Chilham and Whitstable – 7th anniversary weekend

A few weekends ago, the bf decided to surprise me by taking me somewhere for our 7th anniversary.

‘Where?’ I kept asking. ‘You’ll find out where when we’re there,’ he kept saying. So, while the road signs said Dover and Canterbury, and while I kept asking ‘We going to Dover?’ and then kept it up with a few ‘We going to Canterbury?’s, it didn’t do much good when all there was around us was long, winding country roads, hedges literally metres high, and the bright, full moon in the sky.

So we kept going on and on, following the Tom Tom (trust is key … and also, we didn’t know the way) until we finally came back to civilisation (there were road lights, for one) and saw the sign to ‘Village Centre’.

Up a small, winding road we went (a hill, they called it) until we came to a square, the size of a small parking lot. It was a parking lot, actually, but that was the village centre, and imagine if you will, a little parking lot surrounded by black and white cottages, with a castle at one end, and a church at the other.

What do you think it looks like? Come on … imagine …

Voila. Beautiful little village (at least, I think this was the village) with one pub, one tea house, and one souvenir shop.

The bf rented this fantastic little cottage for the weekend – Orion Cottage, which looks so lovely bathed in the sunlight. The night we got there was a different story, as we only left London quite late after work, and it took us about an hour to get to this place. It was cold, and we fumbled around in the dark, unlit square looking for the cottage (they all look the same in the dark, believe me) and finally found it. Tried to open the door (see the white door in the picture) and realised that it wasn’t gonna be as easy as we thought it might be. There I was standing on one foot, shuffling to the other (cold), and there he was, trying one key after another. Finally, he thought of trying the back of the cottage (see the little brown door to the left of the cottage) and it worked!

Walked through a few spider webs but we finally succeeded, and was greeted with a cute, very modern, well-furnished little kitchen.

How fab is this? All excited, we took our bags into the cottage, and set about exploring.

First place to be explored was Morrison’s. Hey, it was 10pm on a cold night, and we were hungry. Good thing was, Morrison’s was only 15 minutes away, and off we went in search of some food. Half an hour later, we were back with a 2-person takeaway curry bag, some juice, cheese, and croissants for breakfast.

The little cottage also had a lovely sitting room, complete with fireplace and all. Ever the camp enthusiast, the bf set about trying to make a fire (the owner of the cottage had left us some wood for this purpose) and it made the room feel nice and warm as the fire crackled away to the sounds of X Factor and my dried up contact lenses.

Love the decor, don’t you think? TV could’ve been a little bigger … just saying.

The next day, we took a short trip to Whitstable, which was recommended by quite a few of the guests who’d wrote in the guestbook. Eager to take advantage of a lovely, sunny day (and also because we’d pretty much read everything in the cottage, and seen all that Morrison’s had to offer), we decided to have lunch in this seaside town.

Wee Willie Winkle’s was one of the places we kept hearing about, so we thought, why not.

Wee Willie Winkle’s turned out to be a big, warehouse-like place selling a mixture of fresh, and ready-cooked seafood, with a hot counter serving a variety of deep-fried seafood with chips.

We were tempted to buy some of the king prawns, but with typical touristy attitudes, thought, nah, we’ll wait a bit and maybe find something even better …

 

While we were there, a lady actually stopped by the shop and asked the guy manning the hot counter ‘Do you sell deep-fried white bait? Oh you do? I heard from someone that yours is the best whitebait in town. Oh no, I won’t get any today, but I just wanted to stop by to see if it was any good, before I get some next time’.

If this was a TV show, I would’ve thought she was advertisement, but turns out, she was actually really just checking out the place.

With all the seafood around us, how could we not have tried something? So we chose some deep-fried king prawns with chips. Don’t ask me why everything is deep-fried, I asked the same question myself.

How was it? It was OK. Not the freshest, in fact, it kinda was mushy to the bite, and the chips were kinda not mushy enough, so while it wasn’t the best, it staved off the hunger for a bit.

After the little snack of mushy vs non-mushy, we took a little stroll down the beach to see what else was on offer. Quite a lot, it seems, though by that time, we’d kinda lost interest in trying any more. Just happy to observe the going ons around us, we continued down the beach.

Of all the English beaches I’ve been to (about three?) I’ve not seen this anywhere. Recycling oyster shells to replenish the sea, how inventive.

After a while on the beach, we headed towards the high street where we found a nice, unique little cafe and had some teacakes with tea. Very well-toasted, fruity, chewy teacakes made all the better with some lovely butter all over it.

Lovely weekend, really enjoyed ourselves.