Sunday 1 July Prospect Tower

I was up early again, the sun was shining so I got Andrew up and we drove over to Harty Ferry on the Swale to have a walk on the marshes. We walked all round Oare Creek Nature Reserve, it is a lovely place. Watched the birds and saw the sailing barges with the ochre sails, spent a couple of hours walking and reached the car again just before the rain began. Drove into Faversham for lunch at the Sun Inn, fresh haddock then steamed ginger pudding – this is like sticky toffee pudding with loads of fresh ginger in it, extremely yummy. Went back to Belmont to have a look round the gardens and have a tour of the house. We get free access to the tour and grounds because we are staying in the folly. The 5th Lord Harris spent years collecting over 350 clocks, it is said to be one of the largest privately owned collections in the country. The tour, including all the clocks was very good, Belmont is a Georgian mansion designed by Samuel Wyatt. The gardens are lovely and date back to the 1790’s, there is a Pinetum with a Victorian shell grotto within it, which contains fossilised Ammonites, a pretty kitchen garden and Victorian greenhouses. All well worth a visit, but the gardens are even nicer to walk around in the evening when we have the place to ourselves. After dinner at the tower we wandered around the grounds again and found a lovely herb garden that we’d missed earlier, several different types of lavender are in it and it smells wonderful. Relaxed with some wine up on the roof and watched a lovely sunset, turning round I found an intensely bright rainbow in a perfect arc opposite the setting sun.