Restoration House Gardens, Rochester

Today started off with a short run around our local environs. It was a glorious morning but still cool with a pleasant breeze which made our trot very agreeable. After a bit of a rest I finally got to the bottom of my huge pile of photography magazines. I also started to file away the cuttings I've kept so should soon have an extensive catalogue of technical stuff to refer to and try out over the next few months.
One of the magazines had a review of Nikon full frame camera it recommended as a good buy second hand so I've decided to take the plunge and purchase one with some of my redundancy money. I couldn't afford one before but thought what the hell you only live once and I also realised I didn't want to just squander the money away.
By lunchtime, and it still being a lovely day, we decided to head over to Rochester to visit Restoration House. It's a unique survival of a city mansion and takes it name from the stay of Charles II on the eve of the Restoration on 28th May 1660. It also features in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations as the home of Miss Havisham!
When we arrived we decided just to visit the beautiful gardens so that we could both take some photographs. The double walled gardens, interlinked by a formal pond, and surrounded by yew hedges, fruit, vegetables and a cutting garden were so wonderful to walk around. After ten years of enormous hard work the remains of a Tudor wall were found along with some incredible archaeology and this in turn has led to the creation of an incredible Renaissance water garden.
My main shot is a detail of the roped off formal pond (I loved how the light caught the cobwebs that had formed on the sculpture) and the two extras are from different areas of the rest of the garden. We will certainly go back again to take more images and also take a tour of the house as well. To finish off the great visit we, of course, had a lovely cold pint at a local pub.