{"id":8641,"date":"2026-01-16T15:59:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T15:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/walsallntassn.co.uk\/?page_id=8641"},"modified":"2026-07-01T07:36:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T07:36:26","slug":"holidays","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/walsallntassn.co.uk\/index.php\/holidays\/","title":{"rendered":"Holidays"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Kent 2026<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Castles, Historic Houses & Heritage of Kent<\/strong><\/mark><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Dover Castle<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

51 of our members braved the June \u201cheat dome\u201d to make our five day holiday trip to Kent, entitled \u201cCastles, Historic Houses and Heritage of Kent\u201d As always the schedule was busy and full of different experiences. En route we visited Ightham Mote, a superb moated manor house dating from 1330, with a spectacular Great Hall and Tudor Chapel, before making our way to our hotel on the seafront at Dover. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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Ightham Mote<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Our blue badge guide, Wilf, joined us on day two to take us to two of the promised castles, Dover and Walmer, the latter being the elegant home and residence of the Warden of the Cinque Ports, often used by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother when she was Warden.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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Walmer Castle<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

A guided tour of Canterbury city and the cathedral preceded the next castle, Leeds Castle, famously set on a moated island. Scotney and Sissinghurst Castles completed the set, the latter being the home of Vita Sackville-West who conceived the stunning gardens. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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Canterbury Cathedral<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Our last historic house was Knole. Because of the intense heat we had the house more or less to ourselves, giving us the opportunity to experience its fantastic Jacobean rooms, including two amazing bed chambers, a long gallery with numerous paintings and a bedroom with solid silver furniture.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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Knole<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Towards the end of the holiday, we thought back to Dover Castle and its key role in our history, as the site of an early Roman settlement when they came to our shores; featuring again after the Norman invasion of 1066; where in the 1790\u2019s tunnels were made to house troops preparing for invasion from Napoleonic France and, much later, these same tunnels were the nerve centre for organising the evacuation from Dunkirk in 1940. Kent is the gateway to Britain which we came to appreciate most clearly when we visited the Battle of Britain memorial honouring those young men who lost their lives in that same year. <\/strong>
A most moving experience.
Viviane Fairbank<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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The holiday group. Click to show actual size<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Many thanks to Louise Platt for organising another great holiday – supported and assisted as always by Tom.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Details and reviews of previous holidays are below. They are also available on the Archive page<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Northern Ireland 2025<\/strong><\/a>

Click the image to see the report<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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Northumbria 2024<\/a><\/strong>

Click on the image for report<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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Sussex<\/strong> 2023<\/strong><\/a>

Click to read more<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kent 2026 The Castles, Historic Houses & Heritage of Kent 51 of our members braved the June \u201cheat dome\u201d to make our five day holiday trip to Kent, entitled \u201cCastles, Historic Houses and Heritage of Kent\u201d As always the schedule was busy and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-8641","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/walsallntassn.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/walsallntassn.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/walsallntassn.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walsallntassn.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walsallntassn.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8641"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/walsallntassn.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9261,"href":"https:\/\/walsallntassn.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8641\/revisions\/9261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/walsallntassn.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}