Today we set out for the village of Rye, with high expectations. We wanted to do a lot of shopping and enjoy the quaint old town. Our drive this time did not involve any of the larger motorways, which meant it took longer and had the challenge of narrow winding roads, with many roundabouts in the middle of nowhere. 43 miles took about 1 hour and 15 minutes. This was our first day that was "a bit murky," which means low overcast, light rain, with no sunshine. We got there just fine and started out at the Rye Heritage Center. They had an interesting video and light show presentation of a 20' x 20' hand-crafted model of the village (see picture above). That gave us a good orientation before we hit the streets to walk and scooter. Rye set on a hilltop, is truly a medieval town dating from the 1300's and 1400's, and that meant some steep roads with the roughest cobblestone streets we had ever seen. The cobblestones were round river rocks, with no flat surface; just a bunch of round rocks mortared and cemented together. Reed couldn't make the scooter work on that surface, but fortunately there were sidewalks with larger, flatter stones. Of course these sidewalks were often so narrow that the scooter wheels were too wide to stay on the walk. So "Jan the handy woman" walked beside the scooter and kept it from falling off and dumping Reed on the cobblestones! Rye started back in the 12th and 13th centuries and was a coastal port with a lot of maritime business. But the three rivers surrounding the Rye hill silted up over the centuries until it is now over 2 miles away from the coast. The big business now is tourism. .
While we did see some of the famous sites, like the Landgate (1329), which was the only place to get off the hill when it was high tide, the Church of St. Mary (dating from 1150), the Old Grammar School (1636), and a lot of the old town (a lot dating from the 1700's), we only found two thrift shops; one which seemed overpriced and the other which was closed. What to do, when you want to do a lot of shopping? Well, Reed had an idea.
He suggested going to another small town he had seen online that had several charity shops. We didn't have an address, so we asked at the Heritage center and they found us a postal code to look up on the GPS. The town is named Tenterden. On the way there, we drove through several narrow winding roads with "Sherwood" like forests along the sides, "tree tunnels" which are created by the narrow road and the trees growing over the road from both sides.
He suggested going to another small town he had seen online that had several charity shops. We didn't have an address, so we asked at the Heritage center and they found us a postal code to look up on the GPS. The town is named Tenterden. On the way there, we drove through several narrow winding roads with "Sherwood" like forests along the sides, "tree tunnels" which are created by the narrow road and the trees growing over the road from both sides.
It was a harrowing and crazy 8-mile drive on curvy, narrow roads through pasture lands and dark forests, but we finally got there. We found the town of Tenterden by "winging it" which is a brave thing for Reed to do since he likes to pre-plan everything usually, but as Reed had begun saying: that's just how he rolls! We got out and just explored and found 5 charity shops. The town was really neat. (We know that many Texas towns are proud of their "olde town" areas, but England has Texas beat hands down when it comes to olde town. We shopped till I was tired - Reed felt very good that I wanted to call it a day before he did! We took some photos and started back to the B&B.
We ate dinner on the way home at the White Horse Pub - great food! Some of the other traffic anomalies that we have come across are: when you come to a red light - it turns yellow before it turns green and vice versa! So people start out into the intersection before it's green because it's yellow! weird. and we haven't seen any red light runners, at least in the UK. There were a couple of places where the bridge is so narrow that there is a traffic light controlling which direction goes across at a time. This happens in the US usually at construction sites, but here it's permanent. Most of the roads through the towns are pretty narrow: barely wide enough for two cars to go by each other. There are no shoulders or parking lanes on the side. But people still park on the side of the road, often running partly up on the sidewalk. So you can be driving along and suddenly half of your narrow lane is taken up by a bunch of parked cars. You have to move into the oncoming traffic lane to get around, and it happens a lot! People here are used to it and most of the time yield to each other, sliding by with inches to spare. What a place! One more thing I wanted to mention, 2 days ago at the South Foreland lighthouse, a gentlemen there came up to me and said, at first glance, Reed reminded him of Ernest Hemingway! I thought that was neat. I haven't trimmed his beard in 2 weeks! |