Friday: Leeds Castle, Canterbury and Dover

We're running a bit behind on the blogs right now so I'll do my best to catch up today.
On Friday Mikey, Margie and I headed out for another day-trip. Initially we had booked a 1/2 day tour as we didn't want to be too tired for our Euro engagement party on Saturday but when they called Thursday morning to tell us that we had been upgraded to a full day tour free of charge we weren't going to look a gift horse in the mouth and we took it.

What we didn't know is that we would be meeting up with Fin for a "quiet" beer at the Porterhouse in Covent Gardens that night. Several quiet beers, boisterous bourbons and loud shots later, we were all singing along to the cover band. Needless to say the next morning we weren't in the best state to be enjoying an all day tour bus trip.

We got up groggily on Friday morning at 6am (not a civilized hour for hungover people) and headed into Victoria station to catch our bus. The driver was 1/2 an hour late and then led us to a mini bus which was not what we were expecting. The bus turned out to be fine though it was basically half a luxury coach though what wasn't OK was the fact it was full of freaks!

The biggest freaks of all... us. Mikey and Marg frolic after seeing the Greenwich meridian line

We spent the next half hour as we drove through London City to Greenwich laughing at the weird people on the bus with us. One weird pair that stood out above the rest was a creepy mother and son, the mother was way overdressed and the son looked like Martin Bryant. They kept muttering to themselves and generally being creepy. Mikey got a great shot of them that I feel a bit slack publishing (but that isn't stopping me ;)

Scary!

After a brief photo op at the Greenwich meridian line (which our rotund guide assured would be impossible to drive across on our tour, as the brochure has suggested, as it is not located on the road but in the park. I'm not sure he understood what it actually was ;)We headed back to the bus and drove down to Leeds.

Leeds Castle instantly sobered us all up. It was a beautiful day and the castle was easily the most beautiful place I had been to (well in England anyway). We had traditional Devonshire tea, got lost in a hedge maze (no, really, we had to be guided out) and toured the castle. We took so many photos that I ran out of batteries. The castle was traditionally the home of widowed queens and is built on top of 2 islands in a lake. The photos don't do it justice.

We were feeling pretty good by the time we left the castle and were more than ready for a nice lunch. Our next stop was Canterbury for a visit to the Cathedral there. We grabbed a bite to eat while the rest of the freaks... erm tour went inside the cathedral.
Now everyone knows I'm not terribly religious but this church was amazing. It has been in place for over 1000 years and in it's current form for over 600.

The final stop was another photo op this time at the white cliffs of Dover. On a clear day you can see France from the pier and the guide swore he could see it when we were there though no one else could. The photo below shows the white cliffs with the castle on top. The keep is an exact copy of the central keep in the tower of London (the White tower) and was also built by William the Conqueror.

We then headed back to London and snoozed all the way. All in all another brilliant day.