Sunday 19 April 2015

One Day, Two Castles! Part 1


If you have been following our Home School Journey then you will know that William has been learning about castles. He has done some fantastic work where he has built a working drawbridge and even made a Castle


This along with general learning about them.

One thing that you may remember though was my failed attempt at taking them on a field trip to a castle! If not click here.

After our successful and lovely day out to the Wildlife Park I thought I would continue the theme of taking advantage of the lovely weather and take the surprise trip; one that would involve going to see a castle.

Now, in thinking where we could go I realised that two castles were very close to each other; Deal and Walmer Castles in Kent. Both of these castles were originally part of a trio with the aim being that the two outer castles were used for extra support, with tunnels leading between them, to the central one.

So that was it! Was it possible to go see two Castles in one day? Well that was the challenge!

Walmer Castle


As you can see it was a beautiful day.


On entering the castle you quickly come across the stately rooms; these rooms were used by Queen Victoria in her summer retreats as well as being a particular favourite for the late Queen Mother.




The Boys just chilling with the Queen Mother!

Access there was a bit tricky and I had difficulty going to the top where you would find the turrets and cannons. But, don't fear we did still find some cannons to explore!

(What boy or man doesn't enjoy looking and exploring cannons?!)



We saw that the Castle did have a moat; this fact is something that William found intriguing.




Over the moat you are led to the castles beautiful gardens; they really are breath taking and my photos don't do it justice.



William adored the garden statues around. The Lion ones especially:
"Daddy I'm riding Aslan"





These beautifully arranged gardens are vast; each section offered a different range of plants and flowers to admire. You can understand why the Queen Mother enjoyed being there so much.


They had opened green houses to go and explore:






To explore the Gardens fully actually took us far longer than seeing what the castle itself offered. This though was something that William found fascinating; he was under the impression that a castle was just the building and hadn't considered that Kings or Queens would have lived there and they would have wanted a nice garden, nicer than ours, to sit and spend time in.



I think by this point though the Boys were trying to give me a hint! We had spent 4 hours there and they needed a rest and to have their lunch:


I did suggest that we carry on exploring but by this point they had decided that enough was enough and we should go to the next castle!


This is the photo of William telling me "We need to go Daddy, stop taking photos for your blog!" Bloggers Children for ya!

I will do a part 2 for the second Castle.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Looks like a fabulous day trip, I do love a good castle, we will have to add it to the list when we come back to the UK!

I especially love William telling you no more blog photos!

Looking forward to part 2!

Martyn Kitney said...

Thanks Laura! It was lovely! You definitely should!

Haha it's what happens being a blogger child!

Ashley Beolens said...

Great stuff, and I'm jealous of riding Aslan :)

Martyn Kitney said...

Thanks for commenting Ashley! ha who wouldn't want to ride Aslan!