Thursday. 12.40 p.m. Continuing my weekend away in Worcester. On Sunday we were all going to Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire, to a historic event with knights and a medieval theme to it. I have been to Kenilworth Castle before when Carol and I were members of English Heritage, and we got in free. Chloe and Steve are members, and we got reduced rates to get into this event. Steve managed to book online on Saturday. I was given an English Heritage sticker to put in my car's windscreen, and so got free parking at the castle. Steve went with the children in their car, and Chloe came with me in my car. It was around a 45-minute drive from Worcester to Kenilworth.
There were a number of things going on within the castle over the course of the day, including knights in armour taking part in archery, and other forms of medieval arms, such as fighting with staves, swords and so on. These were really full-on bouts and the whole gave a real theatrical atmosphere. Very colourful and exciting and the three boys, George, Eddie and Arthur seemed to be totally intrigued. There were several sessions of different aspects of fighting, which ended around 3.30 with what is called a melee (do a Google search to discover what this is.)
Chloe had bought picnic food, so we were able to have something to eat during the course of the day.
The three grandsons seemed to relish clambering about on the ruined sections of the castle. When we had our lunch, some distance away from the main activity of the history festival (for want of a description for the day's events.) George and Eddie climbed up a slope and seemed to enjoy enormously sliding down on their bottoms! As a result, their clothes got somewhat dirty, but what do you expect young boys to do? When there's such a great place to explore and then slide down, make the most of it.
We had a look inside the gatehouse, several floors of interesting stuff on the various characters who had either lived in Kenilworth Castle or who were connected to it in some way, which included Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley and then a walk around the Elizabethan garden, which was actually a reconstruction of what historians believed one was like and then we went to watch the falconry display, which was, as far as I was concerned, the best part of the whole day as I really enjoy seeing falcons and other birds of prey in flight.
Once we had seen the final session with the knights, it was time to leave for home. I thought it probably a good idea to move towards the car park before the rest of the crowds had the same idea, otherwise, we would have been inundated, and it would have taken some time to reach the car park, with one child in her pushchair/buggy (not sure which.) and rounding up the three boys. So we got to the car park and I bade farewell to them all as they were returning to Worcester and I was driving home to Milton Keynes.
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