Bermondsey and Rotherhithe

On Saturday, I took a guided tour of Bermondsey and Rotherhithe-they are on the South side of the river between The City and Greenwich. They used to be the old shipping docks of the East India Company and a pretty rough area. Most of the old warehouses have now been converted into flats.

A view towards Tower Bridge from Bermondsey
Looking across the river-the pub in the middle is the Town of Ramsgate where they used to drown pirates

Looking down the river

Statue of a cat on the river wall

The foundations of the summer palace of Edward II-famous for being killed with a red hot poker up the bum!!

One of the converted warehouses

The Sailors Church-the Captain of the Mayflower is buried here

The Mayflower pub-named after the Mayflower-obviously not that old and I doubt that the Pilgrims were very big drinkers.

Lewes

I went today to Lewes, East Sussex-London was boiling was I decided to do a day away-without hoards of tourists!! Lewes is about five miles inland, not terribly far from Brighton. One of the first Norman castles was built here. The town is one of the "jewels" of East Sussex-many of the buildings are left from the 17th and 18th centuries.

The Barbican-the castle is in ruins
The Barbican with the chalk hills in the background-all of Lewes is built on a steep hill

A view from the castle to the South Down Hills

A view of the chalk cliffs from one of the Castle windows

Lewes and the chalk cliffs from one of the castle towers

The Barbican from the top of the castle towers

The castle tower-(previous photo was taken from the top of it)

The castle tower from the top of the Barbican

The castle keep

A closeup of the chalk cliffs-(they are nowhere near Dover, most of the South Coast has them)

The cliffs from a nature reserve

Part of the Anne of Cleves House- she never came here, it was part of her divorce settlement

The kitchen of the Anne of Cleves House

Beams in one of the rooms

Southover Grange and Gardens-an 18th century manor house, the gardens are open to the public though the house is now offices

Flowers in the garden

The 15th century bookshop

Looking up one of the streets, it is much steeper than it looks in the photos, quite a hike especially as I was in my ballet flats!

Roses in Regent's Park

I actually took these pictures a couple of weeks ago but with moving etc, I haven't had a chance to post them before. They're of Queen Mary's Garden in Regents Park-named after the rather grumpy Queen Mary, grandmother to the current Queen. The roses are very famous and are supposed to bloom all at the same time in June-they were all mostly out when I was there, though a few were still being finicky!

Not roses, but a baby coot-sort of hard to see, the mummy coot was very protective and kept chasing away the pigeons.