London - Leeds Castle from Maidstone

Wednesday, June 7th, we road tripped to Maidstone, on to Leeds Castle. Wanting to get back early enough in the evening to do laundry before their 8:30pm closing time, we skipped our traditional morning coffee at Costa Cafe and instead went directly to the City Line tube to Victoria Station to get our train. There, we did get some take away capps and pastries for the brief ride. Once in Maidstone, we found a tourist info center and were explained how to get from there, on the 510 bus, to the castle. We walked around for about 20 minutes before the bus arrived, and then boarded the double-decker for the quick trip out. The bus driver told us where we needed to go before we got off, which proved critical. We walked to the castle grounds, bought our tickets, and walked through the beautifully manicured and maintained forest setting and gardens and paths by the various ponds and flowers and bridges. Eventually, we made it to the castle and it was gorgeous. We toured the inside and learned about the multitude of owners, from royalty, to private wealthy owners. The Fairfax family owned it for a number of generations, and it was the family patriarc who was granted a large estate, next to George Washington's in Virginia. Henry the VIII also owned it for a time, and some of his wives spent some time there. The castle was originally built in 1066, when William the Conqueror took control of the island. We got to see many paintings, tapestries, wood carvings, armor, swords, and rooms as they had existed during various periods of time in its existance. Besides the castel itself, the grounds were beautiful. The aviary was alot of fun as we attempted to converse with the many different exotic birds there, like the toucans, owls, amazons, parrots, parakeets, etc. The maze was a frustrating exercise in patience, so we cheated our way out, and enjoyed being done with it. The lake was full of swans, ducks and geese, and they were fun to watch, especially the white swans that fly-run across the top of the water. We missed the bus that we wanted to take back to Maidstone, and thus, missed our opportunity for doing laundry later on, but made the most of it by spending the next hour reading under the shade of a big tree before catching the next one. The train ride back to London was a non-event, and that pretty much makes it another complete day. Tomorrow, we leave this dump, and head back over to the Madison House for our final 3 nights in London and thereabouts.