#5 Hawkhurst, England

Here we are! In Hawkhurst, England! I'm sad to report I really didn't see many hawks... but no worries! There was other cool stuff! We'll get to that in a bit... First: Where we stayed the night. OH! This truly was a tricky situation. On our way into town we passed a building (below) with a sign that said "Tollgate Bed & Breakfast". Well... all looked well enough, except they wanted to charge a toll to walk anywhere on the property. So we vetoed that of course (silly).

We had trouble finding a another place to rent a room... but we did come across this house for sale!!! We ALMOST bought it as a vacation home (*sigh*) but alas, once we pooled all the change we had from our pockets we realized we were juuuuuust a few dollars shy of afforing it... (dang it!) So we kept looking...

Ah ha! At last... we found this place (below). A nice English couple was going away for the weekend. It was too cute of a little house, we simply couldn't resist! So after we saw them drive away we snuck inside and stayed in the attic bedroom (don't worry, we cleaned it all up and left a couple $100 bills in their cookie jar).

The next morning we did some sightseeing. Hawkhurst sadly didn't have too much... but one thing that stuck out was the "Babies Castle". It was built in 1886 as the largest orphanage for babies and young children. I can't imagine the conditions for children were great back then anyways, and I don't know how the conditions were here, but at least the poor little guys had SOMEwhere to be.

I tried to imagine what it might have looked like back in the late 1800's.... (of course... while imagining such historical events, your vision often turns to black and white or sepia tones...)

We found this pic of one of the nannies going for a walk with a bunch of the little orphan babies. It reminds me of the big strollers they have for the toddlers at my kids daycare! Although... I have to admit... the one in this pic looks insanely less safe then the one the daycare has! LoL! But I'm betting back then they didn't use car seats or even seat belts either! : )

One last cool thing we found was this medieval castlle! oooooooooooh! Neat eh? AND... it's still in use! Some Christian religion... though we couldn't tell exactly which. I love old buildings... awesome!

And so our journey to Hawkhurst came to an end... with no hawks to be seen anywhere... (darn!)... We are now headed for our LAST stop in England... Fairlight! We've got 13.8 miles til we get there, see you then!!! Happy jogging & blogging!