Today I did not sleep until a million-o-clock. I actually made it to the table in time for breakfast!

We decided to try our luck at another castle, since the last one wasn't so castley. This time we decided to go to Berkeley Castle.

 

It was significantly castlier. (Miriam and David, lurking around the outer courtyard.)

It was build in the....13th century, I want to say, by the Berkeley family. And they're still living in it today! You couldn't get into all of it. But the parts we did see were pretty neat.

Unfortunately I don't have any photos from the inside, since they asked you not to. The inside had lots of stately furniture and old oil paintings. It even had an oubliette, and a prison cell where some king or another was murdered!

There was even a portrait of one of the former Earls of Berkeley, who was known as Wicked Willy, for apparently fathering about a hundred children (though he never married).

Wicked Willy's father (or grandfather, I can't remember) caught himself a wife by literally kidnapping her. She was trying to avoid his attentions by moving to the other side of the country and not telling him, so he (maybe) got her sister to write her an urgent letter telling her to come quickly, and then promptly kidnapped her out of the sister's house.

That all being said, the girl ended up being a very wise and shrewd woman, and once she got a hold of the purse strings, she brought the estate out of the red and into the black within two years.

This isn't all the castle. It carries on quite a bit to the right.

But you know how you can tell it's a REAL castle?

I mean, besides the murder holes and the oubliette and the archer slits and what not...

Oliver Cromwell managed to bash down a wall! Fortunately for the Berkeleys, old Cromwell was in a bit of a hurry so paid his men a bonus in cash rather than let them hang around and loot the place.

This castle has been renovated abonut a million times (with a big one happening in the 1920's), so it's a funny mismash of styles. A lot of the time who ever was renovating shipped in bits of old churches and stuff to patch up the castle with, so it's all the same age (more or less), but it's from all over the place.

Also, apparently, one of the bathrooms in the private suite is exactly like the one in the Waldorf Astoria, in New York. By exactly like, I mean the last earl bought it from the hotel and had it shipped over for his rather fussy wife.

After Berkeley castle, we went down into Gloucester to find tea and scones (mmmmmmmmm...) and also discovered the Gloucester Cathedral.

Damn. Big ole cathedral.

There was an organ recital going on when we went in. It was kind of epic. Of course, I didn't get a picture of the massive organ, mostly because I was getting my hair blown back.

It sounded a little bit like the Phantom of the Opera had met the Count (of the muppets), had a baby, and that child was drunk and playing the organ.

That being said, it was impressive organing. I just thought it was kind of...mashed.

A set of covered halls circled a courtyard. This is just one of the halls.

We headed back to Cheltenham after that, since we had a dinner reservation.

The food we had was good, but took FOREVER. There's a jazz festival in town and so every place is booked up to the gills.

I got the impression they did not have nearly enough staff to cope.

C'est la vie.

I ate a lemon posset. It tastes like I was eating a dish of lemon flavoured butter, which sounds awful when I say it like that, but trust me when I say:

I wanted to jam my face in that dish.

HALLO.

Today I woke up in Cheltenham. Did I mention we took a train to Cheltenham?

Well, we did.

 

This is the view out of the back window of our B+B. It's a very nice B+B. I'm trying not to think about how much it must cost, but Miriam and David have pretty much not let me pay for anything.

By pretty much, I mean they have not let me pay for anything.

After breakfast (which I had to drag my poor corpse out of bed for), we hopped in the rental car and went whizzing across the disgustingly picturesque English countryside toward Sudely Castle. Because I insisted on seeing a castle.

It wasn't REALLY a castle so much as a stately royal country home. A really big one. But it wasn't too 'castley'. A lot of it got destroyed in the civil war, if my memory serves. Before that it was the last home of Katherine Parr (the final and surviving wife of Henry VIII who went on to marry Thomas Seymour, I believe).

It was rediscovered by some ladies who were hiking through the hills and discovered a half-buried casket whose inscription on the side said it was Katherine Parr, sixth wife of Henry VIII.

So what do you do when you discover a slightlly unburied casket?

WHY YOU OPEN IT OF COURSE!

Inside was her corpse. Rather anticlimactic.

So they closed it up again and told some folks, who came and fixed up the place, or what bits could be.

The ruined wall above apparently was part of the banquet hall.

This fine fellow on the right, I believe, was a former lord of the castle. I would guess in the 70's.

He had this pet badger that he carried around everywhere with him.

It got into lots of trouble, digging up peoples gardens, and he had to go around behind it paying reparations for the damages his dear badger caused.

They had a taxidermied badger by this picture with a note saying that it was just some random badger, and not THE badger.

So yes.

Sudeley Castle was pretty neat. The house bit was pretty small, but there was an adorable little chapel on the grounds as well.

The gardens were very pretty.

SEE?

Very pretty indeed.

David trying to decide whether Katherine Parr was ACTUALLY close to six feet tall (as was alleged) and Miriam giving me the hairy eyeball for sneaky pictures.

