No let up on the weather.

 But at least the rain was only showers today.

Was feeling a bit bored with being shut in the house, so decided to take a little stroll around the less obvious parts of the town centre. 

At last! I managed to get into the parish church - well, for a half hour. Then I got asked to leave, as they wanted to lock up.

It's a magnificent place, and I really need to sort out which mornings it's open for a couple of hours for coffee, so that I can have an in-depth scrutiny of everything.

Still, I did my best, and the results have been added to the Ashford chapter on Kent1

So, I also need a map of the layout of the Old Graveyard in Canterbury Road. I know that what I want is in the Catholic Section, but I don't know where that is in relation to the entrance.

A visit to the Ashford Museum when it's open is in order too.

Quick trip out for a birthday meal

 Been too busy lately to be able to get out and about visiting places and doing research. 

Hopefully, I can resume shortly. In the meantime, tonight we went for a meal in a small village pub 'out in the sticks'.

Warehorne is somewhere we go through often, but seldom turn off of the main road. Having done so tonight, I can heartily recommend the Woolpack. It's not cheap, but the food is exquisite.

St. Matthew's church stands on a mound opposite the pub Obviously by the time we rocked up there for dinner, it was closed. But it looks interesting, so I've added it to my 'to do' list, and meanwhile, I'll look to see what else is interesting about the village.

Piccy of the pub, and a section opened for Warehorne on the KENT2 page.

A quick spin in between rain showers

 Yep, it was one of those days again. It happened the last time I set out to explore Lenham, and it was the same today. However, between the rain clouds, I managed to explore a large part of Charing, and added a lot more to my knowledge of Lenham.

Plus I managed to get in a reasonably long, quick ride on my new bike (always a bonus), and get home without getting it wet and dirty.

O.K. so both Charing and Lenham have relevance to my husband's family. His mother came from Charing, and I've traced that line back through the centuries, and her family also came from Lenham and all points around there. Inevitably, there will be one or two mentions of them, but I will try to keep it minimal.

So, both places will be included on the Kent2 page (there's already a bit about Lenham on there).

Probably won't be complete for a couple of days, but here goes........................

Short and sweet

Time hasn't been on my side for the past month or so. Got my new motorcycle just as The Other Half discovered his bike was booked in for a service and he'd surpassed the mileage required.

Luckily, the weather has been excellent recently, so we left the bigger bikes at home, and went out to play on the little Yellow Perils for a few days - which means I've not had a lot of time for my new bike.

However, today I found myself on my own. I needed to go to Wye Farmers' Market, but I only needed a few things, so I duly got the new bike out and headed off.

As the church at Wye is right next to the market, and there didn't appear to be anything on, I decided to have a quick look round.

The resulting shots are on the Kent 2 page.

After I dropped the shopping off back home, I carried on to Lydd, to try and find a grave in the cemetery with an unusual story attached to it. Success! Quite a long story about it has been logged on Kent 1.

They were the only places I managed today - weekends in the school holidays this close to the coastal resorts are not conducive to peace and quiet!

Churches, dogs, and strange conversations

 So, at a loose end today, and it being a lovely sunny day, I decided to take one of the small bikes and poke around some more local villages. I worked out a route that would take in 9 of them, but in the end, the heat, dehydration, and increasingly heavy traffic in the Canterbury area, beat me.

I did, however, manage 5 of them. Dogs and conversations will be included amongst the write-ups. So, the article about Chilham on the Kent1 page, will be updated. The remaining four (Godmersham, Chartham, Sturry and Fordwich) will appear on the Kent2 page

Changing Plans

 Robert Bruce held that 'The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry' - only he said it in a broad Scottish brogue.

He wasn't wrong though. I spent the most part of the winter, making plans to go to some very interesting places. The year started off well, with a lot of ground covered.  Even bought a new motorcycle to do the longer trips on.

However, since the visit to St. Albans, things seem to have fallen apart a bit. All of my city and town trips are now on hold for the foreseeable future, because of the serious unrest in this country. I just don't feel safe going into places with large populations.

Luckily, I still have quite a lot of small villages and curious places to cover. These are mostly ones I would normally do on 'Twinkle', my little yellow bike. However, I am now reviewing them, to see if I  can do some on the new bike - otherwise, I can't see me riding it too much at the present

Ah well, normal service will be resumed, when the Far Right get over themselves, and stop preaching hate to those who believe every idiotic thing they are told................

