This was probably the most touristy bit and we totally took a picture for Matthew who loves the Zog books! (There was a hedge maze and a little playground area too.)
And okay maybe the stocks are a little touristy but come on, STOCKS, are you going to just walk on by?!
We had an awesome time wandering around and then decided to climb up the tallest tower so that we could get out on the rest of the ramparts. See the one with the flag? You access it by a very twisty set of stairs that after a night of no sleep and in close confines of five minutes of constant spiral stair case left me feeling...not great. And poor Abigail, it was totally too much for her. She threw up spectacularly through the murder holes at the top of the tower. It was really something and as I was holding her hair back I thought "none of us will EVER forget this." Thankfully we were almost the only ones up there and the other very nice people up there offered us a bottle of water so we were able to rinse it all right through the murder hole grates and it was a very efficient way to be sick in a pretty crowded place. Our entire family had sloooowly had this awful one-day virus go through us and everyone but Abigail had it; we were all praying like crazy that she would be able to get through her AP exams, so I'm actually so impressed/thankful that she got through AP exams AND the flight and then was just very efficiently sick our first day.
Abigail's special tower. #neverforget
Here's the view from the top...
Then she felt a lot better so we went to check out the dungeon.
I guess while you were hanging from your wrists from the wood thing you could check out the gorgeous ceiling?
Then we went through the undercroft and an exhibit about Richard Neville (the Kingmaker), which was pretty interesting and new since the last time I was there 20 years ago.
My sister texted me asking if all the wax figures were still there so this was the nice photo I sent her to confirm that yes, still there doing their wax figure thing.
This is coming out of the undercroft and looking up at the state rooms and family apartments.
Then we wandered around some more on the outside, waiting for it to be time for our special dungeon tour, which was one of the things Abigail was MOST excited about booking.
And the engineers were extremely excited by this giant trebuchet.
This might have been my favorite view of the castle.
Then we had a few more minutes so we did a super super fast jaunt through some of the state rooms.
And then it was time for the special dungeon tour, Abigail's big moment!! She was seriously so pumped for this, it was very sweet. Lots of warnings from the tour people about it being scary and they didn't allow kids under 8, because they did NOT filter this tour at all. It was actually really hot in there and almost completely black, we were in the second or third room and the guy was describing precisely all the ways in which you could use a hook to torture someone when Abigail whispered in my ear "Mom I'm going to pass out" and I got my arms around here just as she went down. We just both sort of slowly went down to the floor, and we were in the back of the room so nobody noticed until I grabbed Neil as everyone was filtering out to the next room. We got Abigail up and I asked the dungeon tour guide where the nearest exit was, and we started walking that way when Abigail passed out again. So Neil and I ended up fully carrying her out and laying her on a bench where she revived pretty quickly but was so so so confused about what was happening and then extremely disappointed to realize that we couldn't go back on the dungeon tour (no re-entry was in the waiver). Poor kid!
Thankfully it was a nice cool day so the breeze really helped her. We asked if she wanted to go back to the car but she wanted to see more of the state rooms, so we spent maybe ten minutes looking through the state rooms before she started feeling kind of off again.
Every single ceiling was so fantastic!
Even the ceiling in the bathrooms in the undercroft!
Neil and I ended up swapping turns with Abigail outside (she lay down on the grass and fell asleep), so one of us stayed with her while the other did lightning-fast tours through the rest of the interiors.
All the stained glass was so beautiful.
One thing I really liked was the opportunity to learn about the millenium of history at the castle--so many periods were covered so well in so many different ways (IIRC this particular room was set up to talk about a visit from the Prince of Wales).
Thankfully Abigail felt WAY better when she woke up and was able to walk the mile back to the car (!!!). We tried to figure out a way to get the car to her but the way the parking is set up there was truly not a way to get substantially closer.
Then we started driving down through the Cotswolds where Abigail promptly fell asleep the second the car started moving. We stopped at one point so I could run into a store and try to find some electrolytes for her & applesauce, which was the only thing she wanted to eat. I took a photo of this one to text to Neil in the car because at this point I was SO tired from having been awake for two days straight that my brain wasn't really working, and I wasn't sure if this chunky applesauce would work. And I couldn't find anything I recognized as an equivalent of Gatorade or Pedialyte. I finally stopped a woman who looked like she was shopping for kids (based on her cart) and asked her for help and she was a total lifesaver and just the kindest lady and helped me to find everything I needed.
Then we drove to Bourton-on-the-Water, home of the most charming little model village and another thing Abigail really wanted to see. We weren't sure if she would be up for it so we decided to just decide when we got there since it was directly on the route to our AirBnB, and she decided the matter by waking up just as we crossed into the village and then throwing up SO much and then deciding she felt way way way better and wanted to go walk around, so we did.
This village is just the most darling thing, it's a scale replica of the village in which it sits (and even has increasingly tiny model villages).
Seriously worth a stop if you're in the area!!
Then we drove on a bunch of roads that we could not believe were actually designed for cars going both ways...
And finally got to our Airbnb, which might be the most charming one in the entire world.
I mean can you even?!
Neil built a fire and we got Abigail all cozied up and got some food and electrolytes into her.
She had absolutely zero interest in walking into the village with us for dinner, poor kid. So we left her with Netflix and I think she was thrilled to get rid of hovering overly-solicitous parents ("Mom, STOP asking me how I'm feeling!!")
Our AirBnB was just on the outskirts of the village, which itself was teeny tiny, you could easily walk the whole thing in five minutes.
And it was SUCH a pretty walk!!
Totally can see why so many things have been filmed there...
Loved this little war memorial.
All the tiny cottages had such cute names (and the doors were sooo tiny, I had to duck every lintel we went in and poor Neil was living the hobbit life).
Here's the Weaver's Bridge again, heavily cropped to get all the pedestrians out...
I loved the postbox in the village square. Sidenote: very few things in England had been changed from Elizabeth's insignia to Charles. The only ones that really stood out to me as switched-over were the uniforms on the Yeoman Warders at the Tower of London. Just about everything else (including the gates at Buckingham Palace) still bears Elizabeth's insignia.
We eventually picked one of the two pubs that was open and ordered dinner (we chose the White Hart).
Fish and chips for Neil (with garden peas not mushy! Thankfully the landlord gave us a choice!)
And steak pie for me, although we really just each ate both. Oh man, I was so insanely tired by this point and I don't think I really tasted anything other than the peas which were delicious.
Then we walked back to the cottage and fell asleep. I was SO tired that I fell asleep both wearing my compression boots and texting my parents to tell them we were set for the night. And it was easily the best night's sleep I'd had in months, so now I know the secret!!
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