Day 7 – Saturday 28 May 2016

Off to the Royal Horticultural Gardens Wisley this morning so up at 5.30am to pack bags & organise for a 7.45am departure after breakfast. The traffic wasn’t too bad out of London & the journey to Wisley only took around an hour. We read the map of the Wisley Gardens & planned our walks on the bus so that we could see what we wanted as soon as we got there. We waited around 15 minutes for the doors to open then walked slowly past the Canal & Loggia to the walled gardens. There is a diverse range of plants, a lot in flower & a lot that we had never seen before. Next was the wild garden, dominated by a multitude of magnificent rhododendrons in all manners of colours with some of them 20 metres tall. The understory was also very colourful with all manner of plants in various stages of flowering.

The very large glasshouse at the bottom of the gardens which holds tropical plants with one section in the glasshouse artificially heated & fine misting sprays to keep the humidity levels up. Some of the orchids & other tropical plants had magnificent floral displays & again all colours you can imagine & some that you could not even comprehend as being real. Another part of the glasshouse had a very good display of cactus with lots of them in flower, a lot of them very curious indeed. The lake in front of the glasshouse supported a community of birds, one very tame duck with a clutch of 4 very cute ducklings.

We wandered back along the section of garden called the Seven Acres, more rhododendrons in flower & more lakes & came across a bird of prey display being held in the field near the café. The men conducting the display trained & cared for injured birds of prey as well. The most impressive bird on display was the largest & most powerful owl in the world, a Siberian Snow Owl. They also displayed an African Buzzard, a very awkward & ungainly looking bird, surprisingly large though. A small barn owl was also very impressive. We had to be back on the bus by 12 so missed seeing the flying of the other 3 birds of prey they had with them today, a kestrel, a falcon & a Falklands Island Eagle, disappointing. We didn’t get to see all of Wisley Gardens as it is a very large garden but all that we did see we enjoyed.

We then headed to Sissinghurst, a National Trust Estate & this time the traffic was very heavy & very slow. This is a Bank Holiday long weekend & also the kids are having a week holiday, the road we were on is the primary road from London to Dover for people wanting to catch the ferry to France for the weekend or go to the coast. The roadworks along the way compounded the problem so we got to Sissinghurst Castle a lot later than was planned. Sissinghurst is dominated by a tall 16^th century tower and the scattering of old houses & buildings complement an absolutely beautiful series of gardens established in the 1930s. We explored the old Oast House first, formerly used for drying hops, now displaying an interesting history of the couple that developed the current gardens. We explored thoroughly the very beautiful gardens surrounding the castle, totally enjoying the different nuances & displays & arrays of all manner of plants & flowers.

We then walked around the estate, past the old moat & around the lakes before returning to the main house. The old library is a conversion of a former horse stables & is left as the gardening couple originally used it, complete with books, sofas, chairs & tables. I took the opportunity to climb to the top of the tower, built in 1530 & felt all 75 of the steps up the narrow wooden spiral staircase, my legs were shot by the time I got back down. However, the view from the top was worth it, providing a great overview of the garden layouts and the surrounding countryside. Some of the rooms in the tower also had interesting displays, including another library room with another large collection of books.

The café had a speciality of serving scones with clotted cream & jam so I indulged with a coffee & relaxed the legs before the walk back uphill to the bus. Spa Hotel at Royal Tunbridge Wells for our overnight stay was only a short distance. A magnificent old building dating from the 1700s & after unpacking in our beautiful & large old room we went for a walk around the gardens of the hotel. More beautiful & very colourful rhododendrons, with a nice lily covered lake at the bottom of the garden complete with wharf. Dinner in the grand ballroom was superb & a great opportunity to get to know better our fellow travellers.