I'm not really sure what's up with this fellow. He was sitting in the church pews, all askew. Most of the dressed dummies kind of made sense (there was a Katherine Parr in her private chambers, a Thomas Seymour lurking around in one of the drawing rooms), but I don't know about this fellow.

I just thought he was funny.

 

This is some sort of very fat pheasant.

Not a peasant, as Miriam kindly pointed out.

We were NOT going to a peasantry. We were going to a pheasantry.

There were all sorts of pheasants that I didn't bother taking pictures of. I took a picture of this fellow because he looks exactly like a very obese falcon. Maybe hung over too, with the red eyes. 

Too many mice, this one. Can't fly no more.

We found a 'proper' castle on the grounds. A FOUR STORY PLAYGROUND!!!! :DDD

 

You may notice that the photo was shot at the top of the playground.

There was also a foxtail at the back, which we all took turns riding. We had to fight this very insistant little boy, who was CERTAIN that we were NOT allowed turns because we were ADULTS. He was quite scandelized when we all three insisted and told him that other kids wouldn't play with him if he was selfish and hit them with swords (he poked me in the boob with one).

The foxtail was fun, even though I was probably too big for it.

After Sudeley Castle we headed back into Cheltenham and took a walk about, trying to decide what to do for dinner. Eventually we decided quite at random to go to this little 16th century pub just outside of town, in the next village over.

We got there a bit early for our reservations (I know, reservations in a pub, but it was mostly a restaurant), so we took a walk across some farmer's fields.

We saw this thing:

You get kisses from me if you can tell me what it is. I really have no idea.

Also:

Capering lambs! (Miriam suggested they might have brain damage. They were charging around in a pack, and quite randomly, in the middle of the running, one or two would throw themselves in the air in a mad caper, then a few seconds later a couple other ones would do it. It was like a mental tic...)

Also:

A REALLY OLD GRAVEYARD! Some of the gravestones dated back to the mid-1600's, and there was one so new it only had a plastic tag as a marker and the flowers weren't wilted yet.

After that we went to The Craven Arms pub and ate delicious, delicious lamb.

(The capering made them more delicious. Tenderized and what-not.)

I did not take any pictures of the food. It was gone too quickly.

Best damned pub food I ever did have.

And then we came back to the B+B.

And now I'm asleep.

Good night!

Still here, I see?

Yes, well, so am I.

Today I did not take any pictures, so you will get another post full of Unrelated Photographs.

Today I woke up late-ish. Tottered around. Made my way towards Angel's Costumier. They provide costumes for film, television and theatre (and what ever you want to pay them for) for a LOT of people.

Their credits include such little known films as Titanic, Hugo, Harry Potter, Dr. Who, Shakespeare in Love, Memoirs of a Geisha, and Gigi (yes, they're that old, and older).

AND NOW IT'S TIME FOR UNRELATED PICTURE!!

HOLY CRAP IT'S A MOTHERFUCKIN' HERON.

That's what I said when I saw that, until I realized that it's really only BLUE herons that are rare to see, and this park was COVERED in herons. Literally. Like a carpet.

Stupid heron.

Anyway. Costumes. I found the place with relative ease. Had the worst cup of vending machine tea I think I've ever had.

Our tour guide was a small grey and pink sort of man with a neatly pressed blue shirt and glasses made entirely out of clear plastic perched upon his nose. He was very funny, but made me stop answering the questions he posed to the group because I knew all the answers and ruined the surprise. (In my defense, he WAS posing a question...)

The warehouse was AMAZING. Seriously. I thought of all my theatre friends and thought how envious they would be of their eight kilometers of costume rails. They have a whole ROOM of badges, patches, and buttons, and a separate room for all their military uniforms. Amazing.

TIME FOR ANOTHER UNRELATED PHOTO!

Don't worry. They're not real horses. Just statues. (At Camden Markets, what used to be a stable, or so I'm told. Strangely, there were horse statues EVERYWHERE.)

So if you can get in to do a tour at the Angels Costumier, I would definitely suggest it. They have some pretty cool stuff.

Our guide told us a secret about the Titanic flick.

Apparently they had made all these jumpsuits with the Titanic crew logo/words/whatever on the front, for the 'crew' of the Titanic to wear. So they wore them, ran madly around the starboard side of the ship.

Then they changed into ones with backward text, ran around again, and they flipped the film in editting and pretended it was the port side of the ship.

MAGIC.

So as the tour was coming to a close, I got to chatting with the only New Zealander in the group. She also happened to work in theatre, as a costumer, and confessed to me, rather embarassed, that her real passion was reenactment.

"Hey, I do that too!" I confessed.

"What time period?" she asks.

"Early 16th century Florence," I say.

"ME TOO!" she says.

Turns out she was a SCAdian from down under. Needless to say we rode back into London together and exchanged email addresses. (Lookit me. Overcoming my fear of strangers.)

UNRELATED PICTURE! (By luck of the draw you get an 'artistic' picture of a pigeon.)

After that I headed to Paddington Station (yes, there is a statue of Paddington Bear) and met up with Miriam and David and we took a train out of London and now we are in a town called Cheltenham Spa. There are apparently roman baths here.

Why do I always forget my bathing suit?