Wednesday 26 August 2015

Windsor Castle

We arrived in Windsor late yesterday afternoon and had only just got settled when the mooring warden came calling for his £8. When you consider how much it would have cost for us to stay in a hotel I reckon that's a bargain.

It was raining a bit this morning when we set off to go to the castle, but by the time we got there it was an absolute deluge and as we got inside the grounds the deluge changed to a thunder storm. It was so bad that they had to cancel the guided tours of the tower in case of lightening strike.






I felt sorry for this poor young member of the Queen's Guard. It was absolutely tipping it down and while he was nice and dry in his guard box the rain didn't stop people wanting to have their photos taken with him and several young girls were trying their hardest to get him to react to them. I suppose he must be used to it as he never batted an eyelid at their antics.


The state rooms were rammed with soggy tourists and we were half way round with only 10 minutes to go until we needed to be at the meeting point for the tour round the grand kitchens that we'd booked. I asked one of the guides which would be the fastest route out, but he said it would take us at least 20 minutes as it was so busy. When I explained why we needed to get out quickly he took us a short cut through some of the rooms that were closed off to the general public and we arrived at the meeting point in plenty of time.

We'd seen parts of the castle not normally on view and then were pleasantly surprised to find that we were the only ones booked on the 12.45 tour. They normally take 20-30 people but we had the tour guide all to ourselves. VIP treatment indeed! Unfortunately you're not allowed to take photographs inside any of the castle buildings so I "borrowed" these 2 from Google Images



The tour was really interesting and definitely worth doing if you get the chance. As we got back to the meeting point after our tour the next one was just about to start and that was full. It must have been our lucky day!

We gave up after the kitchen tour as we were soaked through but the tickets we'd bought lasts for a year so hopefully we'll be able to go back in better weather when we come back next year.

Bye for now

No comments: