Walmer Castle and the Cinque Ports

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Summary

The historic pleasure gardens at Walmer Castle in Kent have been dramatically brought back to life thanks to a £2.3m restoration project funded by English Heritage, and they form the centrepiece of this new tour which also visits the ‘Cinque Ports’ of Hastings, Sandwich, Hythe, Dover, and Romney.

We begin at the quintessential English garden of Pashley Manor on the Kent/Sussex border and continue to Hastings to see the ruins of William the Conqueror’s castle. We visit the Salutation Garden near Sandwich and explore this, one of the best preserved medieval towns in the UK, before moving on to Walmer. A trip on the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway ticks off the third and fourth of our historic ports, and is shortly followed by the fifth as we tour Dover Castle, one of the most impressive of all English fortresses, which has witnessed centuries of history unfold before it.

A visit to Smallhythe Place, actress Helen Terry’s 16th century cottage and rose garden, rounds of our journey through the Garden of England and the Cinque Ports.