Castle Adventures

By Allison Crane

In our ‘various excursions’ around Great Britain, we have seen a total of 3 castles and one, ah, not-so-castle. I believe Janean elaborated on the, um, latter so I will focus on the other three.

The first real castle that we visited was Alnwick Castle. The castles that we visited were all either a fortress, a home, or of an amusement park style. This castle, however, was a sort of mix of all three. It had defense and protection enough to be called a fortress, inhabitants (some Duke and Duchess whose names I didn’t bother to memorize) that made it a home, and some activities that definitely made it ‘amusing.’



Mom demonstrating technique on broom mounting.

Alnwick castle, as it was the home to some of the Harry Potter filming, (including the  flying lessons in the first movie), had broomstick flying lessons as an activity on the lawns. The ‘lessons’ consisted of learning how to ‘warm up’ your magic, mount, make broomstick engine noises (such as yipeeee! vroooom! or choo choo!) and play red light green light on a broom. In describing it just like that, it sounds quite boring, although in truth it was more hilarious and, at times, extremely embarrassing instead. The director of this activity, named Professor Bottomly, was both funny and a retired military officer. So, he had quite an enjoyable time making people do ridiculous things over and over because they either came late or were losing at red light green light. Unfortunately, that was commonly unlucky members of our family, namely me and my mom.



Hey look! Jeremy finally got the hang of it!

While we were at Alnwick castle, we also visited the stunning Alnwick Gardens, went on an Harry Potter themed tour of the place, and toured the state rooms. Overall, we had a very enjoyable time there.



Here I am inside the outer walls of Edinburgh Castle.

The next castle that we visited was in Edinburgh, Scotland and, coincidentally, was named Edinburgh castle. It was in more of the fortress category, for after going there I have learned that it is not a castle that I would like to attack any time soon. Or be imprisoned in. Or do anything other than have a tour of it, for that matter. It was a remarkable castle; with massive cannons on the battlements, a weird dog cemetery, gloomy dungeons, great hall with armor and weapons on the walls, and Scottish crowned jewels in the towers.



The most recent castle, that we visited fell most under the amusement category.  The castle, that is, Warick Castle, had a wide variety of shows, including falconry, trebuchet firing demonstrations, archery firing/educating, intriguing displays, and interactives.

Family photo in front of Warick Castle



 My favorite of those was most likely the falconry, although there was not a single falcon involved in the entire show. What would make it my favorite if there weren’t any falcons? Well, they did have eagles, buzzards, sea eagles, and vultures; all with at least 6 feet wingspans...which kind of made up for it. All of the birds were enormous and they included the Bald Eagle, which was small in comparison to some of the other huge birds of prey. (If I remembered some of their names it would be really helpful right now). Their size definitely was noticeable, considering that they swooped right above our heads, flying between a perch on the castle wall to the trainer. It was spectacular, if not scary.