The castle had been built of different parts from the 13th and the 15th century. Part of it had been destroyed when there was a fire, when it was a monastery. Lots of bits had been rebuilt on top of old bits and there was a very rich history. However, because there is are a lot of rooms available to rent and they host weddings and other events in the castle, you cannot actually see that many of the rooms. The rooms you could see were very interesting, and there was a lot of historical information available to read and find out. Particularly interesting to me was that this year, 2020, was actually the 500th anniversary of King Henry VIII’s visit to Leeds Castle. He visited on his way back from meeting a French king in Calais, and he was believed to have stayed with his retinue for at least one night. So as I’m very interested in Tudor history, that was of particular interest to me. Unfortunately, the room that Catherine of Aragon was believed to have stayed in with closed for renovation. So was Lady Baillie’s room which was right next door. It seems that that would’ve been the main attraction of the rooms of the castle, however they all seem to be closed for renovation which was a bit disappointing.
Overall, as far as the castle itself goes I think I was a little bit underwhelmed? Certainly, there was a lot of things we couldn’t see that I would’ve liked to have seen and it took us a lot less than expected to go through the rooms and come out at the front of the castle.
After doing the trip through the castle, we of course stopped to check out the gift shop. They had a really lovely range of bits from books, to mugs, to lots of swans. The Black Swan is actually the emblem of Leeds Castle, as black swans were introduced to the castle grounds in the 1920s by Lady Baillie. Before that black swans literally only lived in Australia and she actually imported them herself. So they had a lot of swans on souvenirs. The other thing I had that I was really excited about was their own gin. I had bought one at Highclere Castle last weekend as a souvenir and it was very lovely, so I was excited to be able to get another gin as a souvenir. Despite it being only just midday we sampled a few drinks and ended up buying the special Leeds Castle gin and also a bottle of honey flavoured mead. I also got a book that has a short history of every king and queen of England, and we bought some birdseed to feed the ducks and swans on the grounds with for just a pound.
After that we went back onto the grounds, wandered around and make sure that we had walked every path. This eventually lead us through some of the planned Gardens, and out the back to an area where they have the children’s activities. This includes the bird centre, as they have birds of prey which you can visit and wish to shows most days even in the winter, a café and children’s playground, and the maze. I was definitely excited about going into the maze, as I had read that on its opening in 1988 even the designer and creator of the maze managed to get lost in it.
There was a sign at the entrance that said that on average it took seven minutes for people to find the centre of the maze, so I look made a point of looking at my watch before we went in to try and make sure that I could be faster than that. Initially the husband and I went in together but after just a few turns, I decided to make a break for it and go and find my own way. This was proving unsuccessful when I bumped into my brother, who had entered just in front of us but had taken a different path right from the beginning. We decided to band together as clearly neither of us really knew what we were doing and we continued on. Only a few turns later we found my husband and we continued on together. Just after this we started finding the clues. There are four clues within the maze that tell you up to certain points whether to go left or right, and we listened to them. Not long after that we think we actually worked out how the maze was designed and very quickly after that we found the centre. After looking at my watch we had managed to solve it in only four minutes which is faster than average. So I was pretty happy about that.
In the centre of the maze was a viewing platform which we still on and waved to my mum and dad who were waiting outside the maze for us admiring the view. Then we headed back down and into the grotto which is the way out. As this is very modern, and clearly designed for children, we found it a little bit tacky. It was certainly designed to be atmospheric and interesting, but we didn’t really feel that so much. He did have good lighting design though.
After emerging from the grotto, we decided that we had done all we wanted to do at Leeds Castle and that we would start heading home. We had a look at some local pubs on a map and decided to go to one in particular that was quite close by. However, when we got there it was very full for Sunday lunch and they didn’t have a table for five. Fair enough, so we went along to the next nice looking pub. Same story. Just as we were about to change our mind and go back to London for lunch, I noticed a pub just near where we were – in fact it could be seen from the car park of the second pub that we tried. We drove just down the road to this third pub and they had one table. Perfect!
So we had a really nice, long, leisurely pub lunch. I had a gin and tonic (of course) and a very nice serving of fish and chips, which I hadn’t heard yet since coming back from Germany. We took a few hours over lunch, before we headed back the hour or so drive to London. All in all, a lovely relaxed weekend especially after how busy Germany was, and the fact that I am spending the evenings with my family while also still working during the day. It is quite tiring although I wouldn’t have it any other way.
