Sissinghurst

A day of two halves.  We were woken at 5.30am by the fire alarm going off; we were rather slow to react and whilst some guests had evacuated it had stopped by the time we were about to leave.  No chance of getting back to sleep though, so an early breakfast.

The plan was to go to Sissinghurst, the gardens created by Vita Sackville-West, but the rain was torrential.  I knew we only had enough petrol for about 130 miles and would need to fill up before we head for home on Wednesday so decided to try and get some.  We visited all the petrol stations around Tunbridge Wells but all were out of fuel, so we took the car back to the hotel and walked down to look at The Pantiles as the rain had eased off, and then considered our position.  If we went to Sissinghurst we would be left with about 90 miles in the tank, so couldn’t go to the places we want to visit tomorrow as we’d need that to try and find fuel.  In the end we decided to go, and just this side of Sissinghurst found a petrol station open!  Only a 25 minute queue, so now we are OK until we get home again.

Sissinghurst was lovely and it was warm and sunny.  We spent quite a while looking round the gardens, which included this little cottage.  I’ve added an extra; the visitor reception is housed in an old Kentish Oast House, and this was part of the roof.

Dinner in the hotel tonight; the food looks good, and I think it might be an early night.