Day 2 began with our landing in London a bit before 5am. We felt in pretty good shape after we changed etc at the airport, and bought local 3G sims. We waited a bit for the bus to the Thrifty Car Rental office, but eventually we got there and picked up our car.
Then it was straight off to Guildford Castle! We’d brought our own sat nav, which worked a treat. Stopping for breakfast in a cute little cafe in Guildford, we had some delicious cheesy hammy toasty things, and some good strong coffee. Guildford Castle was small but interesting. Just the keep now, it had much of the original circa 1100 masonry still in it. Henry III lived there for a time, and made some improvements.
Then we scooted off to Penshurst Place, which was really impressive. A fourteenth century fortified manor built by a mayor of London who wanted a country residence, it was later owned by Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, who was quite suddenly executed by Henry VIII for holding too good a claim to the throne and shooting his mouth off about it. Henry then used it as a base when he wooed Anne Boleyn, Hever Castle being not far off. Fascinating rooms and an impressive great hall, it also had a brilliant weapons collection. We had a good wander around the gardens as well, which had an amazing old orchard. After checking out the cute little toy museum we hopped back in the roadster and drove on to Knole House.
Knole House is an interesting place, not quite as beautiful as Penshurst, but with some good art pieces and an interesting collection of rooms from various periods. Built by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1470s, it was also taken by Henry and then given by Elizabeth to the Sackvilles, who owned it most of the time since. One particular gold room, viewable only through floor to ceiling glass walls and very dim, was quite amazing. We had a nice Devonshire tea in the cafeteria courtyard afterwards, and a walk in the deer park, which unfortunately had no visible deer, but did have some very impressive old oak trees.
Soon we set off for our booked hotel, the Bull Hotel in nearby Wrotham. It was way too early for dinner, so we had quite a nice walk around the town, having a bit of a look at a cricket match and the local cemetery. After having a battle with the shower, which only worked on hot causing me to have, perhaps appropriately for England, a bath, we went down for dinner. It was a pub restaurant with a jolly good WW2 Royal Air Force theme, lots of posters and pictures of Spitfires etc, and I had a great steak and chips and Jen had a burger. We did pretty well to make it past 9pm, but we really konked when we hit the hay. Still light outside of course.
