The weather has been gloriously sunny in England this spring, and with a very gradual phased return planned for after the Easter holidays, and aware that once I was back at work, even with reduced hours, I was likely to be too exhausted to do anything in my free time, I was keen to get out and about and enjoy it while it lasted. At the same time, I needed to be very mindful of not overdoing it so that the phased return didn’t happen. A delicate balancing act!

My daughter was home for the two week holiday, and as I can now walk for about an hour at a time without feeling like I’m going to fall over (or about 40 minutes if I have a sit down in the middle before attempting another 40 minutes.) and can also go at a quicker pace so can cover a bit more distance, it meant that we were able to do a little more than we managed over the February half term. We even made it to London, which seemed like a huge breakthrough!

We kicked off the holidays with a visit across the county border to Rye in East Sussex. It is such a pretty town that we have been visiting for years, although it is becoming noticeably busier as it continues to feature as a recommended day trip from London on social media. The most iconic – and most photographed – street is Mermaid Street, a cobbled thoroughfare leading up from the river, lined with picture perfect cottages.

But the area around the church is equally pretty, with half timbered houses and more cobbles.

Rye is the setting for the wonderful Mapp and Lucia books by EF Benson, who was a resident of the town, and although renamed as Tilling, it is easily recognisable from his descriptions. Benson lived at Lamb House, now owned by the National Trust, (as did the authors Henry James and Rumer Godden) and this was the fictional Mallards house, owned by Miss Mapp in the books.

Rye also has a castle (Ypres Tower), and if you go through the little archway to the right in the photo, there is a small garden with views over the River Rother and the Romney Marsh, which is perfect for a picnic.

There are some antique/bric a brac shops in old warehouse buildings on the Strand Quay and although we always enjoy a browse, this time we got a bit carried away with ourselves and ended up buying a 1950s tea set. It was pretty reasonably priced, but we justified the cost by the fact that we went halves – my daughter paid for the teapot, and me the cups, saucers, plates and milk jug. The design is called ‘Dancing Days’ and is very jolly and Spring like. It has already been put to a lot of use since, with afternoon tea in the garden, although as I hate ‘normal’ leafy tea and only drink fruit teas, and as she paid for the teapot, I have been letting my daughter get first dibs on using it. I have been content to make mine in a separate teapot, and enjoyed using the rest.

The trip to London came about after buying cheap tickets to see a matinee performance of ‘Witness for the Prosecution during London theatre week, a scheme which runs twice a year to make theatre productions available at a more affordable price. It was my daughter’s idea. We are both keen Agatha Christie fans, and as the play was on at County Hall, she figured that I would need to do little more than sit on a train, get off at Waterloo East, find somewhere close by for lunch, and then take the very short walk to County Hall before watching the play and returning home. And we opted for the first week of the holiday so that if necessary I would have plenty of time to recover! I was a little sceptical, but it gave me something else to look forward to – and if the worst came to the worst, she would easily find someone else to take my place. But I made it! We did do the very minimum amount of walking, which was very unlike a usual day in London that would normally involve walking about 25,000 steps, but it felt so wonderful to be there that I didn’t mind.

I don’t really know the area around Waterloo (although genealogically speaking, my maternal grandparents grew up in Southwark/Lambeth, and branches of the family had been living there for generations, one line working as watermen, rowing people across the Thames before there were bridges), so as a planner extraordinaire, I had to set about researching lunch ideas. Lower Marsh seemed to be the best option in terms of proximity to the station and independent eateries rather than chains, and it proved to be an excellent choice, with plenty of cafes as well as food stalls, and lots of vegetarian fare available. In the end we decided to try something that we couldn’t have nearer to home and opted for the Tunisian Street Kitchen, and oh my goodness it was amazing! We had the all day brunch, swayed by the photo in the window, depicting the contents arranged in a hand shaped dish, although the food itself did also play a part. We consequently enjoyed the most delicious bean soup, baked eggs, flatbreads, honey, Tunisian jam and chamia (a sesame paste spread). The owner was incredibly friendly, and he introduced us to his sister who was doing the cooking. I would thoroughly recommend it and we will definitely be returning to eat at their wonderful cafe.

