Life . . . Reframed: OK, last castle for awhile!

July 2

Today we decided to go to another castle - mostly because it promised 3000 acres of garden, private lake and walking / cycling trails. This one is called Grimsthorpe Castle, and it's in Lincolnshire where we're staying at the moment. They charge Ł5 each to go into the grounds and wander around, and an additional Ł5 if you want to tour the castle. So we figured we may as well go in - this one promised to be furnished, and was a little more 'modern' (read: still habitable) than the previous two we visited.

REALLY long driveway. You can just see the castle at the end.

Grimsthorpe Castle

A rather underwhelming entrance gate

What they didn't tell us when we paid the additional money to tour the castle was that we would not be allowed to take photos inside. What?!?!? Oh well, we sucked it up, and went in. Turns out you can only go through on a 'guided tour'. Actually, I kind of liked the idea as I figured I might learn something about the things we were seeing. They advertise it as a 128 room castle, and we got to see about 9 of the rooms . . . To be fair, people still live here, but do they really use 119 of the rooms?

The tour mostly consisted of the very nice tour guide telling us about the people in the paintings, who their parents were, who they married, what their titles were, how important they were, and whether they inherited their title or not. There were 10 - 20 paintings in each room. Sigh. It was a kind of very dry history lesson. I can't remember any of it except a bit about a fellow called Jeffrey Hudson who was very small, and at one point in his life, jumped out of a pie for Queen Henrietta Maria (first I'd heard of her) who was wife of Charles I. According to Wikipedia, " He was famous as the "Queen's dwarf" and "Lord Minimus", and was considered one of the "wonders of the age" because of his extreme but well-proportioned smallness." Just in case I've completely piqued your interest, here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Hudson It seems things didn't end particularly well for Jeffrey.

There was a bit of information about the furniture, but it's not a tour I'd do again as I tend to be more interested in how the people lived, stories behind the building and furnishings etc. than I am about titles and who married whom.

Castle vegetable garden

Seriously the nicest veggie garden I've ever seen.

More of the veggie garden

The pear tree. I took this for my sister Jane. A fun comparison to the trees
in your old yard :-)

I think these were apples growing along the fence.

Artichokes. A lot of them.

The grounds, on the other hand, were really beautiful. It's a VERY long drive up the driveway to the castle. They have the most amazingly stunning vegetable garden I've ever seen. The general gardens around the castle are pretty, and the theme seems to be topiary bushes. There are 6 full-time gardeners, but I'd say they could use a couple more. There were a lot of 'untrimmed' areas that needed attention. 3000 acres is a lot of land, so we walked for about 2 hours through fields that had long, wide mown sections to walk in, and then around the castle's private lake. There were hundreds of geese and the requisite swans as well. It was a nice place to walk around the fields and forests of England, and for the Ł5 spent, well worth it.

Huge squares of 'wild grass' with large mown paths in between to walk on.

A lot of topiary bushes. Most of them needed a wee bit of attention.

Looking back at the castle and topiary

I guess these are pheasants

Very decorative hedging behind the flower gardens

There were several of these 'lookout' gardens. All larger than my old back yard.

One of the fun things we do when we're driving is notice the names of the towns - I have spent a fair bit of time wondering where some of the names come from, as they can be quite odd. Although coming from a country that has town names like Moosomin, Piapot, Spuzzum and Flin Flon, I guess I can't throw too many stones here. I guess the ultimate question is "who gets to pick the name?" Here's a sign we passed today.

We both burst out laughing at this one, so we stopped to take a picture.
Bitchfield is fairly small, but there is also a "Lower Bitchfield" which adds
to the general area.

July 2 -

Today was a 'stay home' day for me. Glen went out golfing (it's been over a month since he's had a golf fix!). I did some laundry, and as I was hanging it out to dry, I couldn't help but notice some weeds in the yard, and some ivy that was getting out of hand, and some bushes that needed deadheading and . . . It was pleasant enough outside - not burning hot, and not cold, so before I knew it I was in for the count. It was such a nice way to spend the day - very meditative, and as always with gardening, a lot of instant gratification. I hope Becca's owner doesn't mind too much. Towards the end of the afternoon, I had a serious run-in with stinging nettle, and as a result, my fingertips, my forearms and my inner thighs are all burning now. The fingertips are the worst. Ah well, it goes away.