Grand Tour of England Day 21

We walked the 1.5 miles down into Rye aka Tilling. We had a timed slot to see Lamb house where E F Benson lived and which he described as Mallards in his Mapp and Lucia books. It had been previously the home of Henry James. The garden room where he wrote was destroyed by a bomb in WW2. There were a few couples arriving at the same slot so we went into the beautiful garden first, then spent time in the only 3 rooms open when they were free. The telephone room (apparently H James had one of the first domestic ones) and 2 very small reception rooms. It looked a huge house.

The house was at the top of the hill of the old part of Rye - pebbled streets, roses round the doors, quaint ye olde worlde houses - a mecca for tour buses in other times I imagine. It was busy with tourists when we emerged from Lamb House.

We went into the church which had 3 roofs, flying buttresses, and quaint towers. I always like looking in churches as there’s often special art or architecture to see, and I wasn’t disappointed as they was a lovely stained glass window by Burne Jones, a small portion of which is my blip today.

We had a good view down to the silty river from Ypres Castle. On our was back I persuaded Mr C into an expensive wine merchants (the supermarket was closed) and Piers (it’s a posh place) sold us a couple of what had better be nice reds.

It rained on and off. By the time we got back we’d done 11000 steps so that’ll do for today.