Windsor Castle

The symbol for British Rail. We all come to know and love it. Actually, train travel in Britain is really nice--on time, convenient, and gets you to just about anyplace.


Windsor Castle has both state apartments (the big, historical rooms that are use for official functions) and the private residential areas for the royal family and guests, plus a host of residences and offices for the staff. The castle covers about 300 acres and has hundreds and hundreds of rooms. It's supposed to be the one that the queen likes best, and she spends lots of weekends here. (By the way, some students were near Buckingham Palace one day and saw her leaving in a limo--giving the royal wave, no less.) Here you see a mob of wet peasants (with me trailing along behind) climbing toward an entrance of the castle.

I don't know who this guy is, but he opens doors for the souls who get to arrive in actual cars. A couple in their wedding garb showed up and had pictures made in front of this entrance--with him posing in some of them.

What do you do with your moat when you no longer need it to drown the enemy? You turn it into a flower garden. The moat was around the Round Tower, the inner fortification from the original building some time after 1066.

The Round Tower, the highest point, where in the old days you would make your final defense.

There are three sections to the place--the upper, middle,and lower wards. This picture shows just a part of one ward inside of the castle, so you can see how really big the place is.

Yet another view inside the walls.

This is the section that has the state apartments in it, including the famed "Queen Mary's dollhouse." Too bad you can't take pictures inside any of these places. Well, you could do it, but do you recall that dungeon in Warwick Castle and all those guards with weapons?) Nobody actually played with the dollhouse; it was an ornament of sorts. It's huge, as in maybe five feet tall and much longer. Artists painted tiny paintings; writers wrote books for it; winemakers made tiny bottles of wine, etc. The rooms of the actual castle are pretty spectacular. The Wellington Chamber has a table that seats 64 for cozy dinners. The big one can handle something like 160--and the queen has enough crystal, porcelain, and flatware to feed 'em all.

Here's an officer in his dress uniform and with his best upper class accent, showing mummy and daddy around the grounds on a personal tour. I think he's saying, "Now, mummy, if you leap over the fence and make a run for the door, that nice lad over there will shoot you."

This is the inner courtyard where important people arrive for state events. We can't set foot on it.

This is St. George's Chapel, one of the most important parts of the castle. It's where the royals worship if they so choose when they are here. It's where Charles married Camilla. It's the ceremonial church of the Knights of the Garter, the oldest and most famous order of knighthood in England. Each of the 26 knights has a stall in the choir with his/her crest, etc. In this chapel are buried George V and Queen Mary as well as George VI and Queen Elizabeth (Queen Elizabeth's mother and father). In the crypt below the chapel are Henry VIII and Jane Seymour (favorite wife and QE I's mom), along with several Georgian kings.

Outside the walls is Windsor Park, with this famous stretch of roadway called the Long Walk. It actually leads up to one of the formal entrances of the castle. And so we bid a fond farewell to the castle.

The First Field Trip: Warwick Castle

Warwick Castle was the seat of power for the Earls of Warwick for about 800-900 years. The fortress would have started life as a motte and bailey--a wood fort on a hill. But in the 1300s it started to be much more impressive and by the 1400s, it looked like this on the outside. The earl in the 1970s sold it off, and it is a fairly interactive tourist attraction now. I suppose that the upkeep on a castle must be pretty stiff, what with no serfs to do the work.

If you go up on the end opposite the entrance and stand on what was the original motte, here's what the inside of the place looks like.

They even put in a mill wheel way back when. By the end of the 1800s, they made their own electricity.

Here's the thing. Just as with you and me (well, not exactly), if you live in a place for eight or nine hundred years, you naturally add on and remodel as you go. The present operators have put one section of the place back to what it looked like in the Middle Ages, complete with wax figures. Another part back to the 1500-1600s. A third part back to a weekend party in 1897. All very, very cool. Here's the medieval part, with one of the earl's soldiers ready to go to war.

