I have a whole bunch of Houston to blog about, but I thought I would fast forward to the present for a little while. After a lot of planning, Jim and I were able to get away to the country for a couple of days. At the recommendation of friends, we visited the town of Rye in East Sussex. Rye is incredibly old and has a lot of hauntings and a lot of history, but since I'm not the greatest at retaining historical facts, I'll just report on our own visit.
Our get away started with getting out of London, which is not an easy feat, even on a Monday. For some reason, Jim (he blames google maps) thought that going through town would be a better idea than going around town. For a few dark moments, we thought we had dipped into the dread congestion zone, but managed, somehow, to skirt around it the entire TWO AND A HALF HOURS it took us to get out of town. So, I'll give Googlemaps credit for that, at least.
I booked this get away through a Groupon-type deal, and I have a history of going for "good deals" that end up being hellish (a great example was the cockroach infested, flooded room in the all expense paid, hell hole we started out in in Greece) so we were pleasantly surprised to find that the place where we were staying was really nice! Here I am looking pretty pleased with myself:
Across the street from our hotel was "Grammar School Records" which was, as its name implied, full of old records. And it used to be a grammar school before it was a record store. They also seemed to have every CD I owned in college.
On Mermaid Street was the Mermaid Inn, where we ate dinner the next night. In this inn there are, supposedly, lots of ghosts. We were charmed by Mermaid Street because of it's name and also because it was a street full of beautiful old houses....
Like the appropriately named "House with Two Front Doors":
And the "House with The Seat":
( here is the previously mentioned seat):
Henry James was inspired by Rye (and also by a ghostly woman, who helped him write, he said):
And you can't have a very old town without a very old church! This one had flying buttresses and a tower which we visited before heading home.
Jim as flying buttress:
It also had an old water tower (no longer working, but still worth posing in front of):
Jim outside of the 13th century Ypres Tower (which we for some reason didn't take a picture of) in the 'gun gardens.' When we asked how to pronounce Ypres, the bartender told us that it's supposed to be pronounced "EE-press", but that the British call it "Wipers." We nodded knowingly, as this probably would also happen in America.
On the coast, one should eat coastal foods. So we got sea bass and lobster for dinner (included in our great hotel deal). I haven't eaten lobster since the night before our wedding, so I needed a refresher course.
The next morning, after a good night's sleep and a hearty breakfast, we headed out on our highly anticipated country walk from Rye to Hastings! The walk in the book actually started two miles up the road at Winchelsea (where Paul McCartney has a home), but we had to start in Rye so we did the 1066 country walk to Winchelsea and upped our total distance to around 15 miles. Wondering what the 1066 walk is? Well "This walk follows the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings at Senlac Hill, Battle. In September 1066 William, Duke of Normandy landed at Pevensey with an army of 7,000 men and marched inland to meet King Harold. The resulting 'Battle of Hastings' is one of the most famous in English history and led to the defeat of King Harold and to the Norman conquest."
Read more about it by clicking the link. Thanks internet!
Winchelsea, in the distance:
We got off to a kind of a slow start because we realized that we didn't have any water with us and were forced to stop at the first pub, which was just about 3 miles into the walk. In this pub was a woman who, already drunk, punctuated every statement she made by guffawing loudly and then saying "Oh DAAAHLING!" It was almost like a tick and kept us entertained throughout our lunch.
There were also lots of sheep on this walk (and lambs--very cute!) which offered many opportunities for puns along the way. I was on fire with my sheep punning and Jim actually said "HOLY COW!" by accident upon witnessing a cow peeing, which was the ultimate pun. We like to showcase our intellect while we are walking in the country:
The lambs were labeled with the same numbers as their mothers. Despite my best efforts, I was not able to pet a lamb on this walk.
I also resisted the urge to pose next to this sign, because I am not dumb in any sense of the word (or at least I like to think I'm not dumb). But I wonder what dumb woman inspired that name (presumably she was the mute kind of dumb woman and not the other kind of dumb woman):
My handsome husband posing next to a fence post:
And frolicking in the countryside (with our first view of the sea off in the distance):
Marshlands en route:
and finally, in the last few miles of the walk, we really had to exert ourselves. The Sussex coast is not as spectacular as Cornwall, but it's still pretty. And it still has a lot of cliffs, some of which, coincidentally, have fallen down in recent weeks. So we, being the kind of people who don't want to fall off a crumbling cliff, stayed in a safe distance.
After each cliff, it was necessary to take a break:
And the second cliff was, by far, the hardest. This is how I really felt:
Going down was almost harder than going up, because it was so steep (clearly Jim had the camera so no pictures of him huffing and puffing were taken):
Finally we made it to Hastings, which is an interesting town full of bohemian shops and fun looking bars and a beach fair and lots of arcades.
Ever had whelk? Neither had we until we got to Hastings, where there were stands with fresh seafood all along the beach. Not wanting to know what we were eating we decided to eat first and research later. We later discovered that we had enjoyed freshly caught and picked sea snails. I don't know that we would have tried them if we knew that originally, but I can report that they were tasty!
We were pretty tired and cold and not really motivated to explore Hastings by this point, so we headed back to Rye on the bus. But not before taking a picture of this "Cheese Cottage."
On our final morning, we explored the church's tower. I forgot my camera, so the grainy pictures were taken with my iphone. The church had a very old clock and we were able to see the inner workings of the clock on our way up some very steep and narrow stairs. Then we were in the bell tower. There are a group of bell ringers who have been ringing the bells in the church for over 50 years. There were also some articles on the walls about how people who ring bells can get a kind of bell related vertigo, which can really debilitate them.
