Leeds castle and Rochester - Under Construction!

Last, but not least in the recounting of days gone by is the Sunday trip to Leeds castle and Rochester that I went on two weekends ago. There's not much to say in regards to this but that on a lovely Sunday morning I again made my way to ISH and boarded the coach with 90-some other travelers and headed to the south east, first to visit Leeds castle (which is not in Leeds city by the way) and then to the city of Dickens, Rochester. Leeds was beautiful, an amazing example of English countryside. The late eccentric benefactor fixed up the castle and left it to a foundation to take care of. She also left behind an aviary, Victorian hedge maze and a grotto. The slogan of Leeds castle is "The Loveliest Castle in the World", not too much to live up to, eh? Well I will say it is quite a lovely castle, completely restored according to the various periods of architectural style. In one of the wings there was a spiral staircase made entirely of one gigantic tree trunk, carved with an entwining snake ending at the top with the head of the snake and a wizard crowning the exemplary work. That was truly amazing. Also interesting was the size of the castle, it was in fact a bit smaller than one would expect for the loveliest castle in the world. Not that size matters really. This point was picked up by another Bunacer, a girl from Alabama or Georgia or some other quintessential Southern Belle state, who upon entering the grounds and seeing the castle exclaimed in her discernible accent "It's so small!" The gate keepers laughed awkwardly, and said "Sorry" as if they needed to apologize for the let down of British culture and heritage. I walked around the grounds with the extremely chatting Aussie bloke, Scott, who was good company for the most part though I was inclined to run away or stay behind at certain points in order to gain the much needed composure to listen to him ramble on again. Finally we had to go back to the bus so that we could make it to Rochester in time to see the city and lantern parade.

We at last arrive in Rochester and are separated into groups for our tours around the small city. It came to be known later that my tour guide was quite good and told us many an interesting fact and anecdote whereas other tour guides left their groups with little more information than they came with. My group on the other hand learned that though Charles Dickens never actually lived in Rochester he often made the ancient city the setting for many of his novels. Also one of the boasting points of Rochester is that Dickens wished to be buried in the city, however our guide let us in on the fact that good ol' Chuck also asked to be buried in about half a dozen other cities. The matter was easily solved with the Queen said he would be buried in Poet's Corner in
Westminster Abbey. We also learned that Henry the VIII met one of his wives, Anne of Cleaves in the abbey of Rochester, she was lucky in that she was later only divorced rather than killed but was unlucky enough to be known as the ugliest wife he had. Last but not least of the interesting anecdotes was that the castle was only attacked once by the King of England himself (James that is, a most unloved king). But more on that later, if you really care to know the details.

Anyways, fter the quick tour around the city (quick because Rochester is really exceedingly small, at least the old city/interesting part) we were let loose to wander up and down the high street which took all of an hour and then we had to wait a little bit before the lantern parade started. Again I wound up hanging out with the Aussie fellow, he and I had a little cheap lunch at what looked like a soup kitchen but really was a Church trying to get a few pounds by providing hot lunches to the tourists. We were then joined by another girl who I'd seen before on Bunac trips but hadn't really talked with much. We had a good time fighting through the crowd and popping into shops and having some mulled wine. Finally the parade started. We three found ourselves at the end of the parade where there was a stand and microphone. We were treated to carols sung by the choirs of local churches and some comedy routine by the village funny man. All the townsfolk were dressed in typical Dickensian costume as they walked through the main street holding old school lanterns. We then made our way through the crowd and back to the bus where we boarded and headed back for home. Amazingly we didn't hit traffic and made it back to London about 8pm. And so ends another adventure. Stay tuned to hear about Scotland and Ireland!