Sissinghurst Castle Garden

Today we decided to take a micro trip out to Sissinghurst Castle Garden, just outside Cranbrook, before we had to do the food shop.
The castle itself dates back at least as far as Tudor times and over the centuries has housed up to 3000 French sailors captured by the British during the Seven Years War (between 1756 - 1763), been a poor house at the turn of the 19th Century and then purchased by Vita Sackville-West, a fiction writer, prize-winning poet and gardener and her husband Harold Nicholson, a diplomat and artist, in 1930 before being passed on to the National Trust in 1967.
When the gardens first opened to the public in 1930 the entrance fee was 1 shilling - hence Vita's name for early visitors to the garden "shillingses". The entrance fee these days is rather heftier - £30 for two adults plus £4 to park your car. You don't begrudge it because the cost of  upkeep must be immense.
The gardens are truly spectacular and my main image of the tower overlooking one of the fabulously manicured lawns. Unfortunately, by the time we arrived it was raining heavily so we didn't get the chance to enjoy the gardens at their best but it was still wonderful to be in such amazing surroundings and drink in all that history.
The extra is of some small bottles sitting on a wooden shelf inside a gateway at the castle where we had sheltered from the rain when it was at its heaviest. They really reminded me of the Drink Me potions from Alice in Wonderland!
On the way back home we did the food shop and still managed our usual Sunday pint at our favourite pub in Maidstone. All this before mid-afternoon and I even made a mushroom ragu for dinner. A thoroughly satisfying day!