The morning after my birthday, we had a leisurely start and all left the flat in the car around 11am. Our plan was to check out Hever Castle first before heading on to our main destination for the weeks, Leeds Castle. We arrived at Hever Castle about an hour later, only to find that it was closed entirely until the 8th of February! So that was rather disappointing, and to add the the initial disappointment, when we arrived my phone fell out of my pocket and it broke. The home button cracked and now it doesn't work! On the plus side, there is a work around and I can still use it just fine.
Instead, we went into the small church near the carpark. It turned out to be the church where Sir Thomas Boleyn, Anne's father was buried! So that was very interesting to see anyway, and we can go back to Hever another time. We also stopped for lunch then at the nearby pub (appropriately called Henry VIII), where we had amazing baked camembert and I had a toasted baguette which was delicious. It ended up being a rather long lunch and we really took our time.
After we had finished lunch, we drive the other hour or so through the country lanes to Leeds Castle. Not actually in Leeds (it is in the south of England rather than north!), the castle is gorgeous, and we were staying there! We stayed in the Courtyard B&B, which was the old courtyard and servants quarters which had been converted to bedrooms and also included a restaurant and a few other bits that were open to the public in the daytime.
All the rooms are named after famous people who stayed in the castle when it was owned by Lady Baillie in the 20th century. We were in the David Niven room, and it was a lovely homey room with a huge bathroom and free fudge as well as biscuits! After we arrived we dropped off our stuff and headed straight back out for a quick walk before it got dark. The castle is beautiful and while it was closed to go in, we wandered around the grounds and explored a little. Then we headed back to the rooms to chill for a little while before our dinner reservation.
While we hardly needed a lot of food, we had a dinner reservation in the Castle Restaurant. The walk over to the restaurant took us past the view towards to the castle where the lights were shining and it looked really beautiful. For dinner I had a pumpkin risotto and a really delicious plum tart tatin! The whole meal we had a beautiful view of the lit up castle, and I was even sung to (something which doesn't happen at a fancy restaurant like Heston's)! Then we headed to bed nice and early to curl up in our big hotel beds.
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