"The essence of pleasure is spontaneity" - Germaine Greer
There is something about myself that I need to admit, I am a compulsive planner, as I may have already mentioned. Back in my pre-kids days I was a financial planner and the need to plan everything, meticulously, has stuck fast. I don't generally drop everything and go, I plan carefully, choosing a location then finding accommodation, attractions and places to eat. I can be found regularly trolling through trip reports on my favourite sites, such as Slow Travel, and asking question after question to get it just right.
But this weekend I was faced with unplanned time, hard to believe but true. I had already worked through much of my list of must do day trips and those left were in part not open to the public until March. To compound the problem the forecast predicted glorious blue skies so we though we should take advantage of it and get out and about both days. This was not a stay at home and catch up on jobs around the house weekend, no way, but where to go?
I remembered that Rob had really enjoyed exploring gardens and grounds, Julian had been talking about wanting to visit a maze all week and Emma loves grand rooms the best. So where could we go this weekend that ticked all of these boxes?
Then suddenly I had a crazy idea so I turned to Rob and said "lets go to Hampton Court, it's a palace with royal rooms for Emma, a maze for Julian and fabulous gardens, oh and it two hours away so lets stay in a B&B". Once Rob understood that I meant first thing the following morning and he got over the shock of the idea, and the shock of me calling the owner of the first B&B I could find, at 9.30 at night mind you, he quite liked the idea and so Hampton Court it was.
When Emma came sneaking into our bedroom at 7.30 the next morning I'm sure she expected to be told to come back in an hour, instead we jumped into action told her the plan and woke Julian. Somehow it still took until almost nine to be ready to leave but we were on our way and the sky was blue and it looked like a very promising weekend.
We basically only had to follow the same road for most of the trip and in an hour and three quarters we had arrived at the Wisteria Cottage B&B in East Molesey and met our lovely landlady Sue and her gorgeous friend, Labrador George. This was B&B they way we had hoped to experience it, as welcome guests in the home of a friend. It was terrific, for only ninety pounds we had two separate bedrooms and a bathroom to ourselves. So we had our privacy, which we lacked with hotel rooms, but Julian the night time wanderer could still come in to our bed in the night. In fact the next morning I woke up to find myself in bed with Julian and Emma whilst Rob had moved into the kids room. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Hampton Court opened at ten and it was close to eleven when we arrived but there was only a very short queue which we skipped altogether with our Historic Royal Palaces membership. We went and collected our audio guides which Julian was denied, however the girl said he could always take the kids trail brochures and he could read that instead. I decided that it wasn't necessary to explain to her that at age four an audio guide is simple to operate but reading is way beyond his abilities. As it turns out Emma wasn't interested in listening to the guide and we didn't make much use of it anyway.
We were lucky to be at Hampton Court on a weekend when the monthly Tudor cooking demonstrations were going on in the kitchens. These kitchens, an amazing site in themselves, really came to life with a team of chefs in Tudor costume cooking up a feast. Emma was asked to help and was given the task of grinding long pepper with a mortar and pestle to add to a cheese pie. A shame we didn't get to eat the pie, it sounded delicious with soft cheese, butter, cream, eggs and spices.
We were also shown that a fire can be started by striking a sharp piece of steel against a rough piece of steel, far quicker than by rubbing two sticks together. We then watched a small piece of pork being skewered on a rotisserie pole and placed on the spit racks over a huge fire. There was enough space that at one time four spit boys would have worked in this fireplace turning a total of eight spits, together with another four or so fire places operating to the same capacity in order to feed six hundred people two meals day. Emma had a go turning the spit later in the day, when yes we returned to see if there was any food to try but no luck, however she did enjoying turning a little butt of beef on the spit for awhile.
After the kitchens we visited the stunningly beautiful Chapel Royal which was decorated largely by Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and while she lost her head her initials can still be seen here in the carvings in the chapels ceiling. Henry's son Edward was baptised here and the heart of his poor mother, Jane Seymour, is said to be buried under the alter. There is a beautiful organ up high on one wall, which we were lucky enough to hear played and Emma was excited to learn that Handel, whom Emma has learnt about at school, is said to have played.
