Out with Molly - Bodiam Castle - August 31st 2024

After the lovely day we had yesterday at Sissinghurst Castle Garden instead of the weekend away in Norfolk, we decided to get up early today and go out again.

The plan was to go to Bodiam Castle. It's not that far away and I planned a motorhome friendly route on MyRouteApp and imported it to https://plan.tomtom.com/. Somewhere along the way the "motorhome" route part gets lost in translation and it opens a car route.  It then has to be re-edited to get it back into motorhome format.

Once it is "synced" automatically from Plans to Max (the Go Camper Max satnav)  it seems that despite both products being TomTom products, Max then decides to go a different way to the one planned....

So for most of the journey today we were being told to turn off where we didn't want to go, and to turn around. Unlike my TomTom Rider 410, Max doesn't seem to bother with u-turns.  It simply routes around a huge loop to get back to where it wants to go.

Anyway we finally arrived at 10.25am to a car-park that was full.  Nothing opens until 10am. Not the Castle. Not the Shop. Not the café! 

We found ourselves go all the way through the car park, along a track that seemed to have last been a testing ground for battle tanks and into a field or the "overflow car-park" as it was called. 

Luckily there weren't many cars there and the entrance and a few areas had a plastic grid on the ground.  I parked so that we could get out. My fear of it raining and having to be towed off the grass is always uppermost in my mind at times like this.  

So I parked up near the entrance with the front (drive!) wheels on some of the grid.... Claire sorted the parking ticket. It's free to National Trust members.  A by chance the had a machine near to the entrance to the field!

Not causing an obstruction!

We walked up to the check-in office and got our National Trust membership cards read.  We weren't going to actually go in the ruin, but getting bipped is a good idea.  

We had a coffee and shared a flapjack between us. 

The place was overrun with kids. Not that we don't like kids but they are a noisy set of individuals.  We went back to the moho to drop off a few things that Claire had bought in the shop.  And then went up to the castle for a walk around. 

I had set my Strava walking app to see what sort of distances we are walking. My watch seems to have no idea! Today 1.74 miles.

I took the Nikon D50 with me today to give it another trip out.  I took quite a few photos of the castle etc.  Despite it being dry and reasonably warm the sky was a little grey.

Reggie guarding our coffee!

Once we had had lunch and a relaxing read of the books on our Kindles we set off for home.  

We need to have a pre-flight checklist so that we don't forget anything. Windows closed?  Roof vents closed? Gas off? Toilet flap closed? Drawers all closed and locked?

Max decided to take us a different way home. Initially what could be considered the correct from the right turn out of the castle car park... Then on some roads that with a larger vehicle, although legal, were too narrow for me. So we did a bit of a loop through East Sussex. At Ashford we went into Tesco petrol station to find even at 143.9 they had no diesel. SO we rejoined the M20 and went to Folkestone where they had loads at 140.9!  

The trip showed we had done 601 miles since we last filled up and we were down to the last 75 miles of so on the range indicator. I fill the tank to the first click and then round up to the nearest pound (£) or litre.  This fill up was the most I have ever paid at £110.68 for 78 litres!

So we are all set for next weekend when we go back to East Sussex and the "Coffee and Camper" get together.