Kent – Sissinghurst and Biddenden

It’s a long drive down to Kent, especially when the heavens intermittently dump great vats of rain onto our little Toyota Yaris so that we need to crawl along with the wipers swishing diabolically. It was sometimes so loud that we had to pause the audio book that was playing in the car. It was from the ‘Inspector Alan Grant’ series by Josephine Tey. She’s not a writer I was familiar with, but Anne has read her most famous book, ‘The Daughter of Time’, and from what I’ve listened to so far, her style is very modern considering she wrote her novels between 1929 and 1952 when she died, at the young age of fifty-five. 

We saw a number of St George flags displayed from bridges along the way, and although none of these had the words ‘Get Off My Land’ written on them, it seems that this symbol of a Greco-Turkish man is increasingly billowing in the wind. If the nation is suddenly feeling proud of our green and pleasant land, I wish more would be demanding that the water companies reduce how much effluence and sewage they empty into our rivers for instance, instead of crowding round hotels with people from other countries in them. 

We’re staying near Sissinghurst in a bijou pad above a barn near a village called Benenden. There are several towns and villages here ending in ‘enden’. It’s an Old English suffix denoting a woodland pasture, which is probably how many of these villages began. Benenden had a church that was older than the first Domesday list in 1086, although it has since been mainly rebuilt because of fire damage. William the Conqueror gave this parish to his brother Odo (not the same as the character from Star Trek-Deep Space Nine). 

I ran to the village this morning, via some off-road trails and farmland. I’m not quite sure if I should have been in the farmland, as at one point I had to gingerly climb over a wire fence in order to get back on the trails. It was tempting to reach out and grab a lush red apple from the orchard, or the swollen grapes from the vineyard, but I kept my hands to myself (although I did pinch an apple from Sissinghurst later) and eventually made it to the village after being soaked to the skin from another sudden downpour. It felt quite exhilarating hearing it tap out a frenetic rhythm on the leaves as I jog/walked through the woods, and in the last two weeks I’ve noticed all the acorns underfoot in a way that I’d not paid attention to before. They’re hard little things, and occasionally treacherous. I’ve almost completely decided that I’m taking my foot off the pedal with my training for this Warrington Half in under three weeks’ time. Slight niggles and inconveniently placed holidays aside, it’s a mentally freeing decision. I know I’m on an upwards trajectory overall, and I will get back to some hard work soon, but at least I can enjoy these woodland canters and the holiday in general. 

I was able to enjoy an impromptu tasting session at another vineyard this afternoon, in Bibbenden. The grapes hanging low on the rows of vines we walked through (legitimately this time) looked succulent. I don’t think I have ever visited a vineyard before because I was surprised at the way the vines are tied so that all the grapes hang below the leaves. It’s extremely efficient when it comes to picking them. Annie has been taking notes for our single grape vine. We are staying very close to a famous English vineyard called Chapel Down, but that has at least one local competitor. Biddenden wines are very comparable.

Kent is seen as the ‘Garden of England’, which is one of the reasons we are down here. Vita Sackville-West’s gardens in Sissinghurst are just up the road from us, and Knole, where she grew up is not far either. Anne’s doing a presentation to her gardening group about Vita, so we’re here to investigate. She’s also reading a biography by Victoria Glendinning and finding out just what a snob she was. It wasn’t a snobbery specific to her, but an assumption about life from her upper crust world. It was a world where women were not academically educated, and parents didn’t have much to do with their children. 

Her knowledge of gardens was developed from watching and helping out at Knole. Vita’s instincts were to set down plants in a wild way, and Harold, her husband, preferred regimented lines. You can almost feel that, in the various gardens in Sissinghurst that the wildness has been contained – an apt metaphor for their relationship. The box hedges and the formal espaliered trees sit side by side with the tumbling flora. Even in the autumn when many of the plants are on the wane, it is a beautiful place. The highlight for me, aside from the gardens, was Vita’s writing room, part way up in the tower. It was left as she had left it when she died in 1962, and looks like a proper writer’s den, with most of the walls being lined with books upon books. There’s a chaise longue and a desk, and fireplace in the corner. I’m taking notes for our box room.