Week 19: 100 nights away
- Jan 10, 2022
- 3 min read
Our stops this week:
1 night at Black Horse Farm Club site (near Folkestone)
2 nights at Hope Farm CL (near Tenterden)
4 nights at Brighton Caravan Club site
This week marked the milestone of 100 nights away since we set off in September, in this time we've camped at 48 different places, mainly campsites and farms, with the odd carpark and pub thrown in.
We started the week with a cold and hilly bike ride along the coast path along the white cliffs, although the weather wasn't great we were both grateful that it stopped raining for a while and we could get back on the bikes. We covered about 18 miles with some interesting stops on the way... our first stop was at Samphire Hoe which is a very strange place... it's a nature reserve built on reclaimed land using millions of tons of rock and chalk that was dug out of the ground when the channel tunnel was built.
Samphire Hoe is also home to the channel tunnel cooling and ventilation system, which means there are some strange buildings with lots of security; cameras, razor wire and threatening signs warning you not to do anything! It's also the place where they started digging the original channel tunnel in 1880... unfortunately they didn't get very far and only managed to get 897 yards towards France! Apparently they ran out of money but it's also claimed that the Department for War stopped it, as they were afraid the French might use it to invade the UK! Things really have changed... the French can't do enough to keep us out at the moment!
On the way back we stopped at the Abbots Cliff Sound mirror, which is a massive block of concrete built in the 1920's to detect enemy aircraft... it was abandoned in favour of radar.
Our final stop was at the Battle of Britain Memorial... which is well worth a look around, it's really peaceful place, with great views across the channel and life-size replicas of a Spitfire and a Hurricane, plus lots of fascinating information about the planes and the people that took part in the battle to win the skies.
Our next stop was on a working farm just south of Tenterden, it was a really lovely spot to camp for a few days surrounded by fields of sheep and pigs, unfortunately it was just above some marshes so the ground was really muddy making the footpaths pretty much impossible, definitely a place for the summer. We tried to visit the town of Rye but they clearly don't like MoHo's, we tried all the carparks in the town but they either had height barriers or signs up saying that MoHo's aren't welcome!
Some pics from Hope Farm... the temperature really dropped over night, first time we've ever had ice on the inside of the windscreen!
We noticed that the roads in this part of Kent are shocking (literally), probably the worst roads we have driven anywhere in the UK. There are so many potholes and cracks in the road it's impossible to avoid them all, it's just a case of aiming for the least bad ones! Poor Bear looked a bit shell-shocked after each trip bouncing along in his travel crate.
The state of the roads and the muddy footpaths in Kent told us it was time to move on, so we set off for Sussex and a campsite just up the road from the marina in Brighton, my home town although I've not lived there since I was about 10. We've stayed at this campsite here before but it was years ago when we did the London to Brighton bike ride and we camped in our little tent next to my parent's caravan. Yvette still thinks that Bob managed to consume more calories in flap-jack on the bike ride than he burnt off from the cycling!
Staying in a busy city made a nice change, even though we tried to avoid the busiest places... one advantage of being in a less remote place is takeaway deliveries, we made the most of this getting a Pizza Hut delivery on Friday night! We've had a few pizza's on our travels but can't remember the last time we hit the hut!
We had mixed weather in Brighton but enough dry and sunny spells for walking and cycling along the coast path. We also managed a quick outdoors catch-up with my sister, nieces and great nephew, which was brilliant after our failed attempt to see them at Christmas... hopefully next Christmas will be more normal, although I'm not sure we've ever really had a normal Christmas?!
Not really sure what Bear is doing here but he had a good time!
Comments