We then visited the very grand William III apartments, which were badly damaged by fire in the late 1980's and reopened in the early 1990's. We found it interesting that a number of rooms, such as the grand bedroom, really were more for show than for use, with a smaller more cosy bedroom close by to actually sleep in. Knowing these little details made these "royals" real people for us.
Julian by this stage had reach "I've had enough of this, I was promised a maze and I want it now". So we managed to distract him with the promise of lunch and as we were entered the courtyard containing a grand fountain and a café we spotted none other than Henry VIII and one of his courtiers entering from the garden gate and walking around the covered walkway right over to where we were standing. They were dressed in authentic garb, right down to their prominent codpieces the kids thought hilarious. He stopped to speak to his subjects including a sweet little two and a half year old girl encouraged by her parents to curtsey to the king. He graciously allowed her to rise and asked her all about herself and the kids thought it was great fun.
Once he had passed by it was time to get back to the task at hand, feeding the hungry kids. We enjoyed a lovely spiced parsnip soup with wedges of brown grainy bread and the kids shared a huge toasted Panini. On the way out we were very glad we had arrived when we did as there was a very long queue for a table.
Despite Julian's objections we pressed on the see the Henry VIII apartments and even he enjoyed seeing the last royal great hall built in England, especially as he and Emma got to sit at the high table and pretend they were the king and queen presiding over a great feast. And here I will insert a reminder about the importance of doing your reading before visiting a special place. While in the spectacular Great Hall we were reading the menu and etiquette notes on the table clothes and didn't even spare a glance for the amazing tapestries on the wall which were ordered by Henry VIII for this space and brought out only for special occasions and so have survived remarkably well. Apparently they cost 2000pounds while Hans Holbein, the famous Tudor portrait painter, had only a 30pound per annum retainer. Perhaps we would have done well to listen to the audio guides.
We found Tudor board games in the Great Watching Room which adjoins the Great Hall and the Garderobe (toilet) which led off from it made Julian laugh, four year olds all seem to love toilet humour.
I loved to see the famous paintings of the Tudors and their contemporaries, while these painting are so familiar from books and television to see them close up was pretty special. We didn't see any ghosts along the way and didn't book to come back for the ghost tour in the evening but many people say they have seen interesting things here.
Some of the rooms were closed for renovation but we had seen quite enough inside today and decided it was time to return the audio guides, check on the roast in the kitchen and head out to the gardens. When we entered the garden directly in front of us was a beautiful fountain however mother nature surpassed the beauty of the man made garden ornaments by spreading a huge rainbow across the sky that we could see from end to end and it was magnificent. People simply stood and stared open mouthed at it.
Many year ago I visited Hampton Court in summer and while I preferred the lack of a crowd today, the garden here in summer made a lasting impression on me that a winter visit could not live up to. We didn't enter the formal garden, but we had viewed them from the windows earlier. Instead we went in search of the maze which we found behind the Wilderness, where we found not only Snow Drops but also Daffodils in bloom.
When we had told our landlady that we were off to visit the Maze she told a story of lasting terror after having been lost in a maze as a young girl. With this in mind we decided to keep together in the maze, which is the oldest of its type in Britain. It probably took us thirty minutes to make our way in and around the maze before we found the centre and then it was much quicker to retrace our steps out again.
Despite the blue sky it was freezing cold and so we decided to have a cup of tea to warm up in the tiltyard before we called it a day. We had expected our visit to take up most of the day but we still had a few hours left so we decide to take a drive to Richmond Park to spot some deer, something you don't see in the wild at home. We were thrilled to see so many and so close up as we drove around the park, but we didn't get to stay for long as the gates were soon to close. And so we went in search of an early dinner.
