Castles and the Beach

Only having visited two of our several hundred sites we had listed, today was going to require us to visit lots of sites to get back on track. The morning started with breakfast in the Inn on the Green (although Alison chickened out of the full English, and had the continental breakfast) then we set off at about 9am.

The first site was going to be Battle Abbey, but on the way we altered the route to visit Pevensey castle first. This castle was first founded in Roman times, and has been extended many times. It is now a ruin and was an interesting site to visit. The audio tour really helped bring the site to life – the ruins were rebuilt to house Canadian and American soldiers in WWII.

After Pevensey we headed to Battle Abbey. We had a quick lunch at Battle, and used a “courtesy” wifi site to make a quick call home. After this we headed into the battle field site and followed the audio tour around the whole battle field, and then the large abbey. It was a really interesting visit, so full of history.

With Pevensey and Battle crossed off our list we made our way to Bodiam Castle, another castle ruin only a few miles from Battle. When you think of a ‘typical’ castle, turrets on each corner, surrounded by a moat, this is it. There were a number of standing towers and wall sections that allowed you to climb their very steep stairs for a view from the top. The stairs were very small, and steep, quite scary really.

There wasn’t really enough time for any more tourist sites, so we made our way to Rye, one of the towns on our list. Rye is an old medieval village – exactly what you would expect if you were to think of ‘Ye Olde England’. The buildings and roads were really fascinating to walk around, cobbled stone roads with medieval buildings lining the roads. From here we then made our way to Eastbourne, yet another site from our list.

Eastbourne has a classic English sea-side town feel, pebble beaches and an arcade on the pier. We had fish and chips on the beach and then started the trip back to Ockley. We passed by the Long Man at Wilmington, so we stopped in at Wilmington for a few minutes and a quick photo. Then finally back to the inn… tomorrow we head for Weymouth and Pebble Villa, our next B&B on this trip.