Here's another of the earl's warriors, clearly not ready to go to war. (Metal hats are heavy, by the way.)

When the going got muddy, and if you were an aristocrat and thus had actual shoes, you tied these wooden elevated thingys on to protect your little pointy leather shoes.

More warriors. I've deserted by this picture.

The Great Hall, the biggest room in any castle. In the Middle Ages people spent a lot of quality time in here with the big fireplaces, hoping to avoid frostbite in the winter--the windows had no glass back then. Here these rooms are decked out as they would have been in the 1500-1600 period.

Rooms as they would have appeared in 1670.

My personal favorite. A big section restored to a weekend in 1897, with the Warwick's aristocratic guests. The Earl and Duchess were strictly A-List entertainers. Future King George V near the fireplace talks to Winston Churchill's father in the Smoking Room.

The Ladies' Boudoir with the Duchess of Sutherland and Lady Sackville West--and of course, the footman Sidney. Yes, they all dressed like that.

Another bedroom.

The nursery.

Houseguest Consuelo Vanderbilt. Her mommy wanted her to marry the Duke of Marlborough. Locked her in her room for three days to make it happen. She produced an "heir and a spare" (like Diana) and then later split. The Duke got the modern equivalent of $250 million in the deal. There were lots of rooms set up like these. I loved it.

And, yes, the castle had a dungeon--for real. They didn't have jails--for most crimes, they just killed you or cut off some body part or branded you with a hot iron. They used the dungeon for political enemies or to hold people for ransom. It was a really sad place.

The castle has some really nice gardens, including the Peacock Garden which is full of, guess what? peacocks.They obligingly pose for the tourists.

A Field Trip: Glastonbury Abbey and Glastonbury Tor

This trip was actually the second, but I have these pictures ready to go, and who cares what the order is anyway?Glastonbury is a small village that has several claims to fame. It has the ruins of a very important medieval abbey/cathedral; it is claimed to be where monks dug up Arthur and Guinevere in the 1100s; it is where legend says the Holy Grail was buried; they have a massive Woodstock-like music festival here every year; and New Age religious people and others say that this is one of the place on earth where ley lines of energy converge giving it special religious/spiritual power. It also has some offbeat signs like this store, the "Burn the Bread Bakery."

Here's a model of the Abbey as it appeared before Henry VIII created the Church Of England so he could legally dump wife #1. It was the largest, richest and most powerful abbey (a place full of monks and attendant workers, for those of you not up on your abbeyness) in England at one point. Henry disbanded all the Catholic abbeys, convents, etc., and then took all the riches from them for himself. Then people started taking them apart for building materials. Hence all the ruins of religious buildings scattered around the countryside. I mean, they didn't just build these places as ruins to be picturesque for the tourists to take pictures of centuries later.

This little guy, who looks like an real elf, gave some of my students a hands-on demonstration of weaving the old way. They were pretty good at it. If we had stayed there long enough, who knows, I might have gotten a balnket out of it or at least a pair of medieval socks or something.

This fellow plays the role of a commissioner from Henry VIII who came to Glastonbury and hanged the Abbot and two monks before coming up with a way to justify taking all the goodies for Henry. He gave my class a personalized tour of the place. He was, to say the least, great. Here he is threatening to skewer one of my students if I do not hand over a large ransom. I decided that I could do with one less student.

In the Middle Ages they used sculpture and stained glass to do show-and-tell for the mostly illiterate. They also did it all in the style they were accustomed to in their day. Just to the left in the bottom row is the birth of Jesus--in a poster bed. Go figure.

The interior of what is left of the Lady Chapel of the cathedral.

Glastonbury was the largest church in the country in its glory days. The main part of the building was over 5oo feet long. This would have been in the main aisle of the nave, looking toward the high altar.

You can see the side aisles here, too, marked by the pointed arches. There is a place in the grass where you can lift up a panel and see some of the medieval tiles that were here originally.

