Taking the second exit from Pratt's bottom (you can imagine how long I have been wanting to write that) we were soon hoping that we were not going to be meeting someone coming the other way down the very narrow Kentish lanes around the village of Downe.
before too long we found Down House, which confusingly is spelt without the extra "e", the home of one of the most important scientists ever - Charles Darwin. The property is managed by English Heritage so as we are members we didn't have to pay the £7.50 entry fee.
Starting with the garden we had a wander round the Sand Path where I think Darwin spent a lot of time agonising about whether to go public about his ideas while out enjoying the country air. We also enjoyed the kitchen garden which had some splendid pumpkins and squashes about ready for harvest, the walled garden with its fruit trees, the greenhouse with its fantastic selection of insect eating plants and the laboratory with its glass walled beehive. With the sun shining there were plenty of insects enjoying the nectar and pollen, so I got to show the Powder Monkey the difference between Bumble Bees, Honey Bees and Hover Flys, there were also lots of butterflys.
Inside the house the ground floor is preserved much as it would have been in Darwin's day, we saw the drawing room where the family would spend evenings around the piano, reading and sowing, the billiard room where the gentlemen would retire after dinner, the dining room and Darwin's study, where he would work on the specimens that friends sent him from around the globe. I have often thought that with the large number of parcels contains organic material arriving at Down being Darwin's postman can't have been much fun.
The upstairs features a very informative exhibition about the great man, his life and works.
In all I think we spent about two to three hours there and very enjoyable it was too. Before we left there was time for a cup of tea and a visit to the shop where I picked up some unusual pickles which I'm looking forward to sampling.
Back in Essex we decided to see the birds at Connaught Waters, and I'm really glad we did as the Great Crested Grebes had a pair of chicks. They were really pretty with their grey stripey down and already diving for food with their mum and dad. We also saw Mallard, Mandarins, Red Headed Pochard, Tufted Duck, Canada Geese, Magpies, Coots and Moorhens. So as the sun went down we left the birds to roost and headed for home and were lucky enough to see one of the forest's foxes before the light faded too much.
