Sevenoaks; Sunday, 14 November, 2021

I had a bit of a lie in and a late start, as my ticket for Knole house wasn’t until late morning. It also meant that I could make use of the bus to get up the hill into the centre of town and walk down into Knole Park from there.

I headed down into the park and then immediately back up again – rolling doesn’t do justice to the layout of the park – to head over to Knole House.

The House was once the palace of Archbishops, but following the reformation Henry VIII seized the property and it later found its way into the hands of the Sackville family, who remained owners until it was donated to the National Trust in 1947 – though members of the family still live in parts of the house.

Many of the larger showrooms are open to look around, with the ability to wander at your own pace without having to take a guided tour. Out of the main house the Gatehouse tower is also open to explore, you can climb up and take in the small suite of rooms on the different floors of the tower, before emerging onto the roof to take in the views over the house and grounds.

I also had a wander around the Orangery and did head down to the café to have a late lunch – only to discover that everyone else had clearly had the same idea as the queue was at least 40 people long with only limited seating – I instead decided I’d go for a wander in the park instead.

Most of the park is open to be explored and is home to a large herd of deer – made up of two species the speckled fallow deer as well as Sika, or Japanese, Deer. I’d chosen a good time to visit as November is the height of the rutting season and all of the stags had very impressive sets of antlers on display. That also meant it was possible to watch a lot of idiots put themselves in real danger by wandering up and trying to pet them.

I spent quite a long time wandering through the park before eventually finding my way back on a path that ended up coming out by the leisure centre and library in the centre of Sevenoaks. By now the sky was turning quite dark and a few spots of rain were starting to fall so I quickly found a nice café to grab a now very late lunch in, and sit out what I though would be a short shower.

90 minutes, and two cups of coffee on top of lunch, later, it was clear that this wasn’t a shower but instead general drizzly rain that was settling in for the afternoon and evening, so I took advantage of a short lull in the worst of the wet weather to walk back down the hill to my hotel room and another night of Premier Inn dinner.