If you go down to the woods today...

The weather is absolutely glorious here in the South East at the moment - summer has come at last! Though I think it may be rather a shock when we get back to "normal" temperatures for autumn.

Last weekend I went on a drive around the beautiful Ashdown Forest, in East Sussex. Once a royal hunting forest, today a fabulous place to go for a ramble or horse ride. An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) it stretches for 2500 hectares. From open heathland to wooded copses its a fabulous place to spend a day. Not only are there plenty of walks, but places to visit too, such as the Ashdown Forest Centre or the Llama Park!

The Forest is also home to a well loved children's character, Winnie the Pooh. Created by A.A.Milne in 1926 for his son, Christopher Robin,  Pooh and his friends Tigger, Eeyore and Piglet have been ensconced in children's consciousnesses ever since. I stopped off in the village of Hartfield to visit Pooh Corner, a shop where you can buy anything and everything Pooh related - it was fabulous! You can buy cards, toys, books and even gardening equipment for children with Pooh and his friends on! You can even buy online: www.pooh-country.co.uk

You can buy maps and follow the trail of Pooh around the Forest. From the Enchanted Forest and Galleons Leap to playing Pooh Sticks at Pooh Bridge. A magical exploration of the world of Winnie the Pooh for children, big and small alike.

There are some lovely villages within and surrounding the Forest that are great to stop off at to grab an ice cream, do some shopping, or merely sit and have a drink in a cafe or traditional old pub - Forest Row, Maresfield and Crowborough to name a few. There are also the gardens of The National Trust owned Sheffield Park to explore plus a ride on the first preserved standard gauge passenger railway in the world, the Bluebell Railway.

Forest Row, East Sussex

Sheffield Park

So if you are visiting the South East of England this week, make the most of the glorious weather - go for a stroll in Ashdown Forest and then maybe head down to the beaches at Brighton, Camber, Broadstairs or Hastings to cool your feet. Whatever you choose to do - enjoy!

Countryfile in Kent

If you had time to watch on Sunday evening on BBC 1 the very popular Countryfile - usually handily on just before another high rating programme for the BBC, The Antiques Roadshow, you would have seen that they were featuring Kent as their main location for the episode.

It was wonderful to see featured Brogdale, home of The National Fruit Collection (featured in an earlier blog by myself) which is out near historic Faversham. Hundreds of varieties of plums, cherries, apples, nuts and pears are grown here, and when you visit you can not only walk amongst the orchards but happily pick the fruit straight off the tree and eat it! Many a time I've visited and come away with a rather full tummy from "scrumping" various varieties from the branches. To top it all you can happily sit and enjoy a cup of tea and a then a shop in the Market Place there as well! Perfect. And to top it all if you were to head into Faversham itself you could organise yourself a visit to the UK's oldest brewery - Shepherd Neame. A tour of here can be made part of your overall visit to Faversham and Brogdale, including a historic guided walk by Discover South East England. Just contact me for further details.

Continuing on their theme of Kent on Countryfile, although no mention was made of the hop picking that used to, and in some areas, still, continues; the presenters travelled to the coast to find rock oysters and inland to explore Down House, the home of the great naturalist Charles Darwin. It was here at Down House that Darwin wrote the famous "On the Origin of Species" and would wander his garden collecting and observing wildlife. The house and garden has just been short-listed for World Heritage Status this year. For further information about Down House - take a look at: www.englishheritage.org.uk and search for the property.

Dawin's Study at Down House, Kent

The programme finally ended on one of the more unusual games unique to Kent - Bat and Trap. Still played in many local pubs, the game is believed to have been an early form of cricket. As simply as I can I will try and explain the game - you have a paddle or bat, and to release a ball from inside a box (known as the trap) you have to press on a release mechanism with your bat. Once released the ball springs into the air and in that moment you have to hit the ball and try and get it to land at the other end of the pitch between two posts. You then score if you do so. At that end are the other team who have to catch the ball and then roll it back to the trap, trying to hit a target on the front of the trap. If the target is knocked over then you are out of the game and the points are lost! Not as complicated as cricket, but still difficult enough. There are many more intricacies to the game but I will leave it to you to find out more via: www.batandtrap.org/

If you missed Countryfile on Sunday you can still watch a repeat of it on i player - go to: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006t0bv - enjoy!

New Readers!

The viewers of my website and blog are ever expanding! Welcome to readers from Brazil, Ireland, Estonia, Singapore, Canada, Germany and Portugal!

