For those readers who are familiar with London, especially the Camden area, you might initially suspect that this post is about a trip to the bohemian part of the city. I am afraid you are incorrect - this post is about a day trip to a real town in the county of Kent: the Royal Tunbridge Wells (referred to hereinafter as RTB for the sake of fast typing, or laziness). This trip was brought about by one of many departures (short and long term) in the office in the past couple of weeks, but perhaps this particular departure brought about a serendipitous trip outside of London...
In the last week of May, one of my colleagues went off for a mini Euro trip across France, Holland and Germany; I cannot comment much on this for, to date, I have not seen the guy (though he is back to the UK but clearly taking his time to resume with his appearances at Imperial). Another one of my colleagues went off for a weekend in Riga, which I heard a lot about and I would say, diplomatically, that such a trip is not exactly my cup of tea. Yet another colleague took the Eurostar to Brussels for a weekend in the first week of June and all I know for sure about this trip is that his mobile phone ended up at the bottom of a swan-infested lake. Finally, another colleague of mine was about to head off to Valencia for 3 months on a research placement and thus, before she departed, she invited a group of friends over for a BBQ at her house in Kent, precisely in RTB.
My wife and I promptly booked tickets for RTB as soon as we received the invite and decided to go "slightly" earlier than the given time to wander around the town. And so we did. And on that particular weekend, I had to prepare my suitcase for my own departure, precisely on the next day! The packing was done and dusted in no time, mainly due to the assistance of my wife and also due to my frequent travelling which has made me an expert of short-term packing. Back to RTB. The trip was pleasant - just under an hour and amidst countryside and blessed with sunshine. We soon found out that RTB is not as flat as London but is rather hilly, which at first was exciting but then proved to be stressful in the unusually hot and sunny weather!
RTB is a little town which has nothing of the hustle and bustle which dominates London but has plenty of English charm that I find very relieving given that London tends to get so busy most of the time. The Pantiles area and the spring were particularly interesting and (needless to say) merited a generous number of photo taking. Wandering around the town centre, shopping areas and various parks brought the morning/early afternoon to an end and then off for the BBQ, which was the main motivator behind the trip to RTB!
Of course, I love BBQs and this one in particular even more since I could sit for the entirety of the do and not bother with grilling stuff as I usually end up doing in most BBQs back home; it is somewhat taken for granted in Malta that the men are "in charge" of BBQing. Consumption of meat, bread, sangria, cheeses and cake made it extremely hard to leave my seat and the fact that it was virtually still broad daylight at 8pm did not motivate me much further to leave! Alas, around 9pm, I had to bid my friend farewell before her departure to Valencia and my own departure to Budapest in 15 hours' time! But that is another story...
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