Charlie's Worldcastles castles and more castles (part 1)
Posted on April 18, 2010
The thing about England (and the rest of the UK come to that) is that almost everybody lives in a castle.
There are simply millions of the things scattered about the country that if you don’t live in one, you live next door to one or a pile of stones that used to be one. I’m not even kidding – where I grew up in Kent, where my parents still live, there are probably 30 castles within 20 minutes drive of their house. There’s even a handful of Roman Villas, an old (now ruined) Palace (one of the biggest in the country in its day) and a bunch of pre-historic remains.
Kids love castles – they come with tales of knights, dragons, torture, kings, princesses, behead-ings, dungeons and, of course, garderobes (toilets that empty poos into the moat)
So we went to see some of the local ones.
First up – Leeds Castle. Not near Leeds, West Yorkshire, but Leeds in Kent. Its one of the prettiest best preserved castles anywhere, set in a large parkland with a fairytale moat and stories of King Henry VIII, plus it has a massive maze and lots of things for kids to do.
Sadly, it was frickin’ freezing and miserable on that day, but we kinda wrapped up (not enough though) and just went for it.
There were also (as is customary in these places) lots of peacocks.
tall tales from the motherland
Posted on April 9, 2010
So, as my one regular reader will know, I’m back in England for 10 days to see my beautiful children.
I’ve had a great week so far, starting with breakfast at Pat and Nicky’s straight out of Heathrow. They weren’t up when I got there, but Nicky and Anna (their cute very nearly 4 year old) soon answered the door and made me coffee and breakfast 🙂
Had the best day with them, taking photos and catching up on the last 18 months since I left for Oz. I really didn’t want to leave, but I still had to drive to my mum and dad’s place, go food shopping and get some rest before the long drive the next day.
Went to collect the kids the next day, also took Henry’s presents round so he could open them and play a little before we had to drive the 2 hours back to my parents place. Ella has grown loads (again) and Henry is cheekier than ever!
Drove back to Kent after a nasty road rage incident which I wont go into here, but I did notify the police for them to follow up. There are some advantages to being a photographer – I had the camera on the front seat and caught the guy raging away as he tried to run me off the motorway – he very was shocked to see a camera pointed at him – I suspect the penny was dropping that he was in deep shit. Arseholes that threaten the safety of my kids deserve everything the law has to offer. I still have no idea what his problem was either. Ah well.
Anyway..
Easter Sunday was spent at my youngest sister’s house with her kids and also my middle sister and her 3 kids. Mental doesn’t even cover it. Ella was very quiet as she was still very poorly from the virus she’d had for a week but we all had a good time. I ordered a mahooosive egg for everyone to tuck into
Had a great time, pics from Sunday and more tales tomorrow 🙂
Charlie's World 