A Sort of Homecoming

Waverley is the municipality in Sydney where Keezee grew up and went to school (W-W-A-A-V-V-E-E-R-R-L-L-E-E-Y-Y-Waverley...... go Waves, etc.). It's also the local government area where Mr & Mrs Keezee made their first marital home, before moving to the more salubrious Redfern area. Anyway, as it turns out, Waverley is also the name of a borough in southwest Surrey (what are the chances?), and this Waverley also has a number of picturesque and historic places (some even older than the kids train at Bronte) - a few of which we visitied today.

First stop is the historic market town of Haslemere, which is about a half hour drive from good old West Byfleet. We've driven through a couple of times and said we must have a look around the shops - unfortunately on a Sunday, most of the shops were closed. The one shop that was open had a half price sale, so it wasn't a complete disaster. We also managed to find a pub for lunch, so we did pretty well all up.



Haslemere High Street... pretty quiet on a Sunday, but a keen eye will spot the "Open" sign at The Swan Inn.


The Swan Inn is an old coaching inn, with the archway and stables for the horses, old beams, leather chairs, huge fireplaces, and the like... very nice.

Next up on our Sunday afternoon drive is the pretty village of Tilford, where the River Wey merges with the River Wey to form the River Wey (it's true!). Tilford has two medieval bridges (both crossing the Wey as it happens) as well as a pub and a cricket club. Despite it being a grey old day, it was still a picture-postcard spot.


The Tilford Cricket Club was founded over a 120 years ago. Apparently they've had a few big nights here through the years.... sometimes fitting up to six people in the club at once!


Umm.... this is the town hall (from memory). Looks good but.


"It's over here!" Keezee finds the village pub - no surprises there.


The medieval bridge. Apparently a good spot for swimming, or fishing on a day like this......



..... so the locals tell me


And our final stop for today is the remains of Waverley Abbey, which was built in the 12th century. It's a very pretty and thought provoking place. We were happy to find this is a site we could visit for free, and were amazed how few visitors there were on a Sunday afternoon as it's quite an amazing place. The abbey is certainly a little worse for wear after nine hundred-odd years, and being in an open field, completely open to the public with no security, no doubt relies on the good nature of visitors not to degrade further before its time.


Welcome


Not sure how old this bridge is, but its a good photo opp. on the path to the abbey.


Ah, here it is.


It's big!

Really big!

And a little bit spooky as well.


But very interesting, even for these two.


Time to go

We took so many photos here, we filled up the memory card on our camera. Give us a yell if you want to see more. Hope you enjoyed these.

This is Brooklands.

The next installment of our tour of interesting places near our house takes us to Brooklands. This was the world's first purpose-built motor track and is commonly referred to as the birthplace of British motorsport (or so I'm told). It also has an interesting aviation history, which may help explain the old planes we spotted by the side of the road.

The original race track was built over a huge area and also included an aerodrome. Since its demise around WWII, it's now a multi-functional place with a supermarket, department stores, child-care centre, playground, car showroom, bike trails, post office sorting centre and museum amongst other uses. The nice thing is there's still a few sections of banked track to be seen, so the history of the place is right there to see.


Appropriately named bus on the local merry-go-round.


Our intrepid photographer climbed high up the old track to get this shot.... it's much steeper than it looks.


The aforementioned playground...


...with appropriately themed play equipment.


Note to self: take Mum & Dad here when they visit.

A Visit to the Seaside

When I was a kid I used to laugh at the Brits on the telly talking about visiting the seaside for the day. Visions of rugged-up people walking along stony beaches, dipping their toes in the water - very lame. Anyway, last weekend was pretty nice and it actually hit 30°, so when in Rome......

We headed off to West Wittering beach because we heard it was big and has plenty of room to park. Only problem was, the rest of London had heard the same thing. The line of cars driving in went for miles, but when we finally made it, we could see it really was the biggest car park ever created. In fact some people liked it so much they were having their picnics right there amongst the cars.
"Charles, I know we've driven for 3 hours, but let's not worry about walking 100 yards to the sand, let's break out the strawberries n cream right here next to the Vauxhall!"
"Brilliant idea Camilla!"

It was nice to the see the ocean again, but with a howling onshore, it wasn't the most pleasant beach we've ever been to. The sand was quite shingley, but if you're an avid shell collector like Lucy, this is a good thing. The wind was actually quite cool, so we had a quick dip and a look around before heading off.

Caiti was a bit of a daredevil in the water and managed to swallow half the English Channel for her troubles. Afterwards she went for a wander up the beach to introduce herself to the hundreds of thousands of people sitting around. They'd say "hello" and she'd respond "Cold" - just in case they were wondering.


Shoes on to walk over the rocks.


These guys have got an easy job we reckon, but maybe this was a good day. There was a sign we saw on the way in that said "Beware: Offshore Winds Can KILL" - honest.


No sand, but good if you like collecting shells.


Caiti went hard in the water, but when she got out, she learnt a new word: "Cold!"


The hoardes..... we need to buy one of those wind shelters. Haven't seen them on sale anywhere, but everyone's got one.