We found a Chinese Restaurant in East Molesey and after a less than memorable Chinese dinner we called it a day. The next morning after enjoying our continental breakfast and getting lots of good advice we checked out of Wisteria Cottage having decided that we really needed an outside running around kind of day before the drive home. We drove only about five minutes away to Bushy Park which was filled with people with the same idea, to get outside on this sunny, but very chilly, winters day.
Firstly we visited the very well equipped playground (apparently Rob saw a sign saying no photography but didn't tell me until after I had snapped a few quick pics). It was terrific while we kept moving around but once Julian decided to sit and play in the sandpit Emma and I decided it was much too cold sit still and head off for a brisk walk to warm up.
Last week at the Spread Eagle in Stourhead we had such a delicious roast dinner that we decided to make it a quest to find the best Sunday roast in the UK and perhaps beyond,. So after spending some time at the playground, which was later abandoned in order to climb trees instead, we decided it was time to walk back towards Hampton Court to the Lion Gate entrance to give the Kings Arms Hotel a shot at the title.
It was a lovely walk through Bushy Park and though it was only midday when we arrived we thought it better to have lunch right away before scores of people at the park had the same idea. We were able to take the last available table in the bar area, a beautiful timber booth the kids loved, which was lucky as the restaurant was fully booked. The Kings Arms is a one of those quirky old English Inn's were people bring their dogs with them for lunch, the dogs being warmly welcomed with a bowl of dog biscuits at the front door. There was a lovely crackling fire around which many people, with their pooches, were sat reading the Sunday papers.
We all chose the roast lamb with mint sauce and gravy, and the servings we received were more than generous . Though the kids struggled with their kids servings they managed to finish everything eventually. And the verdict; sadly the meat would cooked longer than we would prefer as well as being sliced very thinly and lacking seasoning, but this could of course be the English way. So while we loved the ambiance, the service and the canine company, the meal was a little lack lustre.
While eating lunch we had been wondering together just how quick we could manage the maze if we tried it again. After all it was next door and our membership meant we could visit as often as we liked. With the challenge set and the maze only a few steps away we were off, slowed a little by our full tummies but also moving fast to keep warm. By the time we had reached the maze we were at top speed, excusing ourselves as we charged past families looking a little lost, as we must have the day before, while laughing like crazy. In the end the kids made it in three and half minutes, while Rob and I got stuck behind frustratingly slow people with a pram. We were grateful that we had free entry as from start to finish we would only have been in the maze less than ten minutes. We decided to try a long walk in Bushy Park to see if we could find any deer and work off our lunch.
A good couple of hours were spent wandering around looking for deer but finding other things instead, such as huge piles of autumn leaves that we delighted in throwing about. Next time I hope remember to give Julian clearer instructions, such as "leaves only no rocks or sticks" as sometime his hand full of leaves contained painful extras. Rob and Emma pretended they were merry men in the forest with their jousting sticks and Julian collected lots of sticks.
I'm sure if we had initially suggested to the kids that we were going to go for a long walk they would have been less than enthusiastic but this adventure where we kept finding fun things to look at was a different story. At one stage we found a lake bursting its banks and we had to warn the kids to not get too close, because Julian looked keen on falling in and I'm sure that would have upset the people fishing. Moving on we found terrific dens made of tree branches leant against a low tree branch. We were not sure who built them but wondered if perhaps someone was taking the National Trust
50 Things to do before you are 11 3/4 challenge. This is a terrific way to get the kids outside and trying different fun activities, I must print it out when we get a chance and start ticking them off.
The much anticipated deer were seen only from a very great distance (this photo was taken using a zoom) to Emma's great distress as she had been really looking forward to seeing the deer again. But time was getting on and we estimated that it would have added at least half an hour to our walk to reach them and time was running short and the light was already fading and so it was time to find the car and begin the journey home.
Arriving home in early evening with tired and grumpy children I felt less than enthusiastic about planning the next adventure and think after nearly six weeks since we left Australia perhaps next Saturday we will just stay home, do nothing and recharge our batteries. Still it was a terrific weekend we are glad we fit in unexpectedly.
