UK Tourist & Leisure Attractions - Rye

This is the Olde Moat House in Ivychurch, near Rye, our comfortable B&B guest house accommodation for the short break.  It proved an excellent place and reasonably priced too.  More pics on Rye page 2.

We always seem to get great weather when away, this short break proved no different and we started with a trek around Rye in the patchy warm sunshine.  That windmill in the background is now a guest house.

Aha, our first stop was this lovely coffee shop we found tucked away.  We sat in the warm autumn sunshine supping a coffee as we planned our day exploring historic Rye town.

Hmmm, so we'll go along there, up here, through that squiggly bit, then in there and out, er, where are we in Rye exactly?  Fortunately we had our hand-held Sat Nav with us!

Rye is an old gated fortified town; here's one of the four gates, Landgate, the only one that remains today.

Another picture in the bag at Rye's Ypres Tower.  There's a museum here and also nearby is the picturesque Church Square with its quaint old church, buildings and cobbled street, which formed the original 14th century East Sussex town of Rye.

We found this Gun Garden in the grounds of Ypres Tower and Mike just had to have a play with this big weapon, just need to take that red thing off the end and.... whoops!  Time to move quickly on to...

...Mermaid Street where we found the olde worlde Mermaid Inn, a historic Rye pub dating back to, oh, really olden times.  It was recently featured on the Most Haunted TV series about ghosts.

So we enjoyed a pint at the Mermaid Inn in Rye, served by a bar tender as miserable as a miserable thing.  Not friendly service at all, and expensive too - we saw sandwiches on the menu at £6!  There's...

...accommodation available at the Mermaid which we considered when planning our short weekend break, but at £220 per couple per night it was somewhat beyond our small pockets.

Strand Quay is the main tourist area.  At Rye Heritage Centre we enjoyed 'The Story of Rye', an involving audio visual show set to a town model as it was 700 years ago.  A historical audio walking town tour could also be obtained here.  Even on...

...a short break we like to get some walking in, so we headed off towards Rye's Camber Castle across land that 1000 years ago was under the sea, a fact we learnt at the Heritage Centre.  The good news was it was all flat for the 1½ mile walk from Rye town.

As we approached Camber Castle it appeared to be built (another of Henry VIII's fortifications) in the middle of nowhere.  Please see our tourist resources for Rye and other local Sussex and Kent websites.

The notice at Camber Castle gave us the history, but sadly it was currently closed to visitors.  There used to be 47 soldiers and their weapons based at this remote castle, um, steady on there Belinda!

Erm, at Camber Castle the notice said something about protecting ancient monuments of national importance.  Hmmm...

This picture was taken from the harbour road across the river towards Rye and shows just what a compact town historic Rye is.  Well, we found it well worth the visit, although it'll undoubtedly be busier during the summer tourist season.  Our Rye short break continues with a ride on the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway in Kent >>>