Do please drop me a line to discuss travel plans to the UK, even if you aren't visiting the South East, or just send me a message to simply say hello! You can even say hello to me now on twitter too - I'm @cathdiscoversee. (Everything said on my twitter account are my personal thoughts and not that of the company.) Look forward to your tweets and thoughts.

Christmas!!

I know, far too early it seems to be talking about Christmas already, but it is less than 100 days till the 25th rolls around again. I just wanted to make mention on here to keep your eyes posted for some exciting plans I have coming up for this year!! The elves are busy with not only Father Christmas, but in my grotto too and coming up with some winter wonderland tours and other activities. You will just have to watch this space, and hope that you have been a good boy or girl this year!

Are you a Nutter?

Autumn is once more upon us. Doesn't time fly! I can't believe the summer is already over, and here in the South East the trees are already beginning to change colour to their autumnal hues of golds, reds and browns. There are some fantastic woodland walks that I can take you on if you are visiting the area - just email me for details; but in this blog I want to talk about a crop that at this time is harvested in the South East - the cob nut.

Cob nuts are cultivated wild hazelnuts, also known as filberts. Cob nuts have been in England since the 16th Century and the county of Kent has always been famous for its own variety - the Kentish Cob Nut, since around the 1830s. They are in season between August and October and are always marketed fresh. You can eat cob nuts when green or when more mature at the end of September when they are the more familiar golden colour, and much sweeter.

Kent once had over 7,000 acres of cob nut orchards, or "platts" as they were once known. Today there are around 250 acres. The nuts have to be picked by hand and those who do so are known as "nutters". In the 16th Century it is even known that children played an early version of conkers with cob nuts called "cobblenut".

Allegedly cob nuts were popular with mariners as they kept fresh for months and are also very high in protein. If you do buy some, keep them in a cool dry place and turn them every day to ensure they don't get damp or mouldy.

If you are visiting the South East this autumn, then the best place to go nutting is around the Greensand Ridge area of Kent - between Sevenoaks, Maidstone and Tonbridge. Places such as Allens Farm near Plaxtol, sell them at the farm gate, or you can find them in local greengrocers.

Other varieties of cob nuts include the Gunslebert, Merville de Bollwiller (or Hall's Giant), Butler, Ennis and Cosford. For more information about cob nuts and the local suppliers, take a look at www.cobnuts.co.uk or www.kentishcobnutsassociation.co.uk

You can not only try cob nuts on their own, or kept preserved in honey, but there are other recipes you can use cob nuts in - including a very seasonal Damson and Cob nut Mincemeat. I like the very simple recipe of chocolate cob nuts - roasted in the oven then rolled in melted chocolate, and sprinkled with cocoa powder as they cool. Yum! Roll on winter I say - as the nights draw in, good excuses for wrapping up warm and autumnal walks around the local area where you can pick up the nuts, apples, pears, plums, damsons and blackberries to create lots of warming and filling pies, puddings and tarts.

Medical Miracles

This past week I have been laid up in bed with a horrible throat, chest and ear infection, which knocked me for six! Only now have the antibiotics kicked in which have enabled me to get up and actually come and check my e-mail etc... During this time I have, however, been able to think about how lucky we are in the 21st Century to have the wonders of modern medicine to be thankful for, compared to our ancestors.

In the current situation I find myself in I have to thank Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) who discovered during his research of the antibiotic, Penicillin in 1928. But, who else do we have to thank for medical wonders that we, today, take for-granted? Thanks to Louis Pasteur's work we would not have Joseph's Lister's pioneering work on antiseptic surgery, and the discovery of chemical disinfectants, that was inspired by Pasteur. Lister in fact lived out the rest of his days in the South East of England at Walmer in Kent.

Alexander Fleming

A born and bred son of Kent who is famous in the medical world, was William Harvey (1578 - 1657). Harvey was born in Folkestone, and you can still see his statue on The Leas today, or even visit The William Harvey Hospital in Ashford. Harvey was the first in 1628 to publish his description of the circulation of the blood around the human body. He also had the prestigious honour of being a physician to King James I.

William Harvey statue in Folkestone, Kent

Another man who should be mentioned is Sir James Simpson, a Scottish physician, who in the 1840s pioneered the use of painkillers, most specifically the use of chloroform vapour to ease childbirth. The use of chloroform in this regard was not taken seriously until Queen Victoria herself used this during the birth of Prince Leopold in 1853.

