Hever Castle and Chartwell

A showery day but thankfully, we managed to avoid them.  This morning we headed for Hever Castle to view the house and gardens.  It was ancestral home to the Boleyn family and Henry VIII’s second wife Anne lived there.  It had pretty much gone to ruin by the turn of the 20th century but was bought by William Waldorf Astor in 1903 and turned into a family home with the addition of an Italian garden to house his extensive collection of Italian sculptures.  A beautiful place to visit, and the gardens were superb.

We spent several hours there but then carried on to Chartwell, the home of Winston Churchill.  We had enough time to tour the house and visit his studio which was all very interesting.

A good meal in the hotel last night but they had warned us when we booked that the restaurant would not be open tonight.  Probably just as well, as we’ve eaten a lot over the last few days.  It’s still raining so we won’t want to go too far but there’s a ‘Pitcher and Piano’ over the road so we may well have a couple of beers and a bar meal.  We’ll see how the mood takes us.