Chartwell House

Here's some pics from the day we stumbled upon Chartwell House - Winston Churchill's old house - after getting slightly lost driving around the Surrey-Kent border with Nanny Dawn. We were on our way back from a spot of shopping at Royal Tunbridge Wells (which, in case you didn't know, is pronounced "Royal Tunbridge Wells Daaaarling").

We saw the trusty National Trust tourist attraction sign by the side of the road, so thought we'd take a side trip and pop in for a look. It was actually quite interesting, and has a very lovely garden. Wouldn't be a bad place to live actually so long as you don't mind hundreds of visitors wandering through your place everyday.

Here's the pics....


The sign


The girls and the house


The girls and the garden


The girls, the house and the roses


The happy couple in front of the croquet lawn - we're thinking of putting in a croquet lawn at home!


Sometimes we just can't keep the smile off Lucy's face


Caiti found a nice spot to sit


The girls and the green hills


Caiti's new top and Keezee's old one.

A Drink at The Mill

We're happy to report a new entry on the Keezees list of good pubs. When Nanny Dawn was here we popped our head into The Mill at Elstead for a bite at lunch.

It's a lovely building, which used to be a working mill back in the old days (whenever that was). The old waterwheel is a feature as you walk into the bar - the beer and Pimms were nice features too. The best feature though, on a nice sunny day, is the huge garden out the back where you can sit by the stream (that runs under the pub) and eat your lunch. Not only that, but its nicely fenced off as well, so you can let the kids run round without worrying about having to dive into the stream after them. Actually, the girls found lots of friends after lunch and were very disappointed to have to leave in the end.

So there you go.... here's the pics.


You can't go past saying you didn't catch the name of the pub... it's in six foot high gold lettering.


This is the back of the pub.. the stream behind there goes straight under the pub, through the bar with the waterwheel, and comes out the other side.


The girls liked their presents from Uncle Scott and family.... the backpacks only get removed for baths and bed!


A quick family snap (girls only) before lunch.

Bath Time

It's been a while between posts... we'll put that down to having visitors (the two Nannies) and Keezee being ridiculously busy at work - it's no excuse, but it's true.

Anyway, whilst Nanny Dawn was here, Mr & Mrs Keezee managed to sneak away for a weekend in Bath without the kids (you could call it a 'clean' weekend) - thanks Nanny Dawn!. It was great and we saw lots of good stuff including some fascinating Roman ruins, with the only problem being our brand spanking new camera running out of battery-life after 3 photos. Someone forgot to bring the battery charger, so it wasn't looking good. Luckily that someone remembered he has a camera on his phone, so all was not lost. So, as long as you don't mind looking at blurry, low-res images of nice buildings..... great.. here goes then...




Here's the 3 shots we did get with the new camera.....


.....and here come the mobile phone shots.....

The Circus - note the colourful pig up there on the right...



There's the street name carved into the building... very Roman!



Warning... Warning... wife looking in antique jewellery shop.... Warning... Warning...


The houses in bath look a lot like this..



There were colourful pigs everywhere we looked
(I might need to reword that, actually)



See what I mean?



The general scene at 10pm... the British summer does afford the opportunity to have a nice walk at night (the British winter does not!).



Yep, another colourful pig.... this one is in the Roman Baths.. that's lovely warm (and green) spa water there



Jo at the Roman Baths, with the Abbey behind... very nice.




More from the Roman Baths. It's hard to believe that this place got buried under the mud and was forgotten about for around 1500 years, only to be discovered again when some plumbers were digging a sewerage pipe in the late 1800's and dug up the head of a Roman God Statue (something like that anyway) They're still digging up new bits today - amazing!



Roman Centurion pig outside the local church.



The pub across the road from our hotel (and next to Centurion Pig Church), is called the Saracen's Head - love the logo!

Polo at Cowdray

Here's a few shots from our recent visit to Midhurst (actually it was the same day we went to Petworth House). We wanted to catch a spot of polo because we knew it was played here at Cowdray Park, from the last time we dropped by, last summer.

Well, the tournament was in full swing by the time we got close, and we watched a few chukkas from the rear (ie. free) stand behind the cars parked around the field. We were very excited to discover that Australia's top player, Jack "Ruki" Baillieu, was in action in the match we watched. However, the real star of the show without a doubt was the commentator - didn't catch his name, but try and imagine a 'half-tanked' Henry Blofeld (if you know him - the English cricket commentator) and you'll get the idea.


Here's Lucy at Cowdray - we took a shot from this same spot last summer


Cowdray through the trees


Here's the polo... it's £10 to drive your car right up to side of the field (not bad for the sport of kings), but we walked round the back and ended up standing in the plebs area.


Ruki Baillieu is the "white daisy" in the blue cap (we think).



The camerawork is not great, but have a listen to the commentary - champion stuff.