I loved being able to read other people’s trip reports and found them so helpful, so I wanted to share my own of Southeast England. We did a big loop and visited Canterbury, Dover, Seven Sisters Cliffs, Arundel, Portsmouth, and London.
We are a husband and wife with 3 children: 8 years old, 5 years old, and 21 months. We absolutely loved our trip and thought it was well paced and well planned (for a young family).
Day 1: We landed at Gatwick at 10am from an overnight flight from the East coast. We got our rental car from the airport, drove 10 minutes to the town of Crawley to get a quick lunch, then headed over to Hever Castle, about a 30 minute drive. We spent the rest of the afternoon there, and absolutely loved this place. Even some rain didn’t ruin our enjoyment of the castle and grounds. I had originally planned to spend a night there, and my maybe one regret of the entire trip was nixing that night. The reason we did is because they have a very early checkout time and breakfast that’s included in the rate, and because it was our first day adjusting to the new time zone, we knew it’d be a struggle to basically eat breakfast and go at 3am our time. I would like to come back here another time and stay, except make it the last location of the trip, so we’re already adjusted to the time change. After the castle closed, we ended up driving an hour to Maidstone to a rented apartment, just a place to cut the drive to Leeds Castle the next day.
Day 2: We woke up and drove 10 minutes to Leeds Castle. We enjoyed Leeds Castle very much, though Hever Castle is definitely the more interesting of the two. We liked the grounds and the kids loved the playground and aviary. By the way: a few people had said to take the train from the gatehouse to avoid a 20 minute walk on “hard paths.” I am so glad we did NOT do this. The walk to the castle is very pleasant and the kids enjoyed all the sculptures and ducks and things along the way. Do not take the train! Once Leeds Castle closed at 5, we drove to Canterbury, about one hour. We ate dinner at the Goodshed (SO GOOD!) and settled into our airbnb in Canterbury.
Day 3: We visited Canterbury Cathedral, St. Augustine’s Abbey Ruins, and St. Martin’s Church. We had planned to visit Eastbridge Hospital but it was closed to the public at that time for an undisclosed reason. It was easy for us to see the cathedral, ruins, and St. Martin’s in one day, and we liked exploring Canterbury, walking inside the city walls and also walking along the river and in the parks. We ate dinner at Cafe De Amis which was excellent, then slept in our airbnb in Canterbury.
Day 4: We drove a half hour to Dover Castle and spent the whole day there. We really, really loved Dover Castle. It is certainly worth getting all the way “over” to the East side of England for it. We actually thought the WWII tunnels were underwhelming (especially having seen the Churchill War Rooms in London, which is such a richly detailed experience by contrast), but the rest of it was fantastic. The grounds are just great to walk around and be at, and there’s a lookout where you can see a great view of the White Cliffs of Dover, which was a bonus, since I had read that you can’t really see them from land there. This day we packed a picnic, and I'm so glad we did, because we loved eating at their picnic tables. Great views, and plenty of space. We drove 30 minutes back to Canterbury to sleep.
[continued in comments]