Windsor Castle

Visited 26th October 2003--------

Report by Shimmer & Midgey

Move your mouse pointer over each picture to see the comments

We'd been wanting to go to Windsor Castle for a few years now, so when we were offered a lift there we jumped at the chance. Although it's not all that far from Enfield, it's tricky to get to by train and we didn't fancy driving ourselves. The first view of the castle is from the motorway, and an impressive site it is!

We left Enfield just before 9am on a Sunday and the journey took about an hour, maybe a little less. We went on a Sunday and at this time of year for two reasons. Firstly, by this time of year the majority of touristy interest has dissapated due to changing weather, children being back at school etc. Secondly on a Sunday there won't be work traffic and also parking is much cheaper. In the car park we chose (it's the small one behind the public toilets on River Street, entrance on Barry Avenue) had parking for hours for only £3 on a Sunday. Most other places would have cost upwards of £8 to park.

Arriving in the car park rewarded us with a better view of the castle, although surprisingly I found the optimal place to take a photo of the castle was the step leading up to the gents toilets! Quite what people may have thought I was doing lurking in front of the door to the toilets with a camera I'd rather not imagine, but I did manage to get a couple of shots off without being arrested.

There was a box selling maps of the town near the exit to the car pack, it looked really good from the display copy, but when I put my £1 in and checked out the results, the maps I was given had some of the features (notably shop names) missing. So I'd just spent £1 on a map that was pretty much useless except to find the castle itself. Oh there it is, the bloody huge stone thing that we'd just been looking at for the past 15 minutes!

Although the Castle does not have facilities for food there is no shortage of places to eat. from the moment you turn out of River Street you are confronted by many eateries including two burger bars (the famous ones!), pizza parlours, restaurants, pubs serving food and other establishments offering food. Also along this route a great deal of souvenir shops are situated.

We also passed Windsor Royal Station. This is a functioning station with train links into Paddington, but is also home to a few specialist shops and coffee houses/cafés, and a steam engine!

Entry looked pretty straightforward with three desks selling tickets and a queue leading into the grounds. You are also given a useful plan of the Castle which shows areas you can visit and those you can't. Round the corner however was the security section where people where being searched, bags develed into and cameras scanned for explosive contents. Whilst Midgey sailed through without incident my metal glasses case caught their attention and I had to go through the metal detector just like those at airports three times before they would let me in, much to the chagrin of the growing queue behind.

On getting through all this (understandable) security - it is one of the Royal residences after all - we stopped briefly to check out the plan of the Castle. In all honesty on first impressions we did think that we had severely wasted our money as there are only three areas of the actual Castle that you can get into... and one of those, we found out later, was closed on the day we went! This doesn't turn out to be the case though as will be revealed later!

As we left the security area we faced a small shop where you can hire audio tours for about £3 and buy guide books in a variety of different languages. The guide books were £4.95 but I personally feel they are well worth the money. For the price you get a large glossy guide with 80 pages of interesting information about the castle and loads of beautiful pictures on each page.

Opting not to go with the guided tour we followed the map to the first place of interest, the Castle Exhibition. This is housed in a small area and charts life in the Castle from it's earliest days. I was slightly disappointed with this as was expecting some, well, exhibits from different stages in the Castle's history. There weren't any, the history of the Castle is told in photographs, pictures and writing and that is it. This may have been quite interesting to read but was very crowded at the time, so was very difficult to even see what was in there in some parts, let alone read any. I was also disappointed by the fact that on a couple of the photos had been slightly defaced and not restored. (You mean the Queen doesn't really have a little red moustache and beard?). I didn't find this very inspiring, especially as we had to battle our way past a group of Japanese tourists who had neatly encamped themselves across the whole hallway in an attempt to block any through traffic. I did consider trying the few words of their tongue I knew but ended up falling back on the universal language of shoving.

The exhibition didn't take too long and we were soon out in the open and making our way around the Round Tower towards the next part of the castle on the tour. The Round Tower is set atop the motte in the centre of the castle grounds. the base of which is now a very pretty garden area.