St. Albans - oh, didn't it rain!

 Well actually, no. It didn't rain (except for a little drizzle at the end of my visit). Apparently, my home town had monsoon weather all day, so I did right by not being there!

I hopped on a train. HS1 to St. Pancras, and from there, there's a train to St. Albans in Hertfordshire every 15 minutes or so, and the journey is a scant 20 minutes. What's not to like?

The fact that there is not an inch of flat land anywhere there, is what's not to like. It's uphill all the way to the cathedral, then a steep drop down to the river, then uphill back to the cathedral, downhill to the station, then up and over the footbridge to the platform. Well worth it though.

I took 117 pictures today. How many I actually use, will depend on how many I need to tell a very complex history.

The only disappointment I had, was that the wet stuff started before I got to the Roman city. By then I'd walked about 1.5 miles, which meant I still had another 1.5 miles to do to return, and to do the roman area justice, would have taken about another mile........in the drizzly rain...........with aching legs.........

So at some point there will be a second visit

I'm going to wander off now, and start writing the piece, but if I were you, I wouldn't bother looking at it until tomorrow at least. This is going to be a long one

A little trip to a few lesser-known places

 The sun was shining, and the local villages were calling. I needed to go and collect my meat and vegetables etc. from the Farm Shop that we use. It's about 12 miles from home............

..........0r twice that, and 3 hours from home in this weather.

Plus a few more history blanks to fill in. So, if you look at the two Kent pages, you will find more info on Aldington, Ivychurch, Kingsnorth and Snave-Wick (although the latter, I couldn't take all the pictures I needed, so I will have to go back at some point)

On my way to do the updates now...........

The County Town of Kent

Today, it was threatening rain (again!), so I decided to hop on a train and go explore our county town of Maidstone. I chose the train because bike parking in Maidstone is not easy to find.

All the years I worked on the edge of the town, I've never really explored it. The town centre is not too badly off for shops, and there are some lovely old buildings, in various states of repair. There's also some interesting history.

The town grew up around the confluence of the rivers Medway and Len, and there's a lovely walk along the banks of the Medway. The archbishops' palace is lovely, and the parish church of All Saints next door, is an imposing edifice

Sadly, I didn't have time to visit either the local museum, or the Tyrwhitt-Drake museum of carriages. So I will probably return in the winter time, when I'm looking for warm places to be.

For those who don't know, most of the traffic revolves (literally) around the river. The town centre is largely pedestrianised and all the vehicles are forced to go round the perimeter via a dual carriageway and a gyratory system which goes over Maidstone Bridge, and back via St. Peter's Bridge. The volume of traffic is horrendous and they only slow down when they're forced to.

And then there are ducks. To be precise mamma and 3 babies - intent on crossing 6 lanes of nose to tail traffic to get to the pond by the old Rootes building. And there was a workman and myself trying to hold the traffic so that she could cross safely, and then shepherding them along the railings to find a point where she could access the water. And we only got yelled at once! Most people were content to wait and had their phones out recording the little flock and its' human sheepdogs!

Just waiting for the camera to finish uploading, and then I'll add them to the Kent1 page. I probably won't get around to the words though until Sunday. I still have a lot of research to do 

The fair weather continues.................

 After last year's almost total wash-out, so far this year, I've been making a lot of headway on catching up with my history visits. This is my 3rd. trip out this week!

Today was a day for taking one of the smaller bikes, and finding strange churches in strange places.

Sadly, a lot of country churches are kept locked when not in use, due to them often being remote from their villages. (The Black Death has a lot to answer for!)

One I went in, had a notice just inside which read: 'Are you exploring on your own? Do you have a mobile phone? Why not let someone know where you are?' 

These trips I do, are my chance to have some 'me' time - just doing what I like to do, and enjoying my own company. 

However, as I left the church, and turned to close the door, I tripped over a boot scraper and fell flat on my face.  That made me think - I was OK, only my pride was hurt. But what if I had banged my head and was unconscious? I could have laid there for days, and nobody would know.

So from now on, when I am off by myself exploring, every time I stop somewhere, I will text my location to my other half, so that he knows where I last was, and at what time.  You never know..........

I'm on my way now to begin updating the Kent2 page. And there's a lot to cover