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Imagery is not permitted!

Saturday, August 28, 2004

We had been planning this day out for months and were both quite excited to finally get it under way. For ages Richard and I have both made comments about visiting Windsor Castle. It's a place we have both often wanted to go to but have never arranged. Anyway after a conversation and a quick look online we had tickets.

Windsor Castle and walled gardens

We arrived early (10), to make the most of our day and are glad we did as it was busy from the off.

We spent the day exploring the grounds, wandering around the exhibits and visiting the State Rooms. Now we have visited Windsor I can fully understand why the Royal Family were so devastated from the consequences of the fire in 1992.

So much of the castle was lost and yet the craftsmanship and work that has go into it's resurrection has been amazing.

As we emerged from our browse around the chapel we happened to notice it was time for the changing of the guard. I have witnessed this at Buckingham Palace several years ago but was interested to see Cute Marine on the left!

the same procedure here. We were not disappointed, in fact I think the "change" was more intimate at Windsor as you were allowed a much closer to the action.

It also helped when trying to spot cute marines!

We spent all of the morning within the castle boundaries headed into Windsor for lunch.

After lunch we made our way to Frogmore.

Frogmore House is where Queen Victoria was raised and you can understand how isolated she must have been from the court as Windsor Castle is barely visible from the grounds of Frogmore.

Another rare treat was the ability to have a look inside the

Mausoleum that Queen Victoria built to honour her Prince Consort; Albert. This really was worth the journey this weekend (it's only open to the public four days of the year), as the contents of the tomb were amazing. Queen Victoria had Alberts' tomb created with her cast next to him, this was so that they would lay together at the point of Albert's passing. The only visible sign that the tomb was opened years later (when Victoria died), is from a crack in the side of the where the seal had to be broken.

This really was a lovely day out which we both thoroughly enjoyed. We did find five minutes to play tourist too (well there were enough Chinese, Germans' and Americans' there so why couldn't we?)