Friday

20 May,

2016

Friday morning, we had plans to go to another castle and a topiary garden before doing a session at the Preston temple. As we started on our way, we noticed ourselves feeling tense and irritable with each other. When we missed the turn off for the castle, we decided we should just go straight to the Temple. We thought maybe our irritability (which we hadn't had much issue with since Sunday) might be partially the Adversary's attempt to prevent us from making it to the Temple. We felt much better with the decision to make the Temple our first stop rather than our second or third.

We set up the tripod to get pictures of both of us

After our Temple session, we met up with Andrew, who Peter met on his mission, for lunch. We had fun catching up with Andrew, and I got to try Yorkshire pudding, which was quite good. It's sort of a fried bread type thing that you pour gravy over and eat with mashed potatoes.

Then we went to see the Evans, a wonderful family Peter baptized while he was on his mission. The family had grown since then, of course, but we really enjoyed our visit. They met me at the door with flowers, which was the sweetest gesture.

After visiting with them, we headed down to Newcastle to our hotel. While bringing suitcases up the stairs, Peter managed to sprain his ankle quite badly, so we didn't do much else this night. We did go over to a little movie theater/shopping area to get dinner at Subway, but then we tucked ourselves in for the evening.

Saturday

21 May

2016

Peter didn't sleep well, and he woke me at about 5 or 5:30am, unable to put his weight on his poor, swollen ankle. So we ended up going to Argos to get him a set of crutches and to Boots to get an ankle brace. It was a good thing we did, too, or else Peter would never have made it through our day.

We went to Warwick castle (pronouced 'war-ick'), which I was quite excited about. The parking lot for it that we found had like a 20 minute walk up to the castle, which would have been horrible for Peter's ankle. Luckily, one of the parking lot workers saw Peter on his crutches, and secured a spot for us much closer. We were very grateful for his kindness; it turned a 20 minute walk into about a 5-7 minute walk.

Once we got inside, the castle grounds were somewhere between theme park and Renaissance festival. There were a few people dressed in period clothing, and there were various attractions in different areas of the castle.

The first one we went to told the story of one of the wars involving Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, nick named the 'King maker'. At different times in his life he held captive two kings of England and played a major role in determining the country's leadership. They had wax figures set up displaying the activities of the castle inhabitants as they prepared for battle.

The Earl's Horse

Peter trying on a helmet

Then we went inside the great hall, which they had set up more what it would have looked like more in Victorian England. I thought I had taken pictures in here, but I can't seem to find them.

Next we went to see a Bowman show. The fellow who did this is apparently a professor, and he gave a very interesting presentation.

After the Bowman show, I believe we grabbed lunch. Then we went up into the "Time Tower", which was a presentation about the different people who owned Warwick, going all the way back to the 900s when the village of Warwick was established.

We caught the end of their bird show, which was fun.

Then we climbed up to the oldest, main fortress, which is up on the hill.

We managed to miss both the trebuchet shows, but we did get a picture of the trebuchet.

It was easy to see how defensible this position would have been, especially with all the trees cleared, as they likely would have been when the castle was built.

Next we walked the castle's outer wall, which we both thought was the most interesting part of our visit. There are a lot of stairs, so we were really glad Peter had his crutches. But the views were amazing and we learned a little bit of history, too.

If attackers made it through the first portcullis, they would have had nasty liquids poured on them as they went through the gauntlet.

Looking through a murder hole

The 13th Earl of Warwick played a role in the trial, torture, and execution of Joan of Arc.

Now for my favorite little historical tidbit I picked up. The stairs in medieval castles are often uneven. This is not shoddy workmanship, but an intentional design to prevent enemies from running up the stairs at full speed. Also, the spiral staircases all turn counter-clockwise. This is so that the men defending the castle would have the advantage of more space for their right sword-arms, whereas the attackers would be cramped on their right hand side.

After Warwick, we headed over to Stratford-Upon-Avon. Unfortunately, we had underestimated how long Warwick would take, and all of the historical buildings here were closed by the time we arrived. But we took pictures in front of Shakespeare's house, anyway.

We tried to see if we could get into a ghost tour in Stratford, and while we waited we decided to do some laundry. We didn't end up going on the ghost tour, but we were very glad to have our laundry done before we got to our hotel in Oxford.

Sunday

22 May

2016

We left our hotel and wandered around Oxford for a bit. We found this museum that had free entry, so we went inside. We looked at the exhibits, but what we really enjoyed seeing was the architecture.

My poor hubby still using his crutch.

We went to sacrament meeting at 1pm. One of the things I had read about online was that there were places in Oxford where Harry Potter had been filmed, but we hadn't been able to figure out where to find them that morning. At church I ran into a girl from the US (her hubby was there for school), and she told me about Christ's Church where some of Harry Potter had been filmed. If we hadn't have gone to sacrament meeting we never would have found this!

Christ's Church

Room the Great Hall was based on

Stairs where McGonagall tells the first-years about sorting
before leading them into the Great Hall.

Then we drove out to Stonehenge, and once again the Lord was blessing us. It was about 2 hours out of our way to get to Stonehenge. We had looked up closing time online to make sure we wouldn't be late, and it said it closed at 7pm. We arrived at about 5:15pm, and there was a sign at the entrance that said the last tickets were sold at 5pm. I was so disappointed, but Peter just drove around this sign and we went in and parked, anyway. We went up to the ticket office, and they happily sold us tickets and told us where to get on the bus!

This was one of those places that I just thought was so cool to see in person after hearing about it and seeing pictures and such. And I love love love the clouds in these pictures!