On Feb 12, 2006, at 10:05 AM, Bob W wrote:
Rochester may be dreary, but you're on the way to the North Kent
Marshes,
which are a spectacular wetland/salt marsh habitat, and the setting
of the
opening scene of Great Expectations when Pip meets Magwitch in the
graveyard
at Cooling.
It's very beautiful, and very important in historical and literary
terms -
it may be the setting for much of Beowulf, and was certainly one of
the
points where the Angles & Saxons first came to this country. So of
course
the government naturally wanted to put an airport there.
Fortunately I think
they were defeated on that one.
One of my photographic trips to Kent took me to Cooling Castle, where
I did a series of photos of Karen Boyle, a Jamaican model who was
living in London. Cooling Castle is six miles north of Rochester
right in the country you're talking about, and a great place for
photo shoots. The current owners rent it out for weddings and other
occasions.
http://www.bobshell.com/bss/karenb7.JPG
http://www.bobshell.com/bss/CASTLE14A.jpg
http://www.ecastles.co.uk/cooling.html
http://www.coolingcastlebarn.com/
Bob