There were a few market stalls in Lower Marsh as well, and we each bought a bag from a lovely lady who makes them herself. Whilst I was dithering over which of the many different fabrics to choose, she produced her own one as evidence of how well it wears and washes, and told us how she had designed it to be the perfect bag that she wanted for herself: roomy, with a zip fastening, and handles long enough to wear on the shoulder, but short enough not to drag on the ground if you wanted to carry it. We had a long chat with her and left feeling pleased to have supported her small business, and with a happy, but useful, reminder of our day.

We then headed to County Hall via the South Bank for a short walk along the river, and the combination of blossom and blue sky, with the London Eye behind, really caught my eye and made me feel truly grateful that I had recovered sufficiently to make it for this big outing!

The play was excellent. We had cheap restricted view seats up in the gods (although this is our normal -theatre tickets, even during London Theatre Week, and indeed at our own local theatre, are soooo expensive!), but there was only a tiny bit of the stage that couldn’t be seen, and leaning forward a bit remedied that anyway. The acting was superb, and it was a real experience to watch a courtroom drama in a fantastic courtroom setting. I managed to stay awake throughout, and as I have the memory of a goldfish, I couldn’t remember the ending, so that came as a complete surprise!

As we were careful to make sure that it really was a mostly sitting down sort of a day, with only the shortest amount of walking, it didn’t seem to set my recovery back too far, although we didn’t do anything the next day, and thereafter we kept it fairly local and low key.

On one particularly sunny Saturday, we decided that a lot of Kent towns would be super busy with day trippers, and so headed to Hythe, the much overlooked neighbour of Folkestone. My grandparents used to live in a village just outside Hythe (after moving from London) and so I have been visiting for as long as I can remember. My grandad was a keen fisherman, whatever the weather, and so we would spend a lot of time on the beach, shivering out of season, swimming in the summer, but the town itself was very much an old person place. Everybody seemed to be retired and the library was the only point of interest – my grandmother and I, both bookworms, would always retreat there for new books and a respite from the wind.

Nowadays, it is thriving and the high street is full of independent shops selling everything from wool to homeware to hand made chocolates, as well as a number of charity shops and my favourite Demelza charity bookshop, where I never fail to find something that I just have to buy, and is one of the reasons why my ‘to be read’ shelf is ever expanding. (On this particular day it was ‘Don’t Go to Sleep in the Dark’, a book of short stories by Celia Fremlin, an author I discovered via the excellent Miranda Mills and her book recommendations on You Tube.)

When the weather is good we like to go for breakfast at a cafe called Ivy’s of Hythe as they have a beautiful sunny terraced garden – and they do an excellent veggie breakfast which never disappoints. I love, love, love halloumi! There really is nothing like eating al fresco, and it pleased me no end that we were able to start doing so in April.

After a potter along the High Street, we would normally head to the seafront and walk to Folkestone, and although I felt quite frustrated that I’m still a very long way off doing that yet, we had a pleasant stroll along the Royal Military Canal instead, which actually made a nice change. The canal was built between 1804 and 1809 as a defence against Napoleon and runs all the way to Cliff End, near Rye. The trees were full of blossom and it was looking very pretty. You can hire a rowing boat during the spring and summer season, and there were a few out and about on this sunny morning.

There is actually a 28 mile long Royal Military Canal footpath, which runs along its whole length until just outside Rye, where it meets the River Rother and joins the Saxon Shore Way and the Sussex Border Path for the final section into Rye itself, and this is one of the very many long distance footpaths that are on my to do list!

