Here at Qype towers we like to get our hands dirty and when we discovered that the winner of Place of Interest of the Year at the Qype Business Awards was Chislehurst Caves, well we had to go and take a look first hand as well as deliver the award to Terry the cave manager (such an awesome job title).

Throughout the tour he told us the history of the caves, hand carved by the Druids, Romans and Saxons and more recently used as a munitions storage for Woolwich Arsenal (slightly scary thought for those living above them), mushroom growing and an air-raid shelter for up to 15,000 people at the height of the blitz.

Not to mention the concerts; rock royalty including Jimi Hendrix, The Who, the Rolling Stones, and my Uncle Dan have all played in the caves….and then there are the ghosts…

…hundreds of stories scatter the caves, from human sacrifice to haunted pools, I’m getting shudders just thinking about them, and as you walk along, you can’t help casting your eye behind you…just in case.

The most chilling part of the tour was when Jason took away our paraffin lamps and left us in the pitch black, alone with the echoes, then suddenly, piercing through the tunnels comes…ah, I can’t give that away, you’ll have to find out for yourselves.

I love these caves, on every tour I’ve been on I leant something new. I know it might seem that they’re a trek into the deepest darkest corners of Kent, but the reality is that they’re 30 mins on the train from London Bridge and less than a 5 min walk from Chislehurst station.

A truly deserving winner of Place of Interest of the Year and a fantastic experience!