The Kent Castles Caper! – Day 1

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We’re off to Kent for a week – in search of Castles! On the list is:-

Yes, we plan to melt those English Heritage Cards before the week is out! 😎

We’re staying and self-catering at Channel View Apartments in Deal until Thursday…

…and then, later in the week, we’re heading for Maidstone and booking-into the Premier Inn in Sandling in time for meeting up with a ex-work friend of Ann’s in the town for an evening meal.

We left home just before 9.45am and had a trouble-free journey – even the M25 was well-behaved! We stopped off at Thong Services (yes, really!) near Gravesend, having covered about ⅔rds of our journey, and even though we only had another hour to go, it felt like the right time for a break.

Hhhhm! Thong Services. That’s a first! Motorway Services named after an item of clothing! 🤔. Somehow, just the name suggested it might not be a very attractive location – and that proved to be true. What a dump! In fact, it’s obviously so unpopular and unknown, even Mr Google can’t find it! In truth, that probably meant we’d got the wrong name, but it was in the village of Thong and it was err, a ‘Services’ area – and we did follow the signposts to ‘Services’.

Fifteen minutes later, with coffee, biscuits and chocolate consumed, we said a rather hurried goodbye to possibly the weirdest village name we’d ever come across (and the crappiest of Motorway Services).

It was then back in the car for the final part of our journey. Looking ahead, we knew we’d be too early to check into our accommodation, so we filled the time by taking a slight diversion and heading for a massive slice of local history in the town of Sandwich – the ruins of the ancient Roman Fort and Ampitheatre called ‘Richborough’.

Roman Fort and Ampitheatre

The Romans considered Richborough a significant location in their invasion of Britain, and they landed here before heading for the Medway and then the Thames before ending up in Colchester. Thus, Richborough Roman Fort became a significant ‘dot on the map’ in Roman Britain.

We weren’t sure what to expect when we arrived, but one thing was certain – it was HOT! Very HOT! 🥵🥵. Touching 32℃ at just before 1pm and showing no signs of cooling down, meant that this was going to be a quicker look around than we originally planned. A short walk from the makeshift car-park took us to the site. Much to see? There’s certainly a fair amount of the Fort’s wall left – a testament to their construction skills – but very little else.

The 2000-year-old walls looked as solid as ever, but it did require a degree of imagination to fill in the gaps and imagine how the complete Fort might have looked ‘back in the day’. Apart from the very solid walls, we learned there had been some significant archaeological finds here too, and in the visitor area they’d built a small museum, packed with what had been uncovered.

The Museum was amazing! 👍👍. There was a lot more here than we imagined! Definitely worth a visit, just to see what they’ve found (so far!). As we ended our visit with a well-deserved Magnum each, we caught up with what happened to the town after the Romans left. Not surprisingly, the town went into decline around AD410, but the legacy of Richborough lived on for a while as the town was one of the last military bases to be occupied by the Romans. In later years, evidence was unearthed of another settlement – Anglo-Saxon – here between AD 400-900. The maritime connection in the shape of the nearby Wantsum Channel eventually silted up, by the early 17th century, making it inaccessible to big ships. Sadly, what we saw today – the impressive fort walls – are all that’s left as a testament to its former glory.

The last mile or so to the Fort had been very narrow and quite twisty. if you follow in our footsteps, take care! 👍. In fact, we had considered turning RIGHT out of the Fort, but according to the staff on duty, that route was even worse!! 😮

With our history lesson over for the day, it was off to our final stop for the day – Deal – to top up the car at the local Aldi and to sort out a meal for tonight.

Luckily, it was easy to find! Unusually, it also had very fast EV chargers and we were soon plugged-in and whilst EVie enjoyed a blast of kilowatts, we headed to the store to pick up some food. We were in and out inside 30 minutes, which meant that by the time we got to the car, EVie was well on the way to being 80% fully charged 👍😊

Channel View Apartments

At just after 3.30pm, we arrived at our bed for the next three nights – Channel View Apartments – where we’d covered a total of just over 150 miles.

First impressions? Not easy to pinpoint. Second impressions? Although we knew there was ‘only’ on-street parking, try finding some! After about a dozen laps around the block, I gave up and parked on double yellows right outside to allow us to get our luggage to our apartment.

Yikes, this was going to be a challenge! It was now 34℃ outside and about 134℃ inside the Apartment. Whilst I left Ann to do the unpacking, I returned to the car to scour the coastline for a parking space. Luckily, on the 17th lap, I spotted one just half a mile from our apartment. Unfortunately, it was limited to a maximum of two hours. Ah well, let’s go for two hours and see what happens! With parking secured (for at least the next few hours, at least) we settled in to our new home.

We’re on the ground floor, and it’s got all the basics. It looks like an old Edwardian house has been ‘carved up’ and turned into multiple dwellings, but there’s plenty of room. Decor-wise, it could do with a coat of paint in places, although the furniture in the lounge and the kitchen looked quite new. It’s not the most luxurious of apartments, but it’ll provide all we need for our short stay. The only ‘issue’ is the parking and as the clock counted down to our two-hour maximum, we decided to head out for a short spin to see if we could find a more permanent parking solution.

Not a chance! All the spaces in the immediate area were taken, and everywhere else was double yellow lines! 🤬🤬. Surely, we were missing something obvious (like a massive multi-storey hidden in plain sight?). Nope! And then Ann read that English Heritage members get parking for free on their properties – and as luck would have it, Deal Castle was right opposite our Apartment! There was the small matter of a THREE hour maximum, but the free ticket from the machine seemed to be suggesting that we were ‘OK’ until 11.47am tomorrow. That suited us fine as we’re visiting Deal Castle tomorrow around 10am.

Had we beaten the system? Who knows? Well, Dover Council probably knows, but let’s see how that turns out!

Tomorrow

Tomorrow, we’re heading for nearby Deal Castle.

We ate in tonight – and it went down a treat! 😋😋. See you tomorrow!