Before this explosion in Victorian medical inventions and discoveries, if you were ill or seriously hurt, you really did not have many options, either for pain relief or the reliability of your doctor/surgeon. Going back in time to the middle ages it was often Monks who were relied upon in medical situations. They were one of the few sections of society who could read the medical literature that was out there, mainly written by Arab scholars to start with. If you weren't lucky to live near a monastery or religious community then really you relied on word of mouth, the experience of others, and old wives tales. For hundred's of years our ancestors relied on a mix of pagan, religious and scientific beliefs to cure all sorts of ailments. Plants and flowers were often used in cures. And there is certainly some truth to some of the remedies - such as chewing cloves for toothache.

In 1215 the Pope declared that Monks should stop treating the sick and that peasants should learn to treat themselves. I think a farmer's knowledge of cattle castration, really didn't qualify them for operations, but this is who the poor had to rely on! Local barbers would not only cut your hair and trim your beard, but take your teeth out for you as well if you wanted, as well as other surgical procedures such as removal of cataracts! Of course there are many tales of Quack Doctors, who were those who saw a way of making some money on the back of the ignorance and desperation of other. However, only a small section of society could afford a qualified doctor, but even if one did pay for a doctor, it did not guarantee you your recovery! Much medicine was trial and error! 

Hippocrates

The influence of the Greeks on medicine cannot be ignored, for centuries the Hippocratic Method was pretty much standard across Europe. Bloodletting either by opening a vein or using leeches was said to cure people of their problems, as each illness related to one of the "Four Humours" that Aristotle and Hippocrates believed the human body was divided into - this was blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile, and all should be in balance. If you were ill, your body was out of balance and as such needed to be purged of the Humour that was affecting it. Another "cure all" prescribed to many was the highly toxic element of Mercury, often used to help with venereal diseases well into the 18th Century.

There really wasn't any painkillers as we know today - people tried various herbs and plants such as hemlock or opium poppies, to help with the pain, however you hoped that you would either pass out from the pain, or perhaps be drunk before surgery was performed. The Herb Garret Old Operating Theatre discovered opposite St Thomas' Hospital in London, really brings to life the reality of medicine and surgery in the early 19th Century, just before anaesthesia. There are even wooden blocks solidly chomped into by the poor people who were operated on over the years - give to them to help them with the pain and to prevent them crying out.

Old Operating Theatre, London

In Samuel Pepys' diary, written in the 17th Century, Pepys' gives us a very vivid account of his own bladder stone operation in 1658, which tells in excruciating leg crossing detail what he went through. Even prehistoric finds have shown signs of surgery - there are a number of examples of trepanning, a technique that was used to alleviate any pressure on the brain, by drilling a hole through the top of the head! Ouch! Some of these very early skulls, do however, show signs that the person survived and healed. Amazing.

Evidence of Trepanning on ancient skull

 
Local and national Nursery Rhymes, old wives tales and folk stories also inform us of people's attitudes/remedies etc...to illness. The nursery rhyme "Ring a Ring o' Rosies" is believed to relate to either the Bubonic Plague or the Pox. Certainly people did hold posies of flowers and herbs to their noses to disguise awful smells, and perhaps also to prevent the passing on of disease. Even in the last century, my grandfather still believed that a good dollop of goose fat on the chest when one had a cold really helped! 

On reflection of everything, it certainly makes me very grateful for the continuing innovations in science and medicine today! Hope you enjoyed this blog entry, and do let me know of any "home" remedies or tales of medicine that interest you.

A Bun on the Run in Sandwich!

There are many local and national traditions that happen throughout the year, plus many fun books written about them. I hope to be able to bring your attention to some of the more unusual ones, especially those in the South East region.

On Wednesday 24th August, try and get yourself down to the Cinque Port of Sandwich - a beautiful town with a large concentration of preserved medieval houses. It is on the 24th August, St Bartholomew's Day, that you can join in the Sandwich Bun Race for free at St Bartholomew's Hospital.

St Bartholomew's Hospital is one of the oldest established hostelries for pilgrims and travellers. The building dates back to 1190 and is located on the Dover road - an important pilgrimage route from London via Canterbury and on to the Continent. The Chapel was built around 1217 and is said it was built to celebrate the defeat of the French.

Every 24th August, a special service begins at 11am which concludes with a run around the church. Children are given buns, and adults are given a hard baked biscuit stamped with the arms of the town on it. The buns and biscuits may represent a dole of bread that may have been given out to the poor, but no one is sure for certain. What you do need to know, though, is that the Bartlemas Bun Run is part of The Sandwich Festival 2011 which this year runs all week from Sunday 21st August to Monday 29th August, with music, festivals, walks, fashion shows, Markets, Duck Races and much more.
Have a look at: www.open-sandwich.co.uk for more details.