From here we walked through an arch in the the wall onto the North Terrace which is quite high up and affords a good view of the landscape for miles around, we took in the view of the surrounding trees, cathedral, cricket pitch and er, gas works. I'm guessing this view was better in medieval times. A door took us into the Upper Ward leading on route to the State Apartments. These were the most impressive part of the tour, and accounted for the bulk of our time.

We started by walking through a dark corridor that lead to "Queen Mary's Dollshouse", a farcically large-scale model mansion complete to the finest detail to such an extent that photos of it's interior are difficult to tell from that of some of the rooms in the state appartments themselves. I do like doll houses a great deal so this was a particular treat for me. Believe me, if you have more than a passing interest in dolls houses you have to see this one. The house gets its name from its primary reason for being constructed, as a national tribute to the royal family in the form of a gift for the then Queen Mary, the wife of King George V, the grandfather of our present Queen.

Another dark corridor lead to the current Queen and her sister's childhood dolls, most of which were decked out in costumes that must have cost more than the annual clothing budget of a normal family of the times. The dolls are called France and Marianne and are displayed with part of their massive wardrobe of miniature clothes and accessories made by leading Parisian fashion houses, including Lanvin, Cartier, Hermes and Vuitton.

We travelled down a corridor with weapon displays on either sides, the most impressive set of which flanked the second entrance/exit to the building, having a dahl as centrepiece with various tulwars, khandars and lots of katars protruding from or around their circumference along with several more exotic weapons that I couldn't readily name and the guidebook doesn't even mention. The "no photo" policy started to annoy me at this point!

Up from the stairs was the gallery which housed works from the Photograph Collection and Royal Archive, and Old Master drawings from the Royal Library collection. The guide book says the China Museum was next, which Midgey remembers but I have no recollection of it! This room displays impressive china services from major English and European porcelain manufacturers of the 18th and 19th centuries. A room that my nan would have loved but really didn't appeal all that much to Shims or myself.

We the entered The State Apartments proper, starting with The Grand Staircase. Now you're talking, with mounted armour flanking you on both sides and an array of arms of armour on display I felt right at home. Shims was in his element in here and in the next few rooms as there were a great many displays of arms and armour here, including a few sword gauntlets in the Grand Vestibule, again though there is a no photography rule inside the State Apartments. Sod the no photo policy this was too good to miss out on so I whipped my mini camera out and fired off a few shots, only a couple of which came out as I couldn't really hold the thing in front of my face to frame a shot!

At the top of the staircase is The Grand Vestibule, which is dominated by a statue of Queen Victoria. Several display cabinets show arms and trophies from Britain's wars including a ornate pair of sword gauntlets and the bullet that killed Nelson at Trafalgar!

Leaving the interesting stuff behind we were jostled into a seemingly unending series of stately rooms, most of which didn't hold a lot of interest for me, so I'll just say a few words about the most notable features of each to save my keyboard.

These rooms reminded me of the state apartments at Hampton Court and make this place well worth the money if you are interested in historical furniture, decoration, arms and armour and paintings. If you are more interested in the actual buildings then you may not get as much out of Windsor as you would out of, say, the Tower Of London.

The King's Drawing Room and the The Queen's Drawing Room; lots of huge paintings and giltwork furniture this was very impressive but was soon going to be a very repetitive form

The King's Bedchamber; Midgey wanted the somewhat ornate four poster bed, although she would have had to throw out all her cupboards and knock a sizeable hole in her ceiling to accomodate it. It didn't have a for sale sign on it either, so I doubted her chances.

The King's Closet; - this differs from most closets that I've seen before, not only was it somewhat bigger, it also had a bloody large gold chandelier in the middle. We ran into the Japanese here again, having found the smallest room in the building they obviouslt thought it was a good ambush point, but the incentive of a wailing child to our rear pushed us forward through them

The King's Dining Room; I found this room one of the most impressive, mainly as the ceiling depics a banquet of the gods and I've always been a little in awe of the skill needed to produce such work. There were also wooden carvings decorating the walls that were are worthy of mention.

