We planned a trip to Hever Castle for an overnight on Sunday. I took Monday off from work to make the most of it as well. The castle is famous for being the home of Anne Boleyn. It was also fully refurbished in the late 1800’s and looks good compared to many other castles of the time. There is also a snowdrop walk and great castle gardens. To get there it was a combination of three different rail routes, but overall a smooth experience. The only issue came up when contactless payment didn’t work on the rail out of London at one point, and the announcement said we’d have to pay a penalty fare if we didn’t get off. Luckily we just had to pay a small upgrade fare.

The walk from the train station to the castle wasn’t too bad, but it did have some very muddy parts. We got to the castle and dropped off our bags before walking the grounds. We started off with the snowdrop walk, which was nice and took us through most of the open sections of the garden, then we walked around the lake and took a relaxing sit at the Japanese Tea pavilion. There wasn’t any tea, but there was a great view of the lake. Then we continued around the lake and went to the walled and hedged parts of the garden, stopping off for two rounds of coffee.

We also went into the castle proper, which was pretty impressive, if small. There were a lot of interesting paintings and furniture. The hard part of it was telling what was the reconstruction in the early 1900’s and what was the original furnishing, walls, or windows. I think most of it was from the reconstruction. There were callouts to parts of the castle that were from the times of Henry VIII, including the sleeping chambers he was expected to have used.

We chilled in the room for a bit, as well as around the Victorian styled castle village that was actually built in the early 1900’s. We sat in the adorable sitting room and tried out hand at some Snooker, which we were terrible at. We ended the game at 13-8, which is pretty bad all around. Then we went for a lovely dinner in the castle dining room.

The dining room wasn’t in the castle, but in the victorian styled village. It was nonetheless a gorgeous and intricately carved set of rooms. There was a huge fireplace that we had breakfast next to the following morning.

We made our way through the gorgeous countryside the next morning with some fog and sun mixed together for a lovely walk. We got to London via London Bridge rail station and decided to walk the south bank. Since last time we went by the Golden Hind they weren’t open, we went back and into the ship.

The rest of the walk along the south ban was really nice, and we went down onto the river bank and I looked around for any artifacts like in the the lost alchemist. It couldn’t have taken anything, but the tide seemed to be really low so it was worth taking a look. We then went into Westminster Abbey and it was a lot more impressive than I was expecting, especially on the historical front. Unlike most churches, the people who are buried there are major historical figures. It was also a lot more expansive than most churches we’ve been inside. They had some garden sections as well.

We then walked to the Victoria Bus Station and got on one of the older double decker busses that had been converted to serve afternoon tea while driving around London. I really enjoyed it, even though we’d already seen most of the places they wanted to show us.

We then headed back to the apartment and cuddled the kitties for the rest of the evening.

Not much happened for the rest of the week, as I was working long days.

We continued watching Physical 100, and the draft is currently favoring us. It is fun to draft participants in shows like this. We have two drafts going with different people and are winning both.

Saturday I went climbing with Alexander from work. We did well on up to V2, but I couldn’t quite get a V3. Alexander was able to as the last route he did.

Steph and I then ran errands for most of the rest of the day. We got some new plants, and some things around the house that we’d been missing.