This was the very pretty stable courtyard at Lulworth Castle. I was hoping for a fully furnished, functioning castle with lots of rooms on several floors to enjoy, but alas, it was an empty shell.
Del's King of the Castle, and to look at it from the outside it looks fantastically preserved for a five-hundred-year-old building, but sadly, there was a fire in 1929 that spread through the entire building and is now a large empty space inside. The conservationists have made it safe and stopped it from crumbling to the ground, but they have no intentions of restoring it to its former glory. I guess you could say this is now the biggest folly on an English Country Estate. Such a shame.
A Ghost
story for you, though. As I was walking through the castle, I stopped by an old
staircase and looked up to take some pictures of an arched doorway on the first
floor, as I did, some plaster came flying through the doorway and landed at my
side!! Was it aimed at me? I've never known plaster to fall from a wall in a
sideways direction before (especially when there was definitely no one up on
the first floor because there is no floor to walk on! Creepy.
There is still a complex network of cellar rooms that are still intact today, and as I walked into one room, I could smell a musky floral aroma, whereas the
rest of the cellars just smelt damp and musty!
Enough of Ghosts, here's Durdle's door on Lulworth Cove. I vaguely remember coming here about fourteen years ago, but I don't recall the steep hills across the headland so arduous a walk before. I think I nearly had a heart attack getting up this hill. In fact, when we reached the bottom again, two ambulance drivers were standing around doing nothing. Del jokingly told them they should fit a public defibrillator at the top of the hill. We didn't walk down to the door; we were both too knackered.
Lulworth Cove, where I had an old Geography lesson about Igneous, Sedimentary and Metamorphic rock formations... Ah, it brought back memories of my first year at High School flooding back... Anyhoo, the cove didn't always look like this and will continue to change due to the rigours of nature, but as the coastline continues to recede, it gives up more fossils and its Jurassic history.
Although we did beat a couple up the hill who were probably ten years younger and a lot thinner than us - the hubby even said, "Come on, we can't let them beat us," as we overtook them, so maybe we're weren't that unfit after all.
A
chilly, drizzly, dismal day, and we are just
leaving Southampton docks to spend a week on the Isle of Wight. Such a shame
the weather wasn't better, we couldn't even see the land we were docking into
at Cowes, it was that foggy.
To give you some idea of its true size, the black spot on the roof was a full-sized outdoor cinema screen, which we could see clearly from our ferry, and if you look closely at the dock, there are three HGV lorries with trailers lined up, and they just look like specks next to this floating hotel.
We were so impressed, I think I've managed to convince
Del to go on a cruise with me someday, as it's been my dream since I was a kid.
Yay, Canadian Cruise next year, me thinks!
