A late October trip to another Yorkshire Castle. This time Richmond Castle.
Richmond is a beautiful part of the country and it’s definitely a Castle With A View.
And here, in this cliff that the castle is perched on is where the legend can be found. King Arthur and his Round Table Knights are said to be asleep in a secret cave below this wall, waiting to come to save the Country in its hour of need……
Castle Bolton in the heart of Yorkshire. Set in Wensleydale, yes the home of Wallace & Gromit’s favourite cheese…… A castle with a stories to tell. Damaged in the civil war, Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned here for 6 months.
The castle really comes alive when you climb towards the top battlements. The views are stunning. Quite unusually you can still get right to the top.
It definitely tests your head first heights, some parts feel a little too precarious.
A blustery old day for an adventure. A four hour car ride heading north, brought us to wonderful Edinburgh.
Eventually we gravitated to Edinburgh Castle.
The Castle has so much history and atmosphere, but the thing that always gets me, is the view.
A view with added Rainbow…
It was busy in the Castle, really busy. Fortunately we bought tickets the night before, as on the day it was completely sold out. This was a challenge for Hawklad. Under the right circumstances he can just about cope with crowds, but this at times felt too uncontrolled, too unpredictable. He feels more comfortable when a crowd is heading mostly in one direction, where he doesn’t have to face too many faces heading towards him. But here people were heading in all directions, way too random for him. It wasn’t just visually, unpredictable sounds, from all directions proved disorientating. He did manage to see a good part of the castle but some places he respectfully declined.
We agreed on a winter trip back here when hopefully the crowds will have thinned a little. That might well be a two woolly jumper trip…..
The summer mission to visit castles continues…..
Two Northumberland entries today, the first is Warkworth Castle. A grand old castle dating back from the 11th century. The tropical northern weather and the occasional civil war has taken some toll but it’s still mighty impressive.
The second castle is one of our favourites. Set just a few feet from the North Sea, we have Dunstanburgh Castle. Very much a ruin, but what a location. You walk from a beautiful seaside fishing village of Craster.
Along the coast…
And after a couple of miles to the remote old castle.
England’s largest waterfall by water volume….
High Force in County Durham. A 70ft waterfall.
Given the lack of rain this summer in the north, still an impressive site. We have been here a number of times over the years but this was definitely the quietest it’s been, normally it’s truly thunderous. Streams feeding into the river are dry.
Most unlike our usual northern weather.
Always a bittersweet feeling for us here. This was the last place we visited as a family of 3 outside of Yorkshire. Over 9 years ago now but on this visit it felt a lot longer to me. At times almost like a different life, different world. As I tried to recall the memories they felt like faded old photos, proving difficult to hold onto, losing their colour. TIME and LIFE I guess inevitably has that effect. Eventually we have to move on.
It’s been a bit of a castle fest this summer……
CASTLES seems to feel like one of the few things that the UK can still do well.
But then again I’m not sure how many castles here, especially in the north, come with wine vineyards. This beautiful castle in Switzerland does.
Spiez Schloss.
Off we headed north to beautiful Northumberland. On this trip we were visiting a wonderfully well preserved castle.
Alnwick.
I first came here when I was at Uni, many many moons ago. It was the first time I had seen a castle that wasn’t in ruins. One you could actually walk inside, through all the rooms. It had paintings, sculptures, carpets, glass in the windows, complete ceilings. A fabulous library. It was lived in. That’s how the aristocracy lived….
Now walking around Alnwick Castle in 2025, it’s still beautifully maintained but now there is an added dimension.
Countless kids and yes some adults dressed up as wizards…
Never seen so many Harry’s and Hermione’s.
This castle is now almost more famous for being used as a film location for the first two Harry Potter movies. The first flying lesson, the early Quidditch training, Harry and Ron crashing the flying car will all filmed here.
On our trip there was no car flying but two wizard tutors were gamely trying to teach as many as possible how to fly a broomstick. As we walked past a line of broomsticks we were asked if we wanted a flying lesson. Hawklad ran off and I politely pointed out that my huge backside would need a jumbo jet sized broom, not one of those titchy things.
Later I realised maybe they had thought I was in character, looking like Hagrid who had really let himself go…..
A grim old Yorkshire Day.
Heading towards that LAKE in the distance. Lake Gormire.
It’s been on our hit list for years. It’s one of those LAKES that has had many old legends attached to it.
It’s BOTTOMLESS and as such it’s a gateway to Hell. Bottomless or 22ft deep if you believe the geological measurements….
It has a prehistoric monster, just not as famous as the one in Loch Ness….
A headless horseman who rides around its shores at night…..
A witch who could transform herself into animals, who jumped into the Lake to escape being burned at the stake and reappeared almost instantly in a local market town, many miles away…. That’s clever as the local bus only runs a couple of times a day, not at weekends and if it turns up it’s running monumentally late…..
Not to be outdone, a Goose apparently did the same Lake disappearing trick ….
A village once stood here but an earthquake swallowed up the buildings, just leaving a lake in their place. Occasionally, when the stars align, you can see the village if you look really carefully into the water….
A mighty castle once stood proudly here, but the owner murdered his wife and as punishment a mighty flood submerged the castle…..
One lake fact which can be confirmed, it was once named by The Times in a list of the top 20 natural swimming locations in the country. Without any feeder rivers or streams, it apparently has hardly any current and has an unusually warm feeling.
On this grim old day these were the only beasts we encountered.
England is a relatively small country.
You read these epic driving blogs, taking days, weeks to travel across a land. Less so epic here. On a good afternoon you can get from North East to North West coasts, the biggest challenge being the never ending motorway roadworks.
This week we kinda did that mini adventure. A trip from our Yorkshire home to the North West edge, Liverpool….. Took just over two hours.
Then 2 days later we stood on the North East edge of England. From our home, just over 40 minutes….
122 miles apart. A famous old city port versus a small old fishing village. Vastly different accents, same WIND….
The Roman Empire covered a fair chunk of the known world. Often hot, sunny places, well they did like a glass of wine and the occasional olive. But for some reason they headed over here as well, to the British Isles. A land not really known for its vineyards and Sun. But they persevered and probably started to invent things like scarfs, fleece tops, thermal underwear, woolly hats and Gortex jackets . At one stage our local city became the unofficial capital of the Empire as Constantine was proclaimed Emperor here. But as they edged further north the penny must have started to drop. What were we thinking of. Eventually they hit Northumberland and decided sod this for a lark. A giant wall was built across the country to mark the official northern boundary of the empire. The rest of Northern England and Scotland deemed too cold, too wet, with too many hooligans and way too many bagpipes to bother with.
Ok my O-Level History might be a tad rusty and unreliable these days….
A few days back we headed towards the edge of the old empire. To the nearly 2000 year old ruins of a huge Roman fort and town.
Then on to Hadrians Wall.
Once 6m tall and heavily defended. With the remoteness, the grim weather, you can see why it was the inspiration for The Wall in The Game of Thrones.
A Dad trying to cope with the loss of his Partner and becoming a single parent. 