Oh the unbridled excitement of living in Kent

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Eichhornchen

The Kentish Rifleman in Plaxtol

The Bakers in Plaxtol was also pretty top notch, Mum used to get me a sweet or two from them from time to time. We spent a lot of time in Plaxtol, we had a friend who lived there, and we also kept our horses in a paddock there next to the home of Air Chief Marshall Hodges:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Hodges

A lovely gentleman he was.

I remember a day...it must have been in the early 1990s, probably somewhere between 1990-1991, a rather hefty thunderstorm developed not far from Maidstone and moved across Plaxtol. We were driving in the Land Rover to Plaxtol to check on the ponies, and it absolutely hammered down with rain, and some hefty crashes of thunder, one of which was when a nearby barn was hit and collapsed around the ears of two blokes who were taking shelter in it! After navigating our way around two blocked roads (landslides) we made it into Plaxtol and the water there must have been about a foot or two deep in places, the manhole covers were off, our friends cars had been moved by the water, and the fish from her pond (including some rather expensive Koi Carp) had made their escape, never to be seen again.
It would be nearly three decades before I'd see another storm that was as fierce. It was quite some excitement for a seven year old!