A tour round the Garden of England - Part 1

We have recently returned from a tour around Kent - the Garden of England. Luckily we managed to avoid the traffic queues that have been plaguing the county.

A birthday treat from our younger son was the key reason to go south for ten days.

He had bought us tickets to see this splendid production of The Railway Children at the King's Cross Theatre - complete with a real steam train! Needless to say, I was enthralled throughout.

We also went to the 38th floor of the Heron Tower for some spectacular views across London before setting off to Kent.

The Historic Dockyard in Chatham was our first port of call. We envisaged that we would spend a couple of hours here...

... but there was so much to see and we were having a great time ... that it was almost six hours later before we left for our overnight campsite in Whitstable. 

From 1547 Chatham Royal Dockyard provided over 500 ships for the Royal Navy, and was at the forefront of shipbuilding, industrial and architectural technology. At its height, it employed over 10,000 skilled workers. Chatham dockyard closed in 1984, and is now managed as a visitor attraction by the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust.

The covered slips formed the industrial heart of the dockyard in the age of sailing ships. Although some ships were built in dry docks, most were constructed on slipways which sloped into the river - this impressive cantilevered frame was built in 1838 

This submarine was used in the James Bond film The World is Not Enough

The Commissioner's Garden

There were three ships to walk through - the HMS Gannet; built in 1878

HMS Cavalier, a 1944 destroyer

and the HM Submarine Ocelot, built in 1962

Over the years, Chatham Dockyard has become a popular location for filming due to its varied and interesting areas such as the cobbled streets, church and over 100 buildings dating from the Georgian and Victorian periods. 

Productions that have chosen to film at Chatham Dockyard include: Les Misérables, Call the Midwife, Mr Selfridge, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Foyle’s War and, as previously mentioned, The World is Not Enough

I thought I had also found The Doctor's Tardis - but he wasn't in!

For more photos of our time in Chatham click  Chatham Historic Dockyard

And so to our first overnight stop in Kent ...

... the fishing port of Whitstable - famous for its oysters

We wondered what these structures were - I have since discovered that they are the Maunsell Forts which were small fortified towers built in the Thames and Medway estuaries during the Second World War to help defend the Country. They were operated as army and navy forts, and named after their designer, Guy Maunsell. The forts were decommissioned in the late 1950s and later used for other activities including pirate radio broadcasting

We sampled some of the local Whitstable Bay ale before retiring for the night