Friday evening, we arrived in London from our
flight from Zagreb, picked up our rental car and checked into a hotel near
Heathrow airport. Saturday morning,
after breakfast at the hotel we headed out to Windsor, a relatively short drive
away.
We had booked a Walking Tour of the city at 11AM
and thought we’d arrive early and take a look around prior to the tour. Well, Windsor is certainly a popular tourist
destination as the streets were already teeming with tourists, us
included. While waiting for our tour at
the designated location on High Street, we became aware of the absence of
traffic and people lining the street on both sides. We lucked out as at 11AM there was to be a “changing of the guards“. Soon we saw and heard the approaching military
band followed by the Windsor Castle guards who, on this occasion, were Gurkhas. These were the guards that would remain
inside the castle for 2 days. Shortly,
later we saw the other guards who had spent their 2 days guarding the castle form up and leave, preceded by a band.
All was in superb military precision. One thing that struck us was the
immensity of the castle. It is in the very centre of the town on the main
street and has an equally large private garden with a very small section
available to the public to enjoy. Windsor, we were told, is the largest
inhabited castle in the world. Windsor
Castle covers about 484,000 square feet and sits on 13 acres of
land. The castle complex, which includes Home Park and Windsor Great Park,
covers more than 5,000 acres.
We located our guide, Sophie, a French national
who had previously worked in the castle.
Her knowledge of Windsor was amazing, so we spent the next almost two
hours wandering throughout Windsor learning much of its history, ancient and
modern. The town itself has beautiful buildings that are very well maintained,
dating back a thousand years.
Shortly after our tour, we unfortunately had to
head towards Wales as we were expected at Lynne and Joe’s, Des’ niece, for
dinner and we had about a three-hour drive ahead of us. Driving through
intermittent cloud bursts, we made our way west across very lush green
landscapes. We arrived late afternoon ready to reconnect since our last visit
about five years ago.
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| Windsor High Street |
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| Windsor Castle with statue of Queen Victoria |
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| Windsor Castle changing of the guard |
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| Market Street |
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| A pedestrian street with D in the foreground |
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| Windsor Guild Hall |
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| This house is called "The Shambles" built originally to replace the Guild Hall, was built from green timber. The building distorted as the timber dried. |
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| Windsor Park - some 2000 acres |
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| Des & Eloise in front of the gate to Windsor Castle |
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This statue was created by an injured in action ex-soldier. The statue was cast from discarded Saddam Hussein statues from Iraq. The rock on which it's mounted is from Afghanistan.
Two past British military arenas |
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| The River Thames |
