A nice hot day today, so we’re off on the train to Hastings for some sea breeze:

And after a smooth journey, we got off at St Leonards Warrior Square Station and walked down to the seafront:

“Bottle Alley” (you can just see the entrance on the left of the photo above) provides a cool route to walk to the pier:

We didn’t stop at the pier this time as there wasn’t a lot of shade:

Instead we found the (largely) pedestrianised Old Town and stopped for a coffee:

The West Hill Lift often hasn’t been running when we’ve been there, but was today, so we took that up the hill (saved a hard walk uphill in the heat!):

Rocco finally had a chance to stretch his legs:

These steps lead past the pub, so we grabbed a couple of beers then wandered down to seafront for fish and chips:

As it was such a nice day, we decided to walk back to St Leonards Warrior Square Station instead of going through the busy town to Hastings Station:

While we were waiting for our train, a nice railway chap came over and asked where we were heading. He told us that there had been an incident at Stonegate (on the line to Orpington) and it was unlikely there would be any trains that way for a while. But a train going to Victoria was due soon, so we caught that instead.

This lead us on a rail tour stopping at Bexhill, Eastbourne, Lewes, Gatwick and East Croydon – an interesting route that we’ve not done before. A slow journey back, but our carraige had excellent air conditioning so we didn’t mind:

Unfortunately, when we got out at Victoria, it was really HOT. And then the joy of 40 minutes on an non-aircon train back to Orpington…

A nice day nevertheless.

Postscript:

It turned out that the incident was “animals on the railway at Stonegate” – it was 2030 before any direct trains ran between Hastings and Orpington!

We’ve been meaning to go to Riverhill Himalayan Gardens for a while now, and finally managed it today.

First task was to find a woodland path where Rocco could let off steam for a while:

It was quite a climb, but this eventually led to a viewpoint high on the hill:

After admiring The Weald for a while, we headed down to the maze:

It would have been too complicated to do this with Rocco, so we headed to the Azalia/Rhododendrum part of the garden:

Then into the walled garden, complete with water feature:

And the recently planted Wild Flower ‘Meadow’:

After a coffee break, I was amused by this sign outside the loo:

We then explored another woodland path on the way to the Fern Garden:

Where it was ferns everywhere – 200 species apparently, though most looked the same to me:

And an ancient Wisteria:

On the way back, we saw an unusual Monkey Puzzle Tree:

A nice morning out, followed by a giant lunch at the Five Bells, Chelsfield: