Off to the Oast Barn
It was snack time when we stopped in the quaint town of Bourne to grab a bite to eat. The roses were in full bloom everywhere!
We made it over to our next VRBO, a delightful, fully refurbished Oast Barn. An Oast Barn is something that is used for drying hops as part of the brewing process for making beer. It took 6 years for the owners to completely renovate their barn and we were the lucky guests in our very comfortable room complete with wee kitchen.
That evening I braved a copious amount of stairs once again to have dinner at The Bottle House Inn. Terry said it was the best meal he enjoyed on the trip.
The next day , October 25th, we headed out to the fabulous Penshurst Place once again…not a castle but a home!
Another gorgeous day for our walkabout the incredible home and the gardens seemed to go on for miles. Read the following placards if you have time. Very interesting about the Magnolia Garden and the Baron’s Hall…..
I have a lovely kitchen at home but even so I had a bit of kitchen envy when we walked into theirs…. and imagine one whole room just to display your plates!
Like many of the castles and large homes we visited this one allowed a movie to be filmed inside. ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’ starring Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman was filmed there.. We even visited the “Toy Museum” they had on their grounds.
We decided to pop over to Tonbridge Castle next for tea but unfortunately they were closed for a private Hallowe’en Themed event. But here are some lovely photos of the castle outside and the grounds…
We drove to a couple of places that were already closed for ‘teatime’ and we ended up in a Tonbridge pub downtown. The server was quite surprised when we asked for tea at a pub but somehow she found us a couple of dirty (not kidding!) cups and some tea. We tried to order a sweet but most things were unavailable so we ended up with with a mushy banana banoffee pie…ha ha. When we went to pay, the new barmaid said, “But we don’t even serve tea!” I guess our first server shared her own private tea service with us…!
That evening we decided to drive back to Tonbridge to catch the newest Michael Caine movie called “The Great Escaper”. Although my knees were crammed into the steep seats in front of us, it couldn’t take away from the joy of seeing that wonderful film.
TO BE CONTINUED…..