New Forest Heritage Centre ★★★★✩
Drive through New Forest National Park ★★✩✩✩
Lunch at Lyndhurst Tea House ★★★✩✩
Cream Tea at the Daisy Tea Garden ★★★★✩
Knowlton Church and Earthworks ★★★★★
Breakfast and dinner at lodging
Lodging at AirBnB in Damerham ★★★★★
Our second drive in New Forest simply disappointed. The trees were not particularly colorful or impressive, and the roads, towns and trails were crowded. We made our way of the park as quickly as we could.
Knowlton church, however, is somewhat unique. It was built in the 12th century by Normans, but it sits in henge created four thousand years earlier. Henges are large circular earth works. This one is 790 feet in diameter. The church was likely built here to illustrate the power of the church over older belief systems. It is as beautiful as it is unique.
The Ramble in the Dinton Wilderness of aught 2025 ★★✩✩✩
St. Edith of Wilton Church ★★★★✩
Lunch and Sticky Toffee Pudding at Wyndham pub ★★★★★
Old Wardour Castle ★★★★★
Breakfast and dinner at lodging
We started this day wanting to avoid a return to New Forest. So instead, we found a nice-looking trail on the website for the nearby Cranborne Chase National Landscape. Supposedly, this trail would take through fields, woodlands and rural villages. Instead, it ramble endlessly, often with seeming dead ends, crossing private property unsigned, up and down, through not particularly scenic landscapes. The trail had not been maintained, and had segments had clearly not been walked for maybe years. To top it all off, a long segment of the trail involved walking along a busy road with minimal walking space for pedestrians. However, near the end of the trail was the lovely St Edith of Wilton Church. Steeped in history and intrigue, this church dates back to a sordid story about one of the earliest kings of england and a captured (or maybe seduced?) nun, who would become his wife (or mistriss) before getting sent away. Fascinating people, those English kings.
We also had a delicious lunch and the best sticky toffee pudding of our trip at the Wyndham pub.
After lunch, we headed along some fairly narrow one-lane roads to Old Wardour Castle, which is a ruin and a victim of the English Civil War. But the stone stairways are still magnificent, and by wandering the ruins, we definitely felt the scale of the place. Mind you, this was upper crust territory only. Peasant rabble like us would have been strictly off-list.
Hulnaker Tree Tunnel ★★★★✩
Lunch at Quay Cafe near Hulnaker ★★★✩✩
Drive through Lewes, but too crowded for castle visit ★✩✩✩✩
Drove through Hastings, arrived too late for battlefield entry ★✩✩✩✩
Breakfast at lodging
Dinner (cheese and crackers) at BnB common room
Lodging at Chilton Farmyard BnB ★★★★★
Halnaker Tree Tunnel is a gorgeous and fanciful stretch of trail where the path has sunken, and the trees have grown into a tunnel around it. It is actually a short stretch of Stane Street, a 57-mile long London to Chichester Roman road. I had wanted to photograph since I learned about it. The light was not quite perfect (rain would have been better, and a family spent 45 minutes taking selfies right in the middle of the tunnel), but I did like this shot. It's just not worth a full day of vacation to get it. The rest of the day was spent driving across southern England from New Forest to Kent, with only a few drive-throughs in Lewes and Hastings.
Breakfast at Bed and Breakfast ★★★★★
Dover Castle ★★★★★
Lunch at Dover Castle Cafe ★✩✩✩✩
Dover Museum and Bronze Age Boat Exhibit ★★★★★
White Cliffs of Dover ★★★★★
Dinner at Bell Inn, pizza oven in back room/closet ★★★★✩
Dover Castle has been on my bucket list for a long time, owing to its importance throughout England’s history. The site where the castle now sits was likely fortified in the Iron Age. The Romans built a lighthouse here, most of which still stands and was converted into a Saxon belfry. The current castle dates from 1179, expanded and improved by Henry II to impress other European kings. In WW2, the tunnels under Dover Castle served as the secret command center for Operation Dynamo (evacuation of soldiers from Dunkirk). Not far from the castle are the famous White Cliffs of Dover. A few miles away from the castle in Dover is the fabulous Dover Museum, which contains the remains of a 3500 year old boat, capable of crossing the English Channel.
Dinner was a bit odd. We went to several pubs for dinner, but all of them were booked up. We even accidentlaly popped into one that only served booze (no food). Finally, we ended up at the Bell Inn, and they normally did not serve food either. But on Friday nights, they set up a pizza oven in their backroom (closet?) and serve pizza there. No plates, just pizza. But by this time, we were very hungry, so we enjoyed our pepperoni pizza (which was better than we expected).
Breakfast at Bed and Breakfast ★★★★★
Guided tour of Canterbury Cathedral ★★★★★
Lunch at Lily's Social Kitchen ★★★★★
St Martin's Church ★★★★✩
St Augustine's Abbey ★★★★★
Cream Tea at Moat Tea Room ★★★★✩
Dinner at Lyddon Bell pub ★★★★★
Also on my bucket list was the enormously important city of Canterbury. St Martin’s church is the oldest church in England, founded in 597 as a private chapel to Queen Bertha of Kent. This place touches nearly all of English history and much of world history. We also visited one of the oldest monasteries in England (St. Augustine's Abbey) founded in 598. These two sites eventually led to the construction of Canterbury Cathedral, which serves as the seat of the Anglican church. To be honest, we were a little underwhelmed by Canterbury Cathedral. It was less spectacular than other we have seen, like Yorkminster in York, and less interesting than others, like Winchester Cathedral. Still, it was fascinating to see the site of Becket’s assassination, and the guided tour was fabulous. The farm pictures here are from the wonderful Bed and Breakfast we stayed in near Dover. We especially loved visits from Polly the Collie.
Learning from the previous night's dinner fiasco, we made reservations at the somewhat more upscale Lyddon Bell pub for tonight's dinner. We were well rewarded! The food was delicious!
This is the reclining whosit in Canterbury Cathedral. He reminded me of...
...this guy I call the foot-ball watching bishop, from Yorkminster Cathedral
Breakfast at Bed and Breakfast ★★★★★
Lunch at Hever Castle Cafe ★★✩✩✩
Hever Castle and Gardens ★★✩✩✩
National Trust Chartwell (Churchill home and gardens) ★★★★★
White Cliffs of Dover ★★★★★
Dinner at Grasshopper on the Green ★★✩✩✩
One chaotic drive to LHR Hertz
Lodging at Hilton LHR Terminal 2 ★★★★✩
Our last day on this wonderful vacation was spent at two places, each historically important and each with beautiful gardens. However, we really enjoyed only one. The first visit was to Hever Castle, which was the childhood home of Anne Boleyn (second and ill-fated wife of Henry VIII). The castle was later purchased by American millionaire William Waldorf Astor, who spent a fortune restoring it. To be honest, though, this place felt more like Disney England than a historical home. It is extremely popular, and the grounds are beautiful, but it was so crowded and so commercialized that it did not really feel authentic. Our second stop was Chartwell, the home of Winston Churchill. Run by the National Trust, Chartwell did an excellent job of telling Churchill’s many stories (the good and the bad). We loved it. We also spent some time in the gardens, which are beautiful in the fall. It is fitting that our final stop in England (Chartwell) was a beautiful National Trust house with a lovely fall garden, just as our first stop in England (Hinton Ampner) was a beautiful National Trust house with a lovely fall garden.