The Smithies

May 2004 Michelham Priory - East Sussex

Who: The Smiths & The Peters

On a weekend visit to see our mates from Sussex, they took us for a day trip to Michelham Priory, saying it was a really nice place, they weren't wrong.

The weather was great, the parking was interesting a meadow with 0.5m high grass!

Lucci provided a packed lunch Fit For a Flippin Fat Friar, very nice. There was a medieval weekend on so the kid were able to have a go a sling shot, spear throwing archery (we were to tight to pay the extra £1 for that - sorry kids.

Just outside is a working water mill, the lake/moat is the mill pond.

Now that's a bit of a fancy looking ticket office!

I managed to get into one of the photos, look at that fine bald head...

Gary got in to one of the photos too

One for us sad muppets, a old machine for making rope

Oh and there as a priory there, quite a fine building

Just after our fine lunch, all the boys went for a mad dash and tumble round the grass, of course I didn't manage to get the more spectacular tumbling or jumping in any of the millions of photos taken

With the boys off running, the rest of us had time to sit and relax, I'm just glad I didn't have sound recording at this time

The gardens are stuffed full of sculptures and works of art, this was quite a nice piece

Charlotte managed to try on a nice hat, it was a bit expensive and too heavy for every day use so decided not to buy it

There were some less visually pleasing works of art, we assumed they were more for fun than serious pieces of art

There were a few of these shadow sculptures there too, I guess we were lucky to be there on a sunny day

There was a coracle expert on hand to answer any of our pressing questions on how to make and use this ancient type of boat. In addition he told us all about the dugout you can seen in the background

To go with Mr Coracle there was an Iron-Age village, with thatched round houses, people in iron-age costume and mud being daubed on the walls etc

I found this lurking in on of the huts, don't think it was an iron age man as he was so tall he stabbed his forehead on the thatch as he entered

Lurking in one of the other huts was this motley crew, they look so primitive in their costumes

The lake/moat/mill pond was very nice, especially on this fine day. There were some very big fish in this water, we assume carp

Another of those odd looking sculpture was spotted, how did the artist get his/her model to pose in such an impossible pose while they made this piece - must be artistic license

And they say art imitates life, hah, what do they know

Bev pushing back the boundary's of decent behaviour

It's the end of the day so the kids jump on the penny farthing ready to cycle home after a great day out

Added 24-5-04