a blind eye on them or simply aided them. And then on the other side of the village of Sissinghurst we found Sissinghurst Castle and Gardens.
Sissinghurst Castle started out in 1235 as the manor house for Saxon pig farmer John de Saxingherste. In 1270 the castle was built as the residence of Sir John Baker, who during the reign of King Henry VIII, held a number of lofty positions and titles. Over the generations, the property changed hands and purposes (Seven Years' War prisoner-of-war camp, Cranbrook Union workhouse, home for farm labourers), and ultimately ended up in dilapidated condition. In the 1930s, poet and gardening writer Vita Sackville-West and her author/diplomat husband Harold Nicolson took over the property and created the first of Sissinghurst's many gardens.
Sackville-West was a writer on the fringes of the Bloomsbury Group, an extremely influential group of English writers, authors, intellectuals and philosophers. She was most well-known for her weekly columns about gardening in the British newspaper The Observer, which led to her own garden becoming famous. From the Sissinghurst brochure: "The garden itself is designed as a series of "rooms", each with a
different character of colour and/or theme, the walls being high clipped hedges
and many pink brick walls. The rooms and "doors" are so arranged that,
as one enjoys the beauty in a given room, one suddenly discovers a new
vista into another part of the garden, making a walk a series of
discoveries that keeps leading one into yet another area of the garden.
Nicolson spent his efforts coming up with interesting new
interconnections, while Sackville-West focused on making the flowers in
the interior of each room exciting."
Before we actually went to/through the castle and garden, we had lunch in the coffeeshop -- tomato-basil soup and fresh bread and butter. Excellent lunch. And though there were about 19 raindrops that sprinkled on us, turned out my umbrella was unnecessary, which was good, because it is really difficult to spread butter on bread while holding an umbrella. After lunch we made our way down the path for a garden walk.
The garden is entered through an arch in the manor house. The left wing of the building was The Library, open to the public, complete with couches and chairs to sit in and over 4,000 books in shelves all around the room. There was a fellow there working on cataloging every volume in there.
Behind the manor house is a large green lawn, bordered by a variety of beautiful flowers and climbing plants that were working their way right up the building walls. On the other side of the lawn is the tower, with 78 steps to the top. Up we went, Mom and I, while Dorie and Catch explored the grounds. The tower holds Sackville-West's writing room; original furniture and books remain there, along with freshly picked flowers in vases throughout. Atop the tower, the view went for miles across lovely English countryside. It also afforded an excellent perspective from which to take in all the different gardens or "rooms" around Sissinghurst. Mom and I both took lots of photos (yes, I really do promise, soon photos will get added to this journal. I promise!).
Once back on the ground, Mom and I began to wander the garden, eventually coming to an orchard of pleached limes. "Orchard" might not be the right word, because that does not due justice to the two very straight and orderly parallel rows of lime trees, their branches trimmed and grafted together so that each tree was literally growing into the next. Each tree side by side in the rows was connected. And it was there, at the pleached limes (go ahead, say that seven times fast) that we ran into Catch and Dorie. They'd already made their way all the way around the grounds from the other direction, so we continued on in our counterclockwise garden perusal while they went clockwise.
Near the White Garden at the Boat House alongside the moat, Mom and I met up with a garrulous older English fellow and his wife who regaled us with info about the various henges (Stonehenge, Woodhenge, and the Henge at Avebury); the fellow regaled us, while his wife looked on with long-suffering patience and occasionally tried to intervene as if to obtain our freedom. Eventually, with very detailed directions to the henges, we bade them farewell and continued on around the gardens.
Back at the front building we met up with Dorie and Catch, and then we all visited the gift shop. More things were bought, including postcards (shocked, aren't you?), some sweets, and some beautiful wooden Christmas ornaments. Then conveniently, the mobility cart collected us up and took us back to the car.
Once back at Rye, naps were taken, and then we headed to Bailey's for dinner. Dinner was Stilton-stuffed mushrooms for some, and fish and chips for me. The mushrooms were delicious, and the fish and chips were served with the most amazing green peas. Really really good green peas. I ate them one by one toward the last in order to savor them.
Then, to the amusement of and with permission from the waitress, we broke out the Skip Bo cards right there in the pub, on Pub Night #1. Kinda funny really. Played several hands, until Catch had won, and then we toddled back to the Regent and called it a night.
