Greetings! I thought Id write a blog entry about a lovely day trip I did from London. I had not long arrived home after an amazing trip to New England USA, when my travel feet continued to itch and I was ready to do a bit more exploring again. This time I planned a little trip Id been thinking about for a while now, ever since I watched the film Pocahontas when it came out in the 1990s really, but my plans developed more recently to include some really quite lovely places nearby. It was a Saturday trip on a Bank Holiday weekend to take in the lovely town of Gravesend on the southern bank of the River Thames in Kent, and then a short ferry ride just across the River Thames onto its northern bank, to take in the smaller town of Tilbury in Essex on the opposite shore.
After having just returned from New England, I was filled with wonderful visions of pilgrims and settlers travelling westwards across the Atlantic Ocean from English shores, bound for new lives in a wild, rugged and adventurous country. My mind reverted to the Disney film Pocahontas which I
had watched as a teenager when it first came out, and very much enjoyed, and after researching more about this Native American princess, I found she had returned to England not long after meeting and marrying Englishman John Rolfe (not in fact John Smith as depicted in the cartoon film), and lived out the rest of her short days in both London and Norfolk, until only a year after arriving in the country, she planned to return with Rolfe to the Americas whence she came, but became gravely ill shortly after leaving London and died after she was taken ashore at nearby Gravesend. Her remains are in fact buried in the grounds of St Georges Church in the town, and are marked by a bronze memorial statue dedicated to her. My recent American adventures beckoned me to at last visit this place, and thus on the morning of this weekend day a couple of weeks after my own return from America, I headed eastwards to visit it, and a few other places besides.
My journey to Gravesend was pleasant, taking first a train from East Croydon to London Bridge, and then from there a direct train eastwards taking
around 50 minutes to reach Gravesend. Upon arrival, I enjoyed a late breakfast of one of my favourite English delicacies: a sausage bap with brown sauce from a local English caff, the classic English eatery known to some as a Greasy Spoon Cafe, and enjoyed it with a morning coffee on a bench in the middle of town. Duly fuelled, I headed through the very English streets of this lovely little Kentish town of around 75,000 inhabitants, decked out at the time with lots of Union Jacks and reds, whites and blues, presumably in advance of our Queens Platinum Jubilee celebrations, or otherwise simply up there showing the towns pride in being British - great stuff I thought!
I headed first to St Georges Church, and admired the lovely statue of Pocahontas in the midst of its grounds there. Upon asking a groundsman, it turns out that the American Indian princesss remains are located somewhere within the grounds, though the exact location is unknown. It seems this was due to the rebuilding of the church and its grounds in 1731, and now the exact location of any of the remains are unknown. Still, I liked the way the
town paid tribute to this influential figure in early relations, and peacefully contemplated the poor girls short life whilst there. After Christian, marrying John Rolfe in 1614, and having their son Thomas in Virginia in 1615, it was decided in 1616 that the family return to England as an example of the taming of the New World savage, and to encourage further development in the Virginia Companys newfound settlement there. Rolfe and Pocahontas met several notable people back in England, including King James himself - she was treated very much like a princess of the New World.
