{"id":2349,"date":"2013-08-01T11:21:32","date_gmt":"2013-08-01T10:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/?p=2349"},"modified":"2026-05-24T08:10:02","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T07:10:02","slug":"through-the-english-countryside-on-a-tiny-train","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/2013\/08\/01\/through-the-english-countryside-on-a-tiny-train\/","title":{"rendered":"Through The English Countryside On A Tiny Train"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rodney was disappointed that the 9:45am train wasn’t a steam engine, but the lady driver set a cracking pace along the 13.5\u00a0miles \/ 22 kilometres\u00a0of the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway, the smallest public railway in the world.\u00a0 We passed our campsite and a couple of farms, we crossed level crossings and waved to a small boy in a Batman outfit clinging to his back fence.\u00a0 We passed black faced sheep, some shorn so short that you could almost see their bones, then\u00a0a cricket pitch, allotments, farms, hedges covered in blackberry brambles and pink and creamy honeysuckle all\u00a0in full flower.\u00a0 While travelling on\u00a0the miniature railway, we even passed a miniature, miniature railway in someone’s back garden.\u00a0 It was all so wonderfully English.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"No,
No, I’m not a giant, it’s a very little train<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

At Romney New Sands station a steam train passed us going in the opposite direction and everybody waved; not just the children.\u00a0 We travelled across the Romney Marshes and out to Dungeness a rather remote corner of Kent with fishermens’ cottages scattered over an area of shingle beach and weeds.\u00a0 At the end of the line, just past the pub, is an enormous nuclear power station staring out to sea and not looking particularly appealing.\u00a0\u00a0 Being a bit short on time, we stayed on the train for the return journey to Hythe, rather than wait an hour for the next one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Dungeness\"
Dungeness<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Apparently we reached a top speed of 22mph \/35kmph and it felt pretty fast sitting in such a tiny carriage.\u00a0 On the return journey we shared our carriage with eight very noisy, middle aged women who were reliving their childhood, whilst celebrating a fiftieth birthday for one of them.\u00a0 It was hilarious and we were all “woo wooing” as we passed every level crossing and waved to everyone along the tracks.\u00a0 All in all, it was a fabulously fun way to spend a sunny\u00a0Thursday morning in England.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Steam
Steam train passing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

When we got back to Hythe, we picked up Eileen (no not literally) and drove across to Rye.\u00a0 We had been there before with Rodney’s brother, Rupert, and we only had good, though vague, memories of the place; perhaps there had been too much chatting going on at the time.\u00a0 Rye really is a lovely town and we were glad we did pop in, but we couldn’t stay long as we had to be at my Auntie Susan’s at 5pm, so we only had a short wander about and refreshed ourselves with a statutory ice cream.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Ypres
Ypres Tower at Rye<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, as we drove west towards Seaford, listening to the dreadful traffic reports all over the country, we got stuck ourselves in a traffic jam in\u00a0Hastings.\u00a0 After hardly moving for half an hour and phoning my Uncle Tom to warn him he we would likely be late, we struck north up to Battle (1066 and all that).\u00a0 We ended up taking a rather circuitous route, but somehow ended up only being about twenty minutes late; thank goodness for a good map!\u00a0 We had a lovely meal and six hours of endless chatting before sleeping indoors for the first time in fifteen and a half weeks!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Rye\"
Rye<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

And now that we’re in England, we really won’t be doing much in the way of touristy things, so there won’t be many photos or interesting stuff to write about.\u00a0 We’ll be catching up on visits with family and friends all over southern England, plus catching up on all the things that don’t get done when we’re travelling.\u00a0 So we’ll take a break here and resume normal service when we get back on the road again in Eileen.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Dreaming
Dreaming of Riomaggiore<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rodney was disappointed that the 9:45am train wasn’t a steam engine, but the lady driver set a cracking pace along the 13.5\u00a0miles \/ 22 kilometres\u00a0of the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway, the smallest public railway in the world.\u00a0 We passed our campsite and a couple of farms, we crossed level crossings and waved to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-on-the-road-in-great-britain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8371,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2349\/revisions\/8371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}