Castle hunting...

Although I'm not sure it counts as castle *hunting* per se if you already know where you're heading. After some intense work, RJ decided that he wanted to check out Castle Rising (http://www.castlerising.co.uk/thecastle.html). Sounded like a day not unpacking to me, so I was all for it. So off we went this morning. When we left the house it was a beautiful sunny day in the Midlands. A little crisp, a little breezy, but generally very nice. Perfect castle hunting weather. Off we went, snacks in the car for little miss, layers of clothing just in case, and a GPS loaded with the correct (double checked) post code.

And an hour later we drove into this. It was windy, it was cold. it was hailing and raining and generally miserable. It was both exactly what we didn't want for tramping around a bunch of old rocks with a two year old and just about exactly what one expects in northern(ish) England in late October. We were almost an hour invested in the trip and only 10 minutes away by GPS, so of course we pressed on.

Ta da! A castle! Oh, wait, not so much. That's the name of the village. The castle is actually called Castle Rising Castle. Confusing? Oh well. Whatever works. When your village has been around as long as this one has, who's going to argue about a silly name? I'm still not sure which came first, the castle or the village name.

Aha! A castle! For real this time! There is it, just peeking over the earthworks. The massive earthworks. 120 feet at the highest point. Massive! Impressive! So glad I didn't have to dig that particular hole. Also glad I never had to storm this particular castle. Particularly with arrows and other nasties raining down on me. Not my idea of a fun day! I'll take intermittent hail over arrows any day!

Here I am with a very sleepy and not particularly happy Maggie at the main gate to the castle. Maggie perked up a bit once we got inside, and was giggling crazily by the time we hit the second floor. Apparently she gets as much of a kick out of these things as her parents. Excellent!

And here she is in all her glory. Built around 1138 by William d'Albini shortly after marrying King Henry I's widow. The castle later became home to Queen Isabella, mother of King Edward III, shortly after she helped murder her husband, King Edward II. After Isabella died the castle was eventually used as a hunting lodge by the Black Prince. Talk about an awesome "lodge". Must be nice to be royalty. Anyway, Prince Edward did a bunch of restorations, including turning some of the battlements into enclosed rooms. Eventually, in 1544 the castle passed to the Howard family, who still own it today. In fact, the current Lord Howard is a direct descendant of William d'Albini, still has a home in Castle Rising (when he's not sitting in the house of lords or otherwise being a lord of the realm...interesting fellow. Google him. It's an interesting read. 3 wives! Yikes!), and still flies his arms from the battlements (sadly the banner was having tangling issues and won't be fixed until Monday so we couldn't get any good pictures). All in all, the castle has had an interesting history. There's some mention of housing a mental patient in the 18th century, but I haven't tracked down any more details on that yet. Interesting, and look how pretty!

The main door. It's gorgeous! Think they'd notice it missing?

And from the other side with Maggie and I for scale. I'm not short. It's a big door.

And here we are in the basement. The original great hall was above this before the floor collapsed in the 16th century. Big basement. Lots of storage. I'm envious.

The other half of the basement. I'm standing beside the castle well. The great hall floor would have been level with the bridge/walk above me. Again with the scale. Lots and lots of storage space, Which makes sense when you consider they might have had to store enough food for a lengthy siege. Those earthworks are awesome, but they can still be surrounded.

I really like these hinges. A lot. I wonder if any of my wonderful blacksmith friends could recreate them? Hmm....

It's hard to see here, but each one of those rocks is carved with a different coat of arms. Heck, they're old enough that it's hard to see them in person. The picture does not do this justice.

As usual I'm in the kitchen. Well, the servant's door into the now-floorless great hall. At least, we think it was the servants door. It also leads to the gardrobes, which are just past the kitchen.

A random face. There are 3 of them. Added in the 14th century if memory serves.

This is the view from the "new" room added by the Black Prince where the battlements once were. Great view of the front gate. Perfect for defense. Still gray out there, but not as bad as before. Crazy wind, though.

Interesting bit about the minting of royal coins. William was apparently loyal to Stephen. In fact, he helped broker a truce between Stephen and Henry Plantagenet. Also an interesting guy. Again, google him. He was also called William d'Aubigny. Stephen was pretty interesting as well. That or I'm really just that much of a geek.

