Pevensey Castle and Bodiam Castle

Hubby and I are members of National Trust and English Heritage. It is about the same price as a good wine each month for our joint memberships and we certainly find it value for money. 

Every holiday we look for National Trust or English Heritage properties to visit, Sussex and Kent have plenty so we had a fab time exploring. 

English Heritage have audio guides which really add to each visit. It is tiring holding the device to your ear, it gets warm too and for me means I have to stand still to listen due to my mobility. I spotted a port hole in the audio device when at Kenilworth Castle so this holiday we took headphones; such a difference. I could walk along listening as my hands were free to grab step railings or a wall if I wobbled a bit. 

We visited two castles during our stay in the South East, Pevensey Castle and Bodiam Castle. They looked simillar but were quite different in their history.

Pevensey Castle was a Roman Saxon Shore fort as early as the 4th century, and was where William the Conqueror landed in 1066. The sea was much further inland then, covering what is now Pevensey Bay; all along the coast we saw high sea defenses and noted how the land was flat and would have been sea.

As a Roman fort the castle would have had wooden structures, over time as the Castle was held by Anglo-Saxons and later Normans before being destroyed during the Battle of Lewes in Henry III's reign. 

There is evidence of each era, the audio guide explained about the dungeons, keep, cannonballs and the machine gun pill-boxes built during WWII.

Hubby bravely went down the narrow spiral staircase to the dungeon. I'm not good on stairs and dungeons are not my favourite psrts if a castle. 

We had a super time st Pevensey Castle. Standing in a prime position overlooking the English Channel to defend our lands its history is amazing. 

Bodiam Castle is the typical romantic vision of a castle with a moat, it's the one we'd all draw if asked. It was built in the late 1300s by Sir Edward Dallingbridge and his wife Elizabeth. It was a castle for living in rather than fighting and as such it's exterior walls are complete.

The interior is however in ruins, the castle has been lived in over time but has decayed with no full record of its life. From the windows and the fireplaces you can image where rooms were and the National Trust are discovering more as their restoration work continues. 

One feature of our visit made us stop and watch for ages ... fish! The moat was full of very large carp, obviously used to being fed by visitors as they appear en mass if a shadow fell over the water. The Trust do have signs asking visitors nit to feed the ducks or fish but such z romantic castle in extensive grounds is an ideal day out for families and feeding the wildlife is so tempting.

We had a super time wandering around such an idyllic setting on a glorious spring day. 

Two more properties visited, as I said before we really do find our memberships great value. We visited some lovely houses too, my next post will tell more.