I’ve been to London a few times and I’ve seen pretty much everything I want to see, done everything I want to do. In fact, London is the only part of England that I’ve ever seen. I really wanted to go for a walk through All Creatures Great and Small territory, crossing fields and climbing styles, but with two days in London, but my nights booked, it wasn’t really possible to get far away. I spent the first wandering the shops and going to see a movie. Yesterday, I looked through the Lonely Planet in more detail and realised that I could get to Windsor castle and back in a day. And you can never see enough castles. Proper defensive castles, not just palaces, but castles with thick walls, bastions and wandering corridors.
If it weren’t for all the tourists, I think I’d like living in Windsor. From almost everywhere in the town, you can look up and see the castle that the queen considers her home. Apparently it’s housed the royal family for 990 years and it’s still well looked after. The state rooms are accessible to the public, but the interiors don’t interest me too much. Except, surprisingly, the doll’s house made for Queen Mary. Everything 1:12 scale and functional right down to the electricity and plumbing.
My real interest was outdoors – the walls, the embattlements, the crenelations and towers. In this case, the walls were at least 4m thick, built to withstand the best that medieval armies could throw at them. Arrow slits and crenelations lined the walls, inside and out, but there was no way of getting onto them. I was limited to walking around the bottom and imagining what it would be like from up there. Surely it wouldn’t be too hard to arrange access to a small section. But then, I guess they’re worried that a sniper might find his way up and be in a good position to assasinate the queen.
St George’s Chapel provided some interest as the home of the Order of the Garter, but there was little to explain what the Order actually does or stands for. There are currently 26 members, including the queen and Charles, and prior members include Winston Churchill, but that doesn’t give much of a guide. I even tried wikipedia, but couldn’t find much except that it seems it’s the highest level of honour a knight can attain. In that sense, it seems more like a badge or a gentlemen’s club.
I left the castle, planning to walk around the walls from the outside, but was diverted when I stumbled on the Windsor Great Park and its Long Walk. A narrow stretch of green, lined with trees (fir?) and with a road running down its centre, the park must be about 4km long in a straight line to a Deer Park where a statue of a man on a horse can be seen in the distance. I walked all the way to the Deer Park to get a feel for the size of the Great Park, but wasn’t inspired to see who the man on the horse was. Another look at wikipedia says that it was George III, but not what for.
Although there were a few disappointments, I found Windsor a great place to spend a day rather than idling it away in London.
Spoken like a true Counter-Strike player. Did you also figure out the best positions to use a flash-bang to blind the foot guards?
Some of the most interesting times I’ve spent on holidays, was not following an itinerary, but just picking a place, wandering around and discovering things. Of course, you’ve got to pick the place well. Windsor sounds like one of those places.