July 5 - Drive to Dover

Today we relocated to Dover and have decided to wander a loop to see some villages before getting to our final destination.  First stop is a little hamlet called  Winchelsea.  Again, it was lovely buildings,

their pocket size front gardens...

an old city gate, 

and another country church, St. Thomas'.  

There was a placard in the church listing important dates related to the church.  The first recorded mention of the church in Old Winchelsea is listed as 1215.  Old Winchelsea was lost to the sea and the town moved to New Winchelsea around 1295.  The placard also listed all of the church rectors (name and date) from 1254 to 2018.  Pretty awesome historical record.

This church had spectacular stained glass windows but somehow they didn’t look like those we had seen in other churches.  

There was a group of women chatting at the back of the church who were obviously locals.  They indicated that all but two of the windows had been replaced in the 1930’s.  While different in style they were still pretty spectacular.

One of two remaining old windows in St. Thomas'

Then it was on to the town of Rye, just a couple of miles from Winchelsea.  The tide was out so the boats docked in the quay in Rye were pretty grounded.

The quay area had many dark brown wooden buildings, much different in style fro many of the buildings we have seen in other villages and towns.

The cobble stone streets led us up a hill... 

past many pretty street side homes and business's

to the church on top of the hill, St. Mary the Virgin…

and climbed the bell tower...

for views of the surrounding countryside…

and the rooftops. 

                                  

                                                       

We also had a great view of the nearby castle.

On the way down we encountered a traffic jam on the floor with the bells…and had our ears totally rung when the bells struck noon.

We then headed over to a pocket size castle...

and its adjoining "Lady's Garden".  

We finally arrived in Dover in late afternoon and found our little lodgings for the next two nights.  Mary had booked all of our Kent accommodations on Booking.com and this one turned out to be a B&B instead of a hotel. Our hostess is Grace, originally from Zimbabwe. 

No. 7 Priory Guest House - Our Home in Dover

We were quite excited to find out that she had parking in back (we take nothing for granted...parking is often a real issue in these busy towns).  And we even found bits of a garden back behind the row of town homes.   

We have a large room with a bathroom that is almost a large as the bedroom.  The bathroom has a black and white tile floor with a claw foot tub in the middle.  For dinner we took Grace's advice and had dinner at La Scala, an Italian restaurant run by Italians...with predictably tasty results.