Moving on

It was time to move on from Rye, but before we did, there were a couple of places we didn't want to miss.

Firstly, the Paper Place, which had been closed on Wednesday. This was the other shop that featured in the Design Masters TV series, specialising in Indian paper.

An original proof copy of The Americans with editing in progress

Secondly, Lamb House which opens Friday to Tuesday, 11am until 4pm. We were there at 10.55am together with a small crowd, eagerly awaiting opening time! Formerly home to Henry James, EF Benson and Rumer Godden, we'd walked past the front door on several occasions, realising that we'd have not more than an hour or so during our stay to see inside since we'd arrived late Tuesday afternoon and were leaving late Friday morning.

We enjoyed our visit, learned something about all three authors and needed less than an hour to look around. By noon, we were on our way.

Quite how I managed to snip the end of the signpost out of my photograph, I have no idea, but you get the picture! This is “1066 Country” and even I, with my abysmal knowledge of history, know the significance of that date. We decided to break the journey to Alfriston here, in Battle.

Battle Abbey stands on the site of the last successful invasion of England, where the Battle of Hastings tool place on October 14th, 1066.

The site is a hillside, the English having been on the higher side and the Normans down below. It's hard to imagine this as a battlefield now, for there are trees and buildings around it, but a great presentation in the visitor centre offered an idea of how the battle progressed.

On the wall in the cafe were a collection of quotes, one of which we both recognised from one of our favourite books: “The Norman Conquest was a Good Thing as from that time onwards England stopped being conquered and thus was able to become Top Nation” 😉

Of course, it wasn't quite such a Good Thing for King Harold.

It seemed an appropriate place to end our walk around the field and continue the rest of our journey, where we looked forward to meeting Edward, Amy and Arthur later for the ongoing birthday celebrations.

We still had seaweed stuck in salt on the window of the car as a souvenir from Margate yesterday!