Colchester

Visited 29th March 2003--------

Report by Midgey & Shimmer

Move your mouse pointer over each picture to see the comments

This was first time we'd been to Colchester, but we'd heard about it from friends and managed to obtain some fairly detailed maps, so had an idea what to expect

It was a little tricky to get there as there are two train stations, the smaller of which is on a side line but much closer to the city centre. Fortunately our preparation paid off once we arrived and we managed to orientate ourselves soon after leaving the station. We headed up to the castle first off, but were drawn in by a new shop selling military memorabilia. Some interesting swords in there that I spent a while drooling over, but most of the stock was too modern to be of real interest to us (First/Second World War), so we ended up only buying a book on ninja and giving the shop keeper our best wishes for organising his merchandise as most of it was still in boxes!

The Tourist information was near the castle, so we had a quick look in there before crossing the road. There is a wonderful statue there, the sort of thing that would make a great statuette, we should have mentioned that to tourist info. We took a photo of it then headed into the Castle grounds.

Just inside the Castle ground is Hollytrees Museum, this is based in a preserved stately home and tells the life, though pictures and memorablia, of people who have lived in the house and in Colchester over the past three hundred years or so. It was an interesting place, filled with many pictures and other nick nacks, it reminded me, in part, of the Yesterday's World building in Battle that we visited during our holiday to Hastings last year.

After a while in Hollytrees we headed over to the Castle. The Castle is now home to a museum, mainly documenting Colchester in Roman times. According to the pamphlet advertising the castle it has been a ruin, a library and a gaol for witches, and that is just since the 16th Century! It is also the largest keep ever built by the Normans and is built on the foundations of the Roman Temple of Claudius.

The inside of the Castle looks, frankly, nothing like a castle at all. It has been totally changed into a modern looking museum. This does seem to work though as they have made sure that it is well decorated and brightly lit.

The museum has many different areas over two floors, covering all different aspects of life. There many hands on displays and even things to try on, for example, you can try on a Roman Helmet and chain mail...but only if you are a child or a very thin adult! later on in the museum you can also try on roman robes, and even be shackled to the wall, if that's your sort of thing of course!

We spent quite a while in this museum, even stopping in their rest area for a snack and a drink. We we lucky to have brought our own snacks though as they did have snack machines, but with nothing in them! We did manage to get a hot drink from the machine though.

The restroom itself was quite small but nicely decorated. The seats and tables looked as though they had just come out of a castle, dark wooden high backed benches and dark wood tables. The walls were decorated with Coats of Arms and standards made and decorated by local children.

Once we finished in the museum we spent the remainder of our time in Colchester browsing round their small windy streets looking in the interesting but overcrowded shops. We bought a walking toy cat for Mum as a Mother's Day present, which was largely unappreciated for some reason and two T shirts from a quality shop that seemed to be owned by Stellios from Easy Jet. Nice bloke, gone down in the world a bit since last we saw him on TV.

After that it was back to the station to start our journey home.