Lewes

Today we went to Lewes, a beautiful and historic town near Brighton. The COG and I both worked there soon after we were married.  But there's Real History there, too.  Important things like the Battle of Lewes and Tom Paine's writings and Virginia Woolf's suicide.

Today, we mostly walked around.  We visited an auction, just because the door was open.  Regency and Georgian chairs in sets of 6 were going for £250 to £350, (plus a 20% auctioneer fee).  Then we went to the amazing Southover Grange Public Garden. Built on the grounds of a lovely little manor house - Southover Grange, of course. The house was lived in by the Newton family, some kind of cousins of Sir Isaac Newton.  Now it's a wedding venue etc.  But it's a beautiful public park, too.  It has the oldest mulberry tree in the UK (350 years), and a tulip tree planted by then-Princess Elizabeth in 1951, and some other huge specimen trees.  It also has these amazing fungi:

and a peaceful walled garden intended for quiet contemplation:

I was sitting on the bench in the background when the COG and I engaged in a quiet discussion about whether playing solitaire on an iphone was contemplative or not.  I hold fast to my position that Solitaire is one of the higher forms of contemplation and belongs in this lovely garden.

This is a fig tree, for those who have not seen one, and it was full of figs.

We walked around some more. Had a cup of coffee, bought some local ciders and ales from a fantastic store, bought dinner at a grocery store, and then came home on the bus.  

Waiting for the bus, we saw these two interesting people (proving once again,  Brighton is an excellent place for people watching.) It's fuzzy because I was trying to look as if I were texting, when I was actually taking a picture.