Not the Dickens Christmas Market

What seemed like a good idea, turned into a four hour round trip in the car, with the only stop a Tesco Extra in Rainham. The Dickens Christmas Market in Rochester was what we had intended to visit, and we really should have turned around when we hit the queue just off of the motorway. But we persevered, only to find that we had to drive straight through Rochester as it was heaving! There were police directing the traffic and we could see a huge crowd in the High Street. I caught a glimpse of a Dickensian looking top hat and then we were off! We just kept on going, as we didn't want to queue all the way back through Rochester. We saw some very interesting buildings up on the hill in Chatham. We kept going and ended up having a drive through some tiny and very pretty country lanes. We saw sheep, horses, wild birds and men on a shoot. We saw glimpses of the river Medway in the distance looking steely blue, and we drove past the most amazing house with an orchard in the front garden. No photos though as we didn't stop. The Tesco Extra on the way back to the motorway was where we eventually did stop. We needed to do our Saturday shopping and thought we might as well do it here. I do like to visit an unfamiliar, out of town supermarket every so often.

This strange sign in the carpark, like a water tower, was what we followed. Very useful.

The industrial ceiling of the cafe where we had a very tasty Christmas dinner type meal.

Comfort baking was called for. Blueberry muffins. Very tasty!

The day turned out ok considering it was not what we wanted to do, but I couldn't help feeling a little cheated!