Travelogue: It's been awhile but I can still remember...

For my birthday Shelagh treated me to a surprise… and in November we got to discover that it was a pottery day at Aylesford Priory. First we learned how to get the air bubbles out of the clay and then to try and centre it on the wheel before you began to shape it. Hands slow.. wheel fast...

It gets very messy….

And requires a lot of concentration...

You get even more messy…

In the afternoon we rolled out more clay and built our own vases before decorating them with more clay...

I made the biggest one and Woody decorated his with fossils...

Some examples of our work...

Then we had to wait three weeks before it was fired and glazed.

Foggy waited by the mousie housie in case there were any developments….

In the meantime we met up with our friend Norman - at Hever Castle which is about midway between our home and his….

It was all decked out for Christmas but with an Alice in Wonderland theme

We took photos by the appropriate signs...

They had some nice old maps on display and East Farleigh features on all of them though the spellings vary somewhat. Looks like we need an old map for our house to keep up with the Boleyns!

This is the inner courtyard before you go inside the castle

And this is coming out the other side having been down the rabbit hole, seen lots of beautiful rooms, been up and down many staircases and through the room full of torture implements on the way out….

We enjoyed walking round the gardens which have been planted up with military precision for winter ably helped by RHS students. It got better as it got darker because the lights were stunning. We didn’t walk around the lake - bit muddy and needed to save something for another time!

Lights everywhere...

Some lights were static and others changed or moved. It was very well done.

There was also a special Christmas walk where you went down the rabbit hole and saw various scenes from Alice in Wonderland including the tea party, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the caterpillar complete with hookah and the Cheshire Cat.

It was a great day but loads more to see so we hope to go back.

This year Woody joined a Samba band in the village and has been samba-ing round the house ever since. On Saturday was his first gigs at two local Christmas fayres. I got to see him at Yalding where they had 3 sets.