Wednesday 26th September, 2018

After a basic breakfast at the B & B we drove up into Elham to the church, to look for any information on John's ancestors. 

There were some at the church, who showed us a photographic directory of gravestones in the churchyard.

 We were able to find 5 of the Stroud family graves recorded here.  There is a John Stroud who was buried in 1739 here !!!
We walked around the graveyard for quite sometime, but were not able to find the actual headstones, as time has made it impossible to read any of the inscriptions.

From here we drove to Canterbury Cathedral along some very small roads between hedgerows and were surprised to find ourselves following a Red Double Decker Bus going quite quickly.!!!!

Canterbury is a very large city, with a wall around the old city. 

After finally finding somewhere to park we walked to the Cathedral through the centre of the old town and cathedral district.
The Cathedral is undergoing renovations at present, but was a lot bigger and grander than we expected.  The Black Prince, who was the eldest son of King Edward III is buried here. 

There is also a shrine to Thomas Beckett at the actual spot where he was killed by for knights of Henry II in 1170. The architecture is English Gothic and quite amazing, and there are beautiful stained glass windows.








We drove from Canterbury to Margate and Ramsgate,

 hoping to find the church where my 3 Great Grandmother's children were christened.  Unfortunately, we couldn't find the church !!! some more research is obviously required !!!
We stopped in Ramsgate for a late lunch overlooking the Marina, which was really nice. 

There was a boat in the marina that had belonged to the most senior surviving officer of the Titanic.  During the 2nd World War, he used the boat to ferry 130 men from France back to Ramsgate during the evacuation from Dunkirk.

We drove from here to see the White Cliffs of Dover, which are amazing and huge, nothing like we have seen before.  We could actually see France from here :)

The cliffs were overlooking the Dover Ferry Terminal and we were amazed at the number of semi trailers being loaded onto the ferries and how often the ferries left and arrived.  From what we could tell it seemed to take about 1 hr for the crossing.

We went back to Elham and had dinner at the Rose & Crown, where we discovered that Audrey Hepburn had come from Elham and was known as little Audrey around the town.