And Sunday

I woke at around 9am which was sort of 8am or something. Reading the twitters from Mazportico and Helenharicot confused me further so I went to have a shower :lol:. When I got out the children were both awake so they got dressed and we went down to breakfast. The hotel we’re in is the same one we stayed at on Monday night and the staff all know Davies and Scarlett by name now and dote on them. Which meant when they went back to the table with their cereal while I toasted my bread and sorted out a pot of tea and then they started arguing loud enough for the whole restuarant to hear I was doubly embarassed :oops:. I went back to sort it out, discovered the squabble was in relation to two identical, as yet unopened packets of Weetabix and loudly berated them for ruining everyone in the restuarant’s peaceful breakfast and made them apologise to the people on nearby tables before we all laughed at the ridiculousness of the spat! 😆

We arrived back at the room and were discussing the plan for the day which involved us packing up and waiting for Ady to arrive back. Davies asked when that would be, I said I didn’t know and the door opened to admit one Tv’s Adrian Goddard! 😆 We packed everything up, said fond farewells (for now) to the hotel staff and were off.

I’d borrowed a book from work with various London attractions listed – from which I am planning to create a page of links for subsequent visits up to London – there are many places we want to visit and it would be good to tick more off on such budget visits :). One of the suggested places to visit ‘outside London’ was Chislehurst Caves. I’d never heard of it although being in Kent it is only about an hour from home for us actually.

We arrived at about 1230 so had time for a drink in the cafebefore our tour of the caves started. There is 22 miles of manmade caves in 3 areas which the tour guide explained are believed to be from Saxon, Druid and Roman times with signs of each area being created at those times. During WW2 the caves were used as an underground town with up to 15000 people living down there. Pitches are still marked out and there are toilets, a hospital, church and even Citizens Advice Bureau down there. No one ever died in the caves but a baby, christned Cavina was born there :). There is a stage carved into the caves where various acts including Hendrix and Rolling Stones played.

We had a tour guide and were underground for about an hour -it cost just £16 for the four of us (once again the only money I spent all weekend, everything else was covered by Ady’s expenses :)) and I’d thoroughly recommend a visit there if you are within travelling distance.

About halfway through the guide took off anyone who wasn’t up for it and left the rest of us without our lanterns in utter darkness. He banged a drum which echoed throughout the caves at deafening decibels and we literally couldn’t see our hands infront of our faces. We also at one point were totally silent and it was the most noiseless environment I think I’ve ever experienced. Very atmospheric, spooky and yet utterly peaceful and lovely. They have recreated scenes along the way from when people lived there and you can feel past echoes around the place. I loved it and Scarlett, who was walking with me, and I kept hanging back and darting down different turnings to experience the creepiness. Davies was more nervous and clung to Ady’s hand very tight but did still enjoy it lots – he does have the most vivid imagination of the four of us though ;).

Photos were both hard to take due to lighting but also impossible to capture the essence of it but a flickr set is here

The walls were full of carvings, initials, paintings and other signs of life and the guide was full of stories of ghosts, hauntings and tales of challenges to stay in the dark for 12 hours.

We returned above ground and headed for home, arriving about 3pm. I cooked ham in coke while the others spent some time in the garden then we watched the documentary about Stephen Hawkin which the children were surprisingly interested in. Tomorrow I am toying with the idea of staying home to recover from a mad week or listening to requests from D and S to go to Drusillas this week with tomorrow being our only free day. We’ll see…