please empty your brain below
Dear Dear.
They do have taxis in Sevenoaks, you know. Quite a few of them are based a relatively short drive from Ightham and NT staff are always happy to ring one for you.
The National Trust circular walk print-out that shows the walk between Knole and I.M. implies that this particular bus operates every day, and it scuppered my plans when I went there on Saturday to do the walk and found out at Sevenoaks station that this bus runs only on weekdays (I would not have had enough daylight to do the circular route, so I was planning on doing 1/2 of it, then returning to Sevenoaks from I.M. by bus). I have emailed the National Trust walks department about correcting this on their walk information sheet, and have not heard back.
When the deer in the park there are in rutting season (like now), they aren't entirely safe, as some people in Bushy Park apparently found out last week when they were attacked by some stags.
Two days ago, when my walk to Ightham Mote couldn't go ahead (which was fine, as I've done it twice before in years past), I decided just to walk around the Knole parklands (they are free to get in, open 24 hours), exploring them in depth for the first time, and the autumnal sunset came up very quickly, and I was trying to get back to the front of the house and onwards to the Sevenoaks station, but every path I tried to go down had a stag on it that was making an angry noise (at me), clinking its antlers on something, etc. I was by myself and actually got pretty nervous! It sounds silly, maybe, but I was not going to get within a mere couple of yards of those animals in order to walk down the pathways towards the house when they were obviously warning me not to come near them and their harems. I don't know how many times I walked up and down various paths, only to meet a stag in the middle and retrace my steps. Finally I went around the back, through the golf course, and there were still deer etc. grazing and skittering around everywhere, including two stags that were running after each other like on "National of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" (or whatever equivalant tv show you folks had in the UK in the 70s) (which did worry me - it was like being on a savannah or something! I just didn't look at them and kept my head down and walked as fast as I could) and it was totally dark by then, with just a sliver of moon, so thank goodness for my new smartphone and the google maps and gps installed on it, which showed me where I was as I was walking.
The park there is lovely - quite dramatic and wild-feeling in places with the de Chirico-like haunting tree stumps/trunks.
Aside from the vast park at Knole, the orangery, a small theatre showing a 15-minute film about the house, the gift shop, the toilets, the courtyard, and the cafe can be entered for free.
This experience on the weekend gave me overconfidence in my new phone's gps system, which unfortunately would not find its location when I was going the wrong way up Beachy Head yesterday (how wrong I didn't know, until I looked at the South Downs map on display on top of the cliff), which was another frightening experience... something to chuckle about now, but scary at the time when I got to almost the top and realized how steep it was (I'm no rock climbing sort of person) going to be for me to get over the edge. I ended up crawling, and chanting to myself not to look backwards. I freaked out the dawdling ice-cream seller when I popped over a strange part of the edge, middle-aged lady that I am, panting and probably wild-eyed, oh dear. :-)
I'd been to Beachy Head several times before and had always taken the really tame path - not sure how I got off on a more adventurous route this time.
Sunday I went to Petworth House which was annoying and overpriced, especially the county bus which charged 6.50 pounds to go the 5 miles between the station and the smelly boring house (the few rooms that were open to the public out of the vast structure) and comparatively ugly, dry, and uninspiring-to-me deer park (compared to my local Nonsuch Park (former deer area), and Knole Park where I'd just been the day before). Then I realized that I had been thinking of Penshurst Place anyway, but got confused (I'll go there tomorrow). Cost 11.50 pounds to get in the house. The National Trust description of Petworth was over-inflated and the only good things on my visit were the kitchens and the view at the far end of the town onto a valley with horses below and hot air balloons above. I only found that view because the expensive bus was only once every 2 hours, so I had a loooong time in the village on a Sunday evening to dawdle, with nowhere to go.
No sir, it's 'Sennockians' !
Although the alumni of Sevenoaks School often refer to themselves as 'Old Socks' rather than 'Old Sennockians'...
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