Castles and ruins and abbeys oh my...

This may be short and sweet due to the fact that French keyboards are fucked. Letters and other stuff are all in different places. But being a look and peck typist just may pay off here…lol

So our first day in Stratford found us heading out to Warwick Castle.It’s a beautiful castle and even has a trebuchet. (for sister purposes think Northern Exposure and that thing that Chris built…the “fling”) Inside the castle was somewhat disappointing as it wasn’t very ‘medievally’. But it was alright and we even climbed the stairs all the way up to the towers.

Our drive there wasn’t too bad. We did end up losing our way, but we just kept driving around and then just happened to eventually fluke our way to it…lol..go figure.

The next night found us heading out to Kenilworth Castle (castle ruins) and to Stoneleigh Abbey. The original plan was to catch the 11 am tour at Stoneleigh then head to Kenilworth, but once again we lost our way…lol. And again we continued to drive around and this time fluked our way to Kenilworth. Not quite the plan but hey a bird in the hand…!

Kenilworth is a castle ruin, once occupied by Elizabeth the first’s favourite, Robert Dudley. He had renovated to make the main part fit to impress Elizabeth and it’s a shame that it was left to ruin but a spectacular ruin it is! Got lots of pics…it was wonderful.

From there we went to Stoneleigh. Once known as Stone Lay it HAD at one time just been an abbey. Now they main part of the abbey is still there (well the gatehouse anyways) and split into about 4 residences. Along with this there is a huge mansion built by the Leigh family alongside it, built in 1558. Oddly enough we found that we had really lucked out cuz the fact that we were lost earlier meant we could only get the last tour and we ended up being the only ones on the tour! She asked what our interests were and she tailored made the tour for us….medieval stuff and of course Jane Austin who despite only spending 2 weeks there, descriptions of the house and grounds and even relatives names taken from the many portraits on the walls and their personal stories influenced her books heavily. The house and grounds were breathtaking I cannot say how much. It was no wonder her short stay influenced her so much.

One other lucky thing was that twice a month one of the people who are in residence in the old abbey allow the tours to enter his home and this day was one of those…lol…Imagine a home inside an old abbey with it’s stone arched ceilings and stone walls, and huge columns about. When I walked in I swear I wanted to cry at the site…I would die to live there!

We walked bout the grounds and through the woods a bit to a small pet cemetery tucked away in there. On the way we saw a big red fox…he was gorgeous. The cemetery was cute, snaps some shots and we made our way back to town.

The next day had us off to Bath…..