More rebellions, this time a tad later.

And then we had to go down. Carrying a toddler. For 4 flights. It was slow. Maggie thought it was great!

One of many arrow loopholes. Many, many, many of them.

The side of the keep, which is the largest in England. The low walls in the foreground are the remains of a 14th century chapel. On the other side of the keep are the remains of a much earlier Norman church that predates the keep itself by about a hundred years. It was the first parish church of Castle Rising (they think). There was also, apparently, a wooden building where the keep stands now that dates to about the same time as the Normal church. Apparently there is some speculation that it was monastic in nature. Always talk to the staff in the souvenir shop. Sometimes they know nothing. But others they are a wealth of information. I got lucky today. The woman was great!

\

I found this at the base of a tree. It reads "Planted by HRH The Princess of Wales Dec. 27th, 1866". The princess in question is Alexandra of Denmark, married to Prince Albert Edward, son of Queen Victoria. Apparently random boulders are interesting here.

Then we headed into the village itself at the suggestion of the helpful shop lady. I found sheep. RJ rolled his eyes, I think. There were 4 of them. Maggie was impressed.

We also found the church, built around the same time as the keep to replace the old Norman construction inside the earthworks as the parish church. We didn't go in as it seemed rather closed up (the sign stating that it was closed was a bit of a giveaway). So we admired the outside.

I love the cross. There is one on each of the four arms extended from the center part of the church.

The little bird on the headstone seemed somehow poignant.

This is across from the old pub (which dates to some time in the 17th century). It reads "Erected by the people of Castle Rising as a memorial to the Great War 1914-1919"

The plaque above is on this street light.

It's old! Really, really old! And how incredibly cool is that?

We found this crest in a few different places. It's the Howard family crest, which makes some sort of sense since the Howard family has owned the castle and various lands around it since 1544. I wonder what it feels like to walk down the street to the pub and know that the old crest carved randomly into the fence is yours? Or do Lords of the realm (and a Baron at that!) walk to the pub?

There you have it. Our castle hunting expedition was, in fact, successful.  I promise not every post will be this picture-laden. Nor will I bore you for 3-4 years with nothing but history. Much. Okay, I might, but isn't this much  more interesting than me moaning about trying to build IKEA furniture in a house with ceilings that are too low? Tomorrow is grocery shopping. I'll spare you the details unless something interesting happens. Next weekend? Who knows. We did pass a very interesting sign stating that there was something relating to the bronze age down one of the roads we didn't take. We might just have to investigate.

Until then!

But where does it lead?

Today Miss Maggie and I decided to take a bit of a walk to see where the road outside the house leads. After watching the UPS truck I was waiting for go zipping by the house up the path never to return (well, okay, he came back 4 hours later at the end of  his run.) I was curious as to where it goes. I thought it just ended in a field and that was that. Apparently not. So we explored as far as little legs and a short attention span could handle.

This is the end of the path where it comes by the house and heads into the village.

And this is what it looks like if we turn left out of our driveway. Wherever does it go? Hmm...

Wherever it goes, it's lined with blackberries (I think? Correct me I'm wrong...). There's still a tonne of fruit on the bushes, too. I'll have to look into the legalities of me picking berries along a public bridlepath. If I'm allowed, and if these berries really are what I think they are, I see lots of blackberry preserves and pies in my future. Mmm...

I also found lots of these guys. They look like either really tiny plums or really huge blueberries. My money's on plums since they grow on trees rather than bushes. I really must pick the landlady's brain about the flora around here. Apparently she's something of a plant expert and loves to share her knowledge. Could be fun!

Maggie's first taste of rural England. She seemed fascinated by it all. Best of all, however, were all the puddles to jump in. What fun!

This is where the road comes out. It carries on past the fields, but it looked like a long walk for little legs so we stopped here. The field to the left apparently belongs to our landlady. It's dotted with various types of apple trees the we have permission to harvest. Hmmm...apple and blackberry pies?

This is where we stopped. In the not so far distance I could just make out the lights that I think mark the perimeter of the base. It's the right direction and about the right distance. I wonder if the road goes that far? We may have to take the car and go exploring. If it's really close I see more car access in my future as hubby will be riding his bike.

