Power Weekends...

While Eryn has been working and I have had four weeks of non-working we have been taking Power Weekends. They go something like this: I spend all day cooking, organising and packing the car on Friday, Go to pick Eryn up, she is an hour late (because we have to hang around at meet and hear James Morrison sing), drive wherever we are going (Eryn asleep), put the tent up, get into as much as we can in a day and a half in [insert text from the next few blogs below], pull the tent down in the rain, drive home while Eryn is again, sleeping.

HASTINGS

We bolted down to Hastings and Battle (yes, a town called Battle... it's where the actual Battle of Hastings happened. Clever, no?) It's the area William the Conqueror successfully invaded in 1066 (the last time England was successfully invaded), which was pretty much the birth of England as we know it. Plenty of history there for this pair of anoraks, then.

We had a couple of hours in Battle Abbey, which William built because he felt bad about the bloodshed from the Battle - he might have been a bit of a hardass, but he had a conscience too. Such a shame that much of the Abbey was destroyed during the reformation - thanks very much Cromwell.
The tour included the spot where King Harold of England (you can already guess this didn't end well for him) was killed... rumour has it he was shot in the eye by an archer - ouch... there's even a pic of that on the Bayeaux Tapestry.

The weather was what the locals told us to expect in an English summer - rain. It was teeming down when we left the Abbey, so we were keen to find something indoors-y. We did, in the form of Smugglers Adventure - an exhibition in an old cave in the hill on the old side of Hastings. The cave was used by the smugglers during the 1700s when they were taxing imports at sometimes over 800% of their cost (see, 17% VAT or 12.5% GST isn't so bad!).
It was still pouring, so we thought it wise to check the state of the tent... whilst Eryn has warmed to the idea of camping, sleeping in a tent full of water was an entirely different proposition. Still dry, so after dinner on our new camping stove we went back into Hastings for the carnival fireworks...pics of the weekend:

On our last morning (accompanied by the sun, yay) we headed out of town a bit towards Tenterden. We took the Kent and East Sussex Railroad (KESR) for a 17km trip through the countryside, to Bodiam Castle, which was beautiful... we managed a short hour there before having to run down the road to get back to the train on time.

More to come,
K & E x