This morning we packed up and started heading south again. Our first stop, an hour a way, was Bury St Edmunds. This turned out to be a pleasant mid-sized town with some sort of market running in the narrow high street. We mainly walked around the medieval abbey ruins and somewhat-more-recent St Edmundbury Cathedral.
Our next stop was just on the outskirts of Bury - another stately home. Ickworth is set in enormous gardens and it's an odd, neo-classical style with a huge cupola in the central building and then curving corridors to each wing. The upper floors were well-maintained and full of paintings. The lower level was an interesting re-creation of the servants' area.
From there we drove down to London, back across the Dartford Crossing, to the Bluewater shopping centre. We were there a couple of hours, in Marks and Spencer and having something to eat. The the final our or so through Kent to reach Herne Bay in the early evening.
