Rye 1-2 June Dungeness, Brede Wood

Wednesday is Farmers’ Market Day in Rye so we thought it a good time to finally explore the town itself.  The market consisted of 10 stalls selling fresh produce.  We passed up the wild boar, venison and elderberry wine but bought delicious strawberries and yummy Bakewell Pie slice. 

The town has many old half-timbered places and cobbled streets, including Mermaid Tavern.
 

 With stooped heads, we walked through it – very quaint, charming, expensive.  The restaurant menu was not special enough to justify the price so we decided against it for my birthday dinner that night.

Another famous place in Rye is Lamb House where Henry James lived for many years.  The back garden is supposed to be lovely but the place (and the Heritage Centre) was not open on Wednesdays.

My treat for the day was a trip to Dungeness Nature Reserve.  At first we wondered what all the fuss was about because it extends out to a nuclear power plant (1/2 retired, rest stops in a few years).  

The area where we had parked is part of the reserve but has 90 very odd homes scattered around, mostly ramshackle often with a bohemian air.  The ground is all shingle and the whole reserve represents the largest shingle area in the world.  The plants are a bit strange – sea kale, viper’s bugloss (look it up!) ... and the claims to fame sound wacky though true – “an internationally important site for medicinal leeches and great crested newts”.

You walk into the Visitor Centre and find yourself in a wonderful indoor bird hide. Through glass walls we could see swans, tufted ducks, lapwings, cormorants, shelducks and many more birds.  The entrance to the main walk is through the Centre.  There are 6 bird hides outside spread over a large area which was once a series of gravel pits, now ponds.

For dinner we went to the Royal Oak, one of 7 out of 1700 pubs in the region to receive an award for good food.  It was good, but our luck that Wednesday menu is always spit roast.

Our last day at Rye was spent doing 2 forest walks, one north of Rye and the other at Brede Wood.  I am told that bluebells are precious and that foxgloves grow in disturbed ground.