Going to Folkestone had to be done on a separate day. but by bus rather than on foot! We began by walking along the Leas, a clifftop promenade which was a popular spot with the Victorians and Edwardians when Folkestone first became established as a holiday resort., and apart from the cars, nothing very much has changed. I can never walk along without wishing that I could time slip back for a short while to experience it in its heydey.

Then and now!

If you keep walking right to the end of the Leas, you drop down into Sandgate, passing two of the houses that the author HG Wells lived in. We headed to the Boathouse Cafe on the seafront, which I have mentioned in a previous post. We often stop for a drink there, but decided that we would treat ourselves to some lunch for a change. They have a small menu but everything is freshly prepared, and my brie and cranberry salad roll was made all the more delicious by the perfect view.

I managed to walk back into Folkestone along the seafront, albeit much slower by now, but the harbour is one of my happy places, and so I always appreciate being able to spend a little time there.

It seems that most of our trips are to the sea, and we also went to Deal, where my daughter treated me to brunch at Deal Pier Kitchen, the cafe at the end of the pier. I remember the time when it was a cheap and cheerful greasy spoon kind of a place, but nowadays it is much more upmarket. They offer either a meat or a vegan breakfast so we have the latter, supplemented with a portion of scrambled eggs which we share. No UPFs here as even the baked beans are homemade.

Here we go, back down the pier. It’s not the prettiest pier in the world, but I still enjoy the fact that it’s there and we can stroll along. There are always lots of fishermen and you have to watch out for them casting off. It was another of my grandad’s favourites, when he wasn’t beach fishing at Hythe or Dungeness, so I always think of him when I’m there.

Whitstable is one of our most frequent destinations for a coastal walk as it is the quickest and most convenient for us to get to by bus as we don’t need to go all the way into the town for the bus station. This latest visit was on Easter Saturday. The tide was right out and we walked along the pebbles towards Seasalter, stopping at the half way point for a home made hot cross bun and flask of tea.

I always suffer from huge amounts of house – and beach hut – envy when I am by the coast, and dream of waking up every day to a sea view, or sitting out on my terrace/balcony with a book and the sound of the waves in the background. In these dreams I am a fantastic hostess who is always entertaining, even though in real life I am a bit of a recluse, hate socialising and never have anyone but immediate family round to my house. But hey, that’s what dreams are for! I spotted this cute little chappy in one garden as we passed by.

I would also love to have the type of beautiful garden that was worthy of a seal sculpture, something that would be slightly more achievable if it wasn’t for the fact that gardening is always at the bottom of the list when it comes to energy expenditure! Thus, an overgrown jungle is what I have for the foreseeable future!

The rest of the holiday was spent even closer to home, and I exchanged the river path that I have been walking daily throughout my sick leave for a small part of the North Downs Way, the reason being that there are bluebells! I am obsessed with bluebells and need to drink my fill as much as I can during the short season.

There haven’t been loads in the short section that I can manage (and when I finally got the opportunity to venture out to a proper bluebell wood, the hot weather meant that they had already gone well past their best), but it was enough to keep me reasonably happy for this year.

En route to the bluebells, there is a small field called Golden Hill which is owned by the National Trust, and we usually stop and have a short rest on the bench, overlooking orchards and the surrounding countryside. Last year we had read about a plan to introduce grazing cattle to manage the site, and had been eagerly awaiting their arrival. For some time we saw the evidence that they had been there, but there never seemed to be any actual cows. And then suddenly, there they were! A group of Dexter cows! It was very exciting, but owing to my recently developed cow phobia, I was too scared to risk going into the field for my usual sit down, so we have been admiring them from the gate.

While I am still having to carefully monitor the distance that I can manage, we have created a circular walk which takes us back along footpaths through apple orchards. The trees have been looking so beautiful with the pink blossom in full bloom as far as the eye can see, and it seems less of a hardship to be heading for home sooner than you would like when you are surrounded by such a wonderful sight. I am always so grateful for the magic to be found in such a lovely corner of England and can’t imagine living anywhere else.