This is the place where in the time of Edward I they erected a huge black marble tomb for what they claimed were the remains of Arthur and Gwenny. Lots of pilgrims showed up--good for the old monastery coffers.

Now this part is the magic. Glastonbury Tor is a 500+ foot hill that rises up out of otherwise flat land. It has been regarded as sacred and mystical for a very long time. A thousand years ago it was mostly surrounded by water and was almost an island. Many say that it is the inspiration for the Isle of Avalon, where Arthur is said to have been taken after his last battle. The day we were there it was raining or misting most of the time. As sometimes uncomfortable as that was, it was the perfect way to experience the Tor. At the top the wind blows very hard all of the time. It's quite an experience. Here you can just make out a tiny figure of a person on the ridge top standing to the right of the tower.

In the 1400s they built St. Michael's Chapel on the top of the Tor. All that's left is the tower. I assure you that no picture I have ever seen or been able to take can convey how steep the climb is. Needless to say, the students made it before their rapidly-aging professor whose life was passing before his rain-blinded eyes as he slogged upward.

Look! It's me. Do I look mystical, or what? I mostly look grateful that the next part of this pilgrimage will all be downhill.

We just stood up there for a long time and looked off through the rain and mist at the town and fields that seem to have dropped away below.

Wandering in London and Hampstead

This is Trafalgar Square with the National Gallery in the background. Visiting the National Gallery is like opening up the pages of an art history textbook. Lots of very well known, world famous works there. Just around the corner is the National Portrait Gallery. As advertised, it's all about portraits of the famous in Britain--kings, queens, statesmaen, writers, scientists, etc. There is a big section on Henry VIII and the Tutor period. You realize that most of the portraits are the ones that you always see used in books about these people. In some ways it has more interest than the other museum. Trafalgar Square is also where Londoners assemble on major occasions as well.

Famous resident of Trafalgar Square--the lions that surround the Nelson Column. People climb up to get their pictures taken--mostly the young and foolish and agile, and they are not supposed to go past the paws, so said the cop I talked to. She said that drunks sometimes get to the head and then fall off and break something or other.

The heart of Trafalgar Square is the monument to Admiral Horation Nelson, who died at the naval battle of Trafalgar while defeating Napoleon's fleet.

There's currently a big platform for performance art in the square. Artists are allowed one hour for their performance--anything as long as it's legal. This guy was looking to turn into a human lightening rod as the storm approached.

Nice little street near Leicester Square in the area where people go to buy theatre tickets.

All kinds of statues to performers in Leicester Square. Here's one to London native Charlie Chaplin.

Oxford Street. Let's go, shoppers.

Meanwhile, back in "our" village of Hampstead. On the walk to Hampstead from here where we saty is St. John's Church. It's been around in one form or another since the Middle Ages. It has a cemetery beside it and another part across the street. It's a little gem that I have come to love. In this one little church graveyard are some fairly famous and very interesting people.

The place is a little overgrown which gives it a nice rustic and remote feel. Come to think of it, I'm starting to feel a little rustic and overgrown myself these days.

Here's a sampler from St. John's. George du Maurier was a 19th century novelist whose main claim to fame is that he is the grandfather of novelist Daphne du Maurier who wrote the novel "Rebecca" which was made into a pretty famous movie with Laurence Olivier.

This is the tomb of John Constable, the most famous English landscape painter of them all. He lived in Hampstead, which has always been home to lots of writers and artists.

Tucked away in the weeds, which someone had kindly pushed back, is the grave of Eleanor Farjeon, who wrote the hymn "Morning Has Broken."

This one to me is the coolest. It's the grave of a husband and wife and a couple of their sons. Their last name is Llewelyn Davies. James Barrie lived with them and was later the guardian of some of the boys after both parents had died. James Barrie? you say, looking puzzled. He's the guy who wrote "Peter Pan." He modeled the characters on this family. The mother was the model for both Wendy and Mrs. Darling. Connections, connections everywhere.

Just one of the streets in quiet Hampstead.