Not sure which village that is in the distance. Just shows how close everything is here, though.

I have no idea what these are. Any ideas? They look sort of like rosehips but they're elongated and definitely not on rose bushes. We do have huge rosehips on some of the plants just on the edge of our back garden. They're on the road side so the gardiner hasn't pruned them back yet. Yet another thing I might be harvesting  if I'm allowed.

And here we are back in our parking area. You can see the back field with some of the apple trees we have access to. I have no idea how many varieties there are back there. Should be interesting!

That was this morning's mini excursion. More to follow as I steal time from unpacking to go wandering with Maggie.

We're here! And a bit of shopping.

Maggie and I have arrived! The little one fell asleep on the plane shortly after they cleared up the dinner remnants (she ate about half the chocolate cake...and nothing else). Fortunately she slept all the way through until we started landing. I, of course, was wide awake the whole way despite my best efforts. Customs was a breeze, the porters took pity on me almost as soon as we hit baggage claim, and we were through the airport in record time (time from plane to seeing Daddy: roughly 30 minutes). After a quick pub lunch and some not so quick paperwork in London we hit the road north to our new home.

The view of our parking area from the back door.

 The front of the house (most of it) from the street.

The view from one of the lounges (there are 2!!) through the rather dirty window.

Interior pictures will come later...once the boxes are gone and we actually have furniture in all the rooms. We kinda upsized from our last house.

The first night here we went down to the pub to have dinner. I think RJ wanted to prove to the owners that Maggie and I actually exist. Apparently after a month of his saying that we'd be there any day they stopped believing him. Go figure. So we had a lovely dinner (mmm....lambchops with homemade mint sauce. It was right out of one of my medieval cook books), Maggie made friends with the pub's dog and half the town (some sort of billiards tournament was happening), and at some point managed to faceplant and bloody her nose. 2 years old and she already knows how to walk out of a pub looking like she's been in a fight. What a good kid! Food was great, beer was (unsurprisingly) tasty, the ambiance was perfect, and Maggie and I were quickly fading. So home we went to sleep.

Yesterday we rested. And set up the phone, internet, computers, and TV. Looks like lounge 1 will be the multimedia room (read: TV and computer) and lounge 2 will be the library (read: all the books will be crammed in there). Now to get furniture to make that actually happen. We currently have a rocking chair (that really belongs in Maggie's room) and a computer chair to sit on. Seating is a little sparse...

Today we shopped! Sounds much grander than it was. We went into the nearest town of note (about 20 minutes away) to go grocery shopping. What a wonderful experience, hampered by a toddler that really needed a nap and so couldn't decide if she wanted to be carried, sit in the cart, or run everywhere. Fun times! I'm sure there will be lots of further posts about the treasures to be found in the grocery stores here. For now, the only thing of real note, besides an extensive and inexpensive variety of alcoholic bevvies, is the Dandelion and Burdoch pop.

It tastes like a less sweet blend of cream soda and root beer with a lovely black liquorice after taste. It's weird...but oddly tasty. It'll be even better once it's cold, I think. I couldn't wait to try it when we got home.

Anyway, that's all for now. I promise this won't be all about groceries and babies bloodying their noses. Let me get over the jet lag and get the boxes unpacked and things will pick up. Promise!

And so it begins!

Many of my friends have been bugging me to start a blog outlining the family's adventures in the UK. I hemmed and hawed and thought it might be a good idea. And then I forgot about it in the midst of all the chaos associated with moving. Until now. So here I sit, killing time before leaving for the airport with Maggie, trying to figure out what tone to set for this. So far I think I'm going with rambling...

A little background (for those that don't know). I am a Canadian military spouse heading off to the UK for 3 years (maybe more?) with my husband (RJ) and 2 year old daughter (Maggie). We will be living in a 400 year old farmhouse in a tiny village that boasts a church, an inn, and a recycling facility. Boring? Only if we let it be, and I'm too stubborn for all that! RJ is there already (has been for a month...a saga not worth getting into). Maggie and I are heading to the airport in a couple hours.

Let the adventures begin!