Maidstone; Sunday, 16 January, 2022

I had a bit more of a lie in this morning as my first attraction was only a 15-minute bus ride away, and didn’t open until 10am. After breakfast I popped over the road to the bus stop near the hotel and caught the bus round to the towns bus station to change there onto the bus out to my first stop of the day at Kent Life.

Kent Life is built on the site of a farm that has been in this location since at least Tudor times. Today the farm buildings have been restored and turned into living museums. The museum also houses examples of buildings from across other parts of Kent to show how life would have been like in previous era’s, including a tin chapel and a small village hall as well as a forge.

Dotted amongst the buildings are pens for farm animals – though I’m not certain that alpacas are an indigenous species to Kent. I spent a good couple of hours wandering around the site, before it was time to head back to the bus stop and catch the bus on to my next stop.

About 40 minutes bus ride north of Maidstone and we reached the former city of Rochester, now relegated to a town when the city’s administrators failed to submit the correct paperwork to keep their city status at the end of the 20th century.

The main site in town is the castle. The imposing keep standing guard over the town. The castle has been in ruins for centuries, but perhaps its most distinguishing feature is that all of the stonework around the many windows in the upper parts of the keep has been removed, making the building look almost like a face missing most of its teeth.

I climbed up through the different levels of the castle, taking in the views out across the Medway valley towards Chatham and the Thames and back upstream towards Maidstone. From the top of the castle you get the interesting perspective of the town centre railway and road bridges, crossing over the Medway at a normal height, whilst in the distance the viaducts of the M2 motorway and Channel Tunnel Rail Link streak across the landscape high above the river.

Having taken in the castle I headed over towards the Cathedral with the intention of having a look round there, but arrived just in time for the site to be closing for the day, so instead I had a little wander through the heart of the town, stopping for a coffee and late afternoon snack before wandering over to the bus stop and picking up a bus for the short journey on into Chatham, where I changed and picked up the bus back into Maidstone.

I stopped in the centre of town for a quick light dinner before heading back to the hotel to pack so that, after working the following morning, I could make a quick getaway for the train back home.