Lucy's Barn

If the birdsong on the site gives you a taste to see things wild and feathered, the Sevenoaks Wildlife Reserve (20 minutes' drive) is the spot for communing with the kingfishers and hailing the herons, throughout a spread of lakes, ponds, pools and reed beds. Wilder still, Howlett's Wild Animal Park an hour away has gorillas and leopards, moneys and the largest herd of elephants in the UK. To get into Kent's history, you could start way way back with the Neolithic long barrow at Addington (15 minutes), then carry on to Knole Castle (half an hour) to see a 600-year-old building still looking pretty fine in its 1,000-acre deer park setting. For a trip not quite so far back in time, take an hour's drive to New Romney for the start of the famed Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway whose steam engines will puff you pleasantly through the marshlands down to Dungeness. The deserted beach there is well worth a look and a photo opp; the sands at Folkestone (an hour) are far livelier while the Kent Battle of Britain Museum reminds you how this friendly coast was once a strategic frontier. A similar distance from the site, Canterbury took some hits in the war but its 14th-century cathedral (on the site of a sixth-century one) still makes for a fine visit, as do the little lanes in the surrounding old town.