Michelle and I started the morning the usual way, waking up, bathing and going down to breakfast. We knew Kate had arrived sometime during the night because the deserts we left her from our dinner the night before were no longer in front of her door.
Breakfast included a choice of cereal, toast and more toast, OJ, and a "traditional English Breakfast" - more toast, eggs, bacon, banger and beans. The woman looked at me like I was nuts when I asked for no banger and bacon (I guess they don't quite understand non-meat eaters...)
As we were checking out, we found out more about our hotel. It's 325 years old. The owner claims it's haunted, even though she doesn't beleive in things like that. They had the Ghostbusters come out and apparently the ghost is a young girl who follows the owner around. The girl was puportedly killed and thwon down the well in back. I told them taht my electrical outlet (in the corner of my room) didn't work and they claimed the ghost was probably playing a trick on me. Yeah right. I think I just forgot to turn on the electrical outlet (later in the trip I noticed on/off switches on a lot of the outlets and I think that's what was going on).
The restaurant had an interesting history - or at least the name did. King Charles II - who in the picture in the restaurant looks like Jonathan Pryce in Pirates of the Carribbean - stopped at this farm to gather his troups on the way to France.
After our morning walk around the grounds (pictures) and bit of historical trivia, we whipped the poor hamsters under the hood of our Toyoda into shape and got on the road ("Run Forest, Run!").We stopped at Warick castle in the Town of Warick. All through of us went through the tour of the staterooms. Michelle and I went up into the ramparts to see the incredible view while Kate went to the archery and Birds of Prey exhibitions.
An album of the castle and the surrounds can be found by clicking on the on the following picture.
After our explorations of the castle, we wandered over the river to see the trebuchet. The two guys who were "in period costumes" were pretty giddy. Apparently they had broken the worlds record for the longest toss of a 20kg ball, 228 meters. One guy said "Do you know any other world record holders? I think not!" They also said that "If anyone else comes along and beats their record, they still have 4 turns (of the trebuchet)" - apparently daring them to try to hurl the thing further still.By this time we were all pretty hungry, so we stopped at the Thomas Oken Tearoom and had a great lunch and some tea. Michelle had a salmon salad sandwhich, Kate had ham and I had cheese and bread. Michelle's lunch included one of the best warm scones I've ever had, and a lovely rich brownie. I highly recommend having lunch there.
Michelle did the driving all the way to Rye - the "carriage ways" weren't a problem, minus the traffic on the M25 going "Anti-clockwise." A268 is a very twisty windy road and I was starting to have some problems with car sickness. The thing that did me in was when we got lost in Rye ... I finally had to jump out of the car and get some fresh air. It wasn't Michelle's driving, it was my really sad excuse for a stomach.
We finally found our B&B, run by Glynn and Lynn, called the Old Boroughs Arms. We had dinner qat a place called Simply Italian across the street - a suprisingly good meal with a very good bottle of Pinot Grigio - a 2005 Le Due Glare - Italian Tinazzi. The next day we found out that the owner of this restaurant is actually on the same Keane fan board as Kate.
