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Published: October 9th 2007
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Last night we were still up at 10pm and it promptly started to pour down with rain. We were expecting it to rain all night, but it stopped after 30 minutes. It got very humid while it was raining.
We got up the next morning and there were puddles everywhere. We headed of early to get to Alnwick Castle and arrived just before the 9.30 opening time in my Lonely Planet Guide. The sign out the front said the new opening hours were 10am. We sat in the car listening to the radio and heard a news report that people should be on the look out for a dummy bomb that was accidentally dropped over Northumberland yesterday afternoon by a fighter jet !
We headed in to the garden display at the Castle. The water feature alone is awesome. There was also little ride-on toy tractors which monopolised most of the kids time. There is also the poison garden that features at some point in Harry Potter and we got to here about the Mandrake plant which features in Harry Potter, and that actually exists. Although the staff claim that no one is game to pull them out of
the ground in case they really do scream ! Next we looked around the very ornamental gardens. They are seriously in to Espaliering their trees over here. There was so many Crab Apple Trees growing, I bet Tanya they had Crab Apple Jam on sale in the ever present Gift Shops, that all these places have. They never have just one !
There is a massive Tree house as part of the display. While the kids and Tanya headed over to that, I walked the few minutes in to the town to buy lunch. In the main street I found a Grocery Store run by the Turnbull’s, who are probably related somehow. I found the Fish and Chip shop which I had promised the kids, got 3 serves of Fish and Chips and headed back to the kids. The 3 serves was enough for us all, and then we headed off to Castle Howard. Once onto the motorway back in England, you notice that there is a lot more traffic and everyone is in more of a hurry. I still can not work out some of the drivers. Some of them flash their headlights when you pull in to
their lane, and some times I am sure it is them giving you permission, but other times, even though they may be miles behind you, I am sure they are telling you to P155 off.
Castle Howard was a little over 2 hours south of Alnwick. We wanted to get there with enough time to check the place out before closing at 4.30pm. We passed through Thirsk, which was the home of James Herriot. We didn’t stop, because the kids have been desperate to get to Garfield’s House. We arrived just before 3pm. The kids looked at the outside and decided, once again, dad had taken them to the wrong place, this is not “Carlisle Castle”. We were at the right place, just you enter through the old Stables. Even before you get in the place, you check out the massive Obelisk and the grounds, and you can see this place is screaming of, “Look at Me”. The place is ostentatious, over the top and ridiculously amazing. We toured the 10 odd rooms that are available to the public, of the 100 plus rooms that exist. The place is crammed with paintings by old masters, paintings of Stuart Kings,
Marble sculptures from Rome which the Pope in the early 1800’s decided to throw out, so the family bought them, and Egyptian artefacts. I was chatting with an American Tourist, and we debated whether the rest of the other 90 plus rooms were just as crammed with all this stuff, or whether we were seeing all of the good stuff.
The gardens are equally impressive, and we walked the toned down formal garden around the massive Pond with the huge statue of Atlas. The garden is not as formal as the old garden, which the 9th Earl’s wife reduced in formality, to reduce the huge running cost of tending it. Even in its present state, it looked like the gardeners had been pruning the hedges for a couple of weeks and still weren’t done. Then they would have to move on to the roses.
We left the house at 4.30pm and headed in to the café for a coffee and hot chocolate as the kids had been so good ?
Then off to Riverbank Caravan Park, just south of York and a short, 2 mile walk or bus ride to York. Very Rustic, and not quite what
we expected, but mid range, based on previous experiences. It is obviously very popular for boaties to camp here and run up and done the river around York. The kids fed the ducks and ran around the playground until 7. Then dinner and bed.
PS. After finishing this last night, the kids rated it the worst campsite ever, but I think they have short memories. I have come to the realisation that the percentage rating system in our AA book has no idea what it is on about. The best measure of a camps potential is 1/ How many pitches it has, 2/ If it is on a farm, good chance you are just in the apple-tree paddock, 3/ If it has a pub/bar/restaurant on site that always helps (a lot).
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