The Queen's Ballroom; a very high ceilinged room with two massive chandeliers and lots of very expensive but not particularly comfortable looking furniture.

The Queen's Audience and Presence Chambers; farcically huge and impressive tapestries dating from the late 18 century were the main attraction in these two rooms. It took Midgey a week to do a 3" square cross stitch of Eeyore, so I guess it must have taken the creators thousands of hours to finish these! Let's hope someone didn't make a mistake and have to unpick a section as happened with Midgey.

The Queens Guard Chamber; phew, just as I was becoming overcome with gilt furniture and massive painting some more arms came into view. Nothing really exception apart from an c1420 wakizashi that was presented to Lord Mountbatten at the end of the 2nd World War. There are also several busts and an impressive oak throne here.

St Georges Hall; this is where state banquet are held. Armoured lancers on pedestals rise high above you as you walk towards The mounted Kings Champion above the doorway at the end of this impressive room. Somehow the Japanese had managed to get in front of us again, if use of mobile phones wasn't allowed inside these rooms I would have thought they'd called for reinforcements.

This is one of the most historic rooms in the castle as for six centuries it has been associated with the Order of the Garter, as can be seen by the vast array of heraldic decoration. It is also famous for a less pleasant reason as this is the area that was seriously damaged during the fire in 1992. It is hard to believe today just how much of this and surrounding rooms were damaged as the restoration is fantastic.

The lantern lobby; a new room that was the site of Queen Victoria's private chapel, where the 1992 fire started. The highlight of this room is a set of Henry VIII's armour (how much kit did that guy have?) which I guess they chose because it's unlikely to catch fire if the spotlight next to it gets too hot.

Green and Crismon Drawings Rooms; Most likely called this because the furniture and carpet/walls are that colour. All getting a bit samey by now and hunger was becoming an issue, which wasn't helped by...

Another 2 Dining Rooms; neither had any food available. Frankly, for the entry price I had hoped for a buffet lunch at the very least.

The Reception Room; there's a massive vase here that's taller than Midgey

 

Garter Throne Room; amongst the impressive looking portraits of people I've never heard of are the Coronation robes of Queen Elizabeth II, which were an amazing sight up close, the detail is awe inspiring!

Waterloo Chamber; more pictures of Dukes, knights and stuff. And the exit!

Thankfully there was an empty bench outside that we claimed before the Japanese could overtake us again and claim it, we made a meal of our provisions as the milled around trying to get in a neat formation in front of The Quadrangle. Seeing our chance, we made a dash for the first of the on site shops which mainly sold china, which worried me as I was carrying a backpack at the time.

Looking at our guide, the only place left was St George's Chapel. We'd seen a programme featuring the interior on TV the week before so we were eager to check it ourselves so we headed off in that direction, stopping to visit the Middle ward shop where I bought a set of castle information cards (which I hope to commit to memory) and took a few photos. Arriving at the entrance to the Chapel we were in for a disappointment, they were having a good old sing-along inside and visitors were only allowed in if they wished to join the service. Not in the mood for a knees-up we meandered round for a while, tutted at the guard who kept thumping his rifle down and making Midgey jump. We did notice that her Maj had turned up though, as the Royal Standard was flying over the Round Tower. Great she was there the same time as us, bit put out she didn't say hello though, especially as we missed her when she visited Enfield the week before.

On the whole I was very surprised by this visit as I really thought I had been duped when we first entered the castle. It was worth the money but only if you are interested in what you find here. I was slightly disappointed that we didn't manage to get into St George's chapel as from the pictures in the guide book it looks beautiful but these things happen. At least you are informed when you buy your tickets what is available and what isn't.

After visting the last gift shop where Midgey bought a guide to the dollshouse we took it easy for a while and phoned SJ before setting off to get a bite to eat and seeing some of the town itself. As expected, we didn't stray far from the unknown, settling for a Big Mac each that was a lot more satisfying that our burger experience in Bath! We had a nose round some of the touristy shops, none of which sold anything of any great interest, although some of the buildings were old enough to be worth a look at themselves. After a couple more photos we headed back to the car for the journey home.