Birthday Outing
This weekend a few of us popped 'dahhn to Margate' in order to visit the legendary Maunsell towers.
the original plan evolved into a birthday outing, but as the boat hadn't much capacity I couldn't invite more than a handful of people. Apologies to anyone that feels I was leaving them out for any reason. There are many people I would also have loved to have along.
We took the train down from St Pancras and found ourselves in the rather faded and dilapidated glory of Margate.
The first stop was for tea and cake at the Mad Hatter's Tea rooms. The Mad hatter Himself was hoovering up as we arrived (wearing a baseball cap). He disappeared upstairs and promptly re-appeared in full mad-hatter's outfit. the tea shop was full of victorian bric-a-brac and sported permanent Christmas decorations. One of the unusual features of the tea room was a genuine turn of the last century toilet (well worth a visit). By the way, this place is only open for 5 hours a week, Saturday 11.30-4.30
He was assisted by his long suffering sister who he introduced as 'Alice'. When he left, she said to us, "I'm not called Alice you know"
The mad hatter had been up since 6am baking delicious cakes.
Afterwards, we walked on to our hotel, which was recommended a while ago by chris_damage , the Walpole Bay Hotel and living museum Thanks Chris!
It's an Edwarduian family run hotel/museum complete with four resident ghosts. The whole place had the feel of it's 1900's origins, from it's decor down to the clothes the staff wore. The reception desk was adorned with an ancient wireless and a toaster that looked like something out of a jules verne novel.
Unfortunately, despite the dry,calm weather and mill-pond like sea , the RIB owner had called the trip off as he thought it was all too rough out there to set sail.
After a few quick calls I managed to organise another, more sedate trip around the coast and up the river Stour to visit a nearby seal colony with the Sea Searcher. I have never seen so many seals, there were between 35 and 40 of them basking in the November air. Really a very lovely experience to see them all enjoying life in the wild.
I had already, but rather informally, reserved a space in the back of a pub, The Lifeboat Inn, which had recieved enthusiastic online reviews. It was a 400 year old building in the heart of Margate's old town, but had only been run as a pub for the last seven months.
Julian, the proprietor had arranged the place without a tradional bar as such. He just drew great jugs of ale, cider and porter for us and brought them to our table. This was supplemented with local cheeses, salad, fish, dressed crab and lobster which was just plonked down before us all.
We had a long bench table by an inglenook fireplace and jim roasted the chestnuts which Julian had collected in Ashdown forest.
If I can recommend anything from the weekend, it is this place. Probably worth the trip in itself.
Needless to say, much drink was drunk and there were a few fuzzy heads this morning. One person who I wont name, was caught trying to let himself into his hotel room with his house keys.
Before we came back today we took a trip to an odd local attraction, the Shell Grotto. It's an ancient subterranean winding complex, it has a rotunda, an ornate serpentine corridor, an alter and even a little dome. This is all decorated with an estimated 4.6 million sea shells. No one even knows it's origins (probably early 1700s), but it was discovered by accident in 1835. It's a real mystery, some people have even taken it as a secret pagan place of worship. This is also well worth a visit and I'm just plain surprised that it never featured in Chas and Dave's eponymous song about the town (see first link on this post)
So in the summer next year, I will go back and I will take a RIB and see those sea forts properly- but this time with a skipper who's has a pair of balls.
There's some great information about these War of the Worlds behemoths here
http://subterrain.org.uk/maunsell/