London blitz, day 3.
Dec. 8th, 2004 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serindeHey, better late than never.
On the north bank across from Canvey are the Benfleet Downs, which is full of public walking trails and suchlike, not to mention Hadleigh Castle or what's left of it. Since nothing is quite as happy-making for me as ambling through the wilds with a ruined castle at the end of it, such was Sunday's plan.
Never having wandered through The English Countryside[tm] before, I was pleasantly surprised to find that, although a good portion of the downs are, in fact, open country, or partially open, there are a lot of foresty bits as well. And for extra bonus delight, every field was utterly loaded with blackberry brambles...which were RIPE. I must've glomphed a good quart of berries en route. Also interesting, at least to my furriner perspective, was that the paths went through a number of actual, in-use pastures. Inhabited by cows and sheep, including one cow who made a horrible noise of objection when I took a picture of the above sheep but not of it, and then once I rectified that error, started following us up the road. To continue, there were signs posted about "do not bug the animals", but still, I'm pretty sure property owners just would not allow this the US. Of course, even here it was not always song and roses; we passed one couple who had a young dog with them, who thought it was simply hilarious when the dog got all excited and started harassing the cows in the field. Fucktards.
Thus to the castle, which really only has a few bits left; two towers (one of which, the most complete, was being restored so was beind scaffolding anyways, dammit), part of the barbican, some wall pieces, etc. You could see some interesting window construction, though. I would have more pictures to inflict on the unwilling populace, but the camera batteries died. :-/
After the castle, we walked into Hadleigh town to catch the bus, whereat I wrestled one last zap out of the batteries to get photographic evidence to counteract![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sweh's previous day's belief that England didn't have head shops. Then back to the parental house to change for dinner out on account of sweh's birthday.
Monday would not even be worth mentioning except for a) the inbound commuter train got thoroughly delayed on account of police activity, enough so to make me twitch about making my connections to Gatwick, and b) I got a not-so-good picture of the Glass Dildo Building. And thus, home again.
On the north bank across from Canvey are the Benfleet Downs, which is full of public walking trails and suchlike, not to mention Hadleigh Castle or what's left of it. Since nothing is quite as happy-making for me as ambling through the wilds with a ruined castle at the end of it, such was Sunday's plan.
Never having wandered through The English Countryside[tm] before, I was pleasantly surprised to find that, although a good portion of the downs are, in fact, open country, or partially open, there are a lot of foresty bits as well. And for extra bonus delight, every field was utterly loaded with blackberry brambles...which were RIPE. I must've glomphed a good quart of berries en route. Also interesting, at least to my furriner perspective, was that the paths went through a number of actual, in-use pastures. Inhabited by cows and sheep, including one cow who made a horrible noise of objection when I took a picture of the above sheep but not of it, and then once I rectified that error, started following us up the road. To continue, there were signs posted about "do not bug the animals", but still, I'm pretty sure property owners just would not allow this the US. Of course, even here it was not always song and roses; we passed one couple who had a young dog with them, who thought it was simply hilarious when the dog got all excited and started harassing the cows in the field. Fucktards.
Thus to the castle, which really only has a few bits left; two towers (one of which, the most complete, was being restored so was beind scaffolding anyways, dammit), part of the barbican, some wall pieces, etc. You could see some interesting window construction, though. I would have more pictures to inflict on the unwilling populace, but the camera batteries died. :-/
After the castle, we walked into Hadleigh town to catch the bus, whereat I wrestled one last zap out of the batteries to get photographic evidence to counteract
sweh's previous day's belief that England didn't have head shops. Then back to the parental house to change for dinner out on account of sweh's birthday.Monday would not even be worth mentioning except for a) the inbound commuter train got thoroughly delayed on account of police activity, enough so to make me twitch about making my connections to Gatwick, and b) I got a not-so-good picture of the Glass Dildo Building. And thus, home again.
