Visiting Walmer & Deal Castles, Kent - English Heritage #CountryKids

Back in May 2016 we took a few days as a family to head over to the Kent coast to explore Thanet. In general we had a lovely time despite some horrendous weather and our drive shaft snapping too!

Whilst we were there we visited Dover Castle, which is a truly amazing place to visit and somewhere I'd highly recommend. I wrote about our visit at the time - click HERE to read the full review. It really is a full day out for all the family and there is something for everyone.

To make the most of our family annual English Heritage membership (which we paid £69.37 for - it's always good to search online for a discount) we decided to also visit some other castles in the local area.

Deal Castle
Deal is an a great example of a Tudor artillery castle, part of a chain of them along this coastline. The external walls are still in-tact and you can see the really unusual shape of the castle. Our visit here was probably only about an hour as it is a fairly small site but as you can visit all of it the kids enjoyed being transported back and learning a bit more about this caste that King Henry VIII commissioned.

950th Anniversary Celebrations for the Battle of Hastings

We've had such a fun family afternoon and the best thing about it was that it was pretty impromptu. We've obviously known that it would be the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings this weekend and that the reenactment was happening at Battle Abbey and battleground this weekend but we hadn't really planned to join in as we've been to the reenactment before and we knew that Battle town would just be crazy busy with tourists.

Then on Monday the girls school sent home a letter saying they they would approve leave for this afternoon if the children wanted to be part of the town festivities and of course they did. At 2.15pm this afternoon this was a parade of more than 600 local school children (including many from my kids school) led by a military band, activities in the library and crafts in the memorial hall. So we planned to spend the afternoon in Battle town and it is close enough for JJ to walk and meet us after he finished school.

Family visit to Battle Abbey, East Sussex (English Heritage)

This year, for the first time we have joint English Heritage so we are happily making the most of our membership by visiting some local sites. Although to be honest the card covered its cost when we went to Kent in May and visited Dover Castle, Deal Castle and Walmer Castle.

We are lucky enough to live just outside of the very pretty and historic town of Battle in East Sussex. So Battle Abbey, which is home to the famous battleground where the 1066 Battle of Hastings took place is something we see most weeks. Bar one visit for the battle reenactment (which was superb fun) we have only ever smiled at the outside in the lat three years we have lived here but now we have the membership we are making frequent visits. Sometimes even just for the tea and cake as the prices (I was super surprised to note) are very reasonable and less than many of the coffee shops in the town. There is also a nice children's play park across from the cafe and that means our kids can run off and have some fun rather than being bored with us oldies!

Family Fun at Dover Castle, Kent

During the May half-term we headed over to Kent for a few days stay. Our intention was to enjoy the coast, visit a few castles and have a refreshing family week together. Sadly things didn't go quite to plan as the weather was terrible (just look at the mist in that photo above) and our car broke down too, meaning a big bill and us being stuck in our hotel room.

Never a family to let the weather get to us we headed over to Dover for a look around the castle. My husband had been here briefly back in 2015 but decided not to explore in depth that time as he knew the rest of us would love it, so this time we were all first timers and I can honestly say it won't be our last time of visiting. We took out English Heritage membership especially for this visit and with a bit of googling, we got a good deal of 20% of the membership price, so we now need to make good use of our years entry to all the English Heritage sites locally.

Arrival and Parking

Dover Castle is super easy to find, there was loads of signage and we used the maps function on my phone to guide us there. The attendants we met were very friendly and we quickly had a parking spot, very close to the welcome area. I suspect it wasn't the busiest of days though due to the high winds, drizzle and mist but it really didn't matter too much in the end as we had a great time.

We were given a map and offered a brochure to buy at the ticket office and then headed straight out to explore. There is no one route to follow, you can suit yourself.

The Battle of Hastings (A year in photos - week 42)

At the anniversary of the 14th October 1066 we went to a reenactment of the Battle of Hastings at Battle Abbey. The event runs for a weekend every year and had been highly recommended to us by lots of local people.

As the rain was coming down hard and we had free tickets (nothing to do with my blog I might add) we decided to go to church, have lunch and go along in the afternoon to watch the main event.

There seemed to have been loads going on if you went for the whole day - food stands, authentic traders, kids activities, theatre performances, have-a-go archery, Falconry, a literary tent with loads of different authors and music shows.

We had a good couple of hours at the event, first we explored the old abbey ruins a bit and then settled down to watch the main reenactment, it was very interesting but the rain pelting down did put a dampener on it for us and we headed to Costa to warm up.

The old abbey -

Loads of traders with far too many interesting things that little people want to touch! lol

English Heritage had a nice big shop there and if you are into this sort of thing there is loads the kids can buy, small wooden bows and arrow at £5.99, helmets, shields and proper metal helmet at about £150 for those more serious.

This is Harold riding in to battle -

More of the English Saxon army marching in -

The first soldiers commence battle -

The Normans march up to the Saxons on Senlac Hill and attempt to break their shield line -

Some of the Saxons feel they have won and break the line and then shortly they are surrounded by the Norman knights on horseback -

Because of the rain we didn't quite manage the full hour for the battle, the kids got bored and once Harold had the arrow in his eye we headed off.

We had a good time and I would recommend a visit to this if you are local to East Sussex.  Pray for good weather, bring a picnic and make a day of it!

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