Another weekend gone...

Leeds Castle claims to be "The loveliest castle in England" and I guess their claim to fame is the wide expanse of immaculately manicured lawns, little ponds, graceful swans, ducks, an aviary, and a castle in the middle of a lake. The castle itself isn't so great (my opinion!), but I absolutely loved the setting. It was breathtakingly beautiful. They really take a lot of trouble to maintain the place! Mr.R and I went to see the Hot air baloon and the Vintage car rally over the weekend. The balloons couldn't take off because of strong winds, but we did get to see a spectacular skydiving performance, a demonstration of falconry, the car rally, some 18th century bicycles... it was a good day and it's a good place to visit in case you are in this part of England. Take a look at the pictures on their site and you'll know why they're so proud of the place.

Sunday morning was devoted to a walk to "Beacon Woods"- a guided walk as part of the Kent Walking Festival. (A walking festival! What a great idea. Must replicate that back home soon. More on that later when I get back with some cronies and do some brainstorming - this trip has been a great one for ideas!!!) Anyway, the walk through the woods was laidback, easy and informative. Our guide was a treasure trove of information about mushrooms and fungi and he went to a lot of trouble to dig up some very interesting species for us. Mr.R had the courage to taste a few, following the guide's example. And yes, he's okay. The woods has a dedicated afternoon walk for fungi (!) sometime late October - I guess kids would really enjoy such stuff; extremely educative!

The rest of the days go by reading (or trying to read!). Ordinarily on a vacation, I 'd be happily gulping down words instead of food - but this time, I guess since I'm on my own, time just flies...I've just managed to read two books completely - Song of Names (very nice) & Man and Boy. I'm trying to read The Artist's way at work, The Sound of the Soul and Synchro-Destiny before I leave...and if I manage to finish that, then there's many shelves of books in Mr.R's living room still waiting to be pounced upon.......

And there's lots of work remaining to be done for Mr.R's PC too...

Ah well..Que Sera Sera... :)