Throwback Thursday 4 - Windsor Castle

Another 'throwback' to last Summer when my friend Robyn visited me in London and one of our excursions was a day trip to Windsor Castle, the town of Bath and Stonehenge. For this post I will only talk about our time at Windsor, stay tuned for later posts about Bath and Stonehenge!

We caught a coach from Victoria station early in the morning and travelled to Windsor, which only took about an hour.  It was a glorious summer day, and we walked from the car park through the old Royal Windsor train station up to the castle.

The oldest and the largest inhabited castle in the world, Windsor was originally built by William the Conqueror but additions have been made throughout it's 1,000 years as home to England's Kings and Queens.  

During the Second World War King George VI and his wife Queen Elizabeth were determined to remain in London at Buckingham Palace during the Blitz but joined their daughters (the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret) at Windsor during the evenings and on weekends. For the current Queen it is not surprising that her childhood home is apparently the castle she favours most.  She apparently loves to walk amongst the gardens here, and why not when they are so lovely?

After wandering around outdoors we visited the State Apartments; absolutely gorgeous and opulent, but unfortunately you can't take photos inside. We also visited the exhibition of Queen Mary's dolls house, the "largest, most beautiful and most famous doll's house in the world"! Built for the Queen by the British Architect Sir Edwin Lutyens between 1921 and 1924 it is a perfect miniature replica of an aristocratic home! Again, no photos allowed, but if you follow this link you can explore the different rooms of the dolls house in detail.

We were also treated to some 'pomp and circumstance' at the changing of the guard within the castle grounds:

We wandered back down the busy streets to get some lunch before continuing on to our next destination, and saw a little old steam train in the station.

All in all it was a very interesting start to our day, so stay tuned for the upcoming posts on Bath and Stonehenge soon! 

If you are interested in finding out more about Windsor Castle's history and attractions, have a look here.

Special thanks must also go to my friend Robyn who was the photographer for this blog post :)

Otters, and Wild Boar, and Moose; Oh My!

Saturday was a simply gorgeous day, sunny and warm.  Dennis and I went for a ride to another nature park in Lelystad, not the huge Oostvaardersplassen I've mentioned before here; although this one was still pretty big, and we saw lots of animals!

While it's not a huge open-plains type nature reserve (there are fences and enclosures to keep the animals in) it is still big enough to wander around for a couple of hours and the animals have very large enclosures.  The first thing you see when you arrive is this "bug palace", the playground area (with a flying fox!) and the information centre and restaurant:

There were lots of frogs making a LOT of noise in the pond, we even saw a couple:

We walked to the otter area first, seeing a big nest for the storks on the way;

These two (below) came up out of the pond and proceeded to have a lovely dust bath in the sun!

One of the storks popped by for a visit as well.  None of the animals seemed at all fazed by the humans, I guess they're used to being looked at and know we can't get in at them. You're even allowed to bring dogs into the park as long as they're on a leash.

It was just lovely walking through the woodland in the dappled sunlight, listening to all the birds as we went looking for more wildlife!

There were absolutely huge fish in this pond, swimming lazily around near the surface.

We could see a herd of deer on the other side of a lake, but they were a bit far away for good photos:

I was just about to record all the frogs and birdsong when this fellow appeared right in front of us!

He'd been for a dip in the pond, and was having a good old scratch against the tree! Again, completely unconcerned by how close we were;

Dennis even got some pretty good footage of it, have a look!

A bit further on we came across some more wild boar, with piglets!

They were so cute! Look at this one also scratching his head on a rock:

And the one in the middle here looking at the camera!

Er, and the one trying to hump another in the background...

Again, completely unconcerned by how close people were.

We also saw some moose:

Some swans;

I liked this giant bird's nest, kids could even get into it!

The restaurant has a deck overlooking the lake, would be just lovely to sit and have a drink there, we are definitely planning to come back and do so!

Our last stop before we went home was to see the Przewalski's horses! Endangered in the wild and originally from Mongolia, I was pretty excited to see some:

Very lovely. There were some areas we didn't get to see, so we will go back sometime soon and see if we can spot some other species of deer, beavers (unlikely) and perhaps some bison.  If you're interested you can read about the nature park here. It's in Dutch but should translate for you.