What a fantastic weekend for weather! I'm sure everyone made the most of it, and it does make you realise what a great part of the world we live in. Having been in West Sussex all day Friday for various meetings, including our August review, with the Worthing team, I dipped into East Sussex on Saturday with a morning at Camber Sands. Haven't been down there for ages and it reinforced my memory of how lovely it is - though the number of kite boarders risk turning the beach into something of a motorway: they look great from a distance, but woe betide if you get in their way!
Then it was off up the road to Bodiam Castle, regretting all over again that it isn't in Kent, it's such a perfect example of how a 'proper' castle should look. Thought the National Trust video on its history was extremely well done and families were queuing up to watch it, which is a great sign. Finally, working my way back up through the picturesque Weald, I ended up in Sissinghurst (now how did that happen, I wonder?), where I swear I was the only native - lots of Americans and Germans there Saturday afternoon, exclaiming at the beauty of the gardens. I know a lot would have been NT members, like myself, but it is interesting to see how many visitors our stately homes and gardens are still getting - car parks packed, cafes full, shop tills ringing - in a time of recession and general belt tightening.
As always after a visit to Sissinghurst, I come back with radical plans for my own garden, so the rest of the weekend saw me shovelling home-grown compost onto beds, and generally hacking down shrubs to a more elegant stature, then spending far too much money in the local garden centre to 'plug the gaps' in my rather sad-looking borders. Exhausting but highly rewarding stuff.
Daughter is back from yet another sailing trip, in a Very Bad Mood when I spoke to her on the ferry from France to Portsmouth, but calming down a bit by the time she was finally on a train bound for Plymouth. She has been offered - and has now accepted - a place at Goldsmith's College in London to do her Masters in Occupational Psychology, which is wonderful, but she now has just a few weeks to repaint the flat she and her boyfriend are currently living in, ready for new occupants in September - then working out where they will live next, when John still hasn't found a permanent job since their return from South America. So if anyone needs a damm fine youth worker, just let me know and I'll pass it on!
Sarah