We spent the weekend visiting Fi and Mars, they’d invited us along to see England’s Medieval Festival at Herstmonceux Castle. The drive down was frustrating, the M25 showed it’s true colours (as usual) and we were stop/start all the way around. The weather on Saturday (as we drove down) was truly gorgeous and we had high hopes for Sunday (yeh, we’re dumb). Saturday night was fun and relaxing and we set off at around 10am on Sunday, in the rain, to get to the castle.
I’ve never been before and the grounds are pretty impressive, the castle itself is quite grand although it’s a reasonably modern castle. The day was really good, half way through the sun came out and we dried out which improved things. Food was hugely over-priced (but what do you expect), but the event itself was fun and the Falconry at the end was pretty impressive despite the wind.
I took a whole bunch of photo’s (except for the major pitched battle in front of the castle, because the rain was coming down too hard during that bit) which you can see over here.
Really enjoyed the weekend, excellent company, and the festival was really enjoyable.
Just seen this post as a related article to your “open letter”. Herstmonceux Castle is literally about 10 minutes from my house! This years festival is just a couple of weeks away now.
When you say it’s reasonably modern, it was still built in 1441, so a rather respectable 570 years old 🙂 Of course it’s had a lot of restoration which has kept it in very good condition over the years and it’s nowhere near as old as some, but it still just about classes as medieval.
Did you visit the old Greenwich Royal Observatory there? They moved to Cambridge in the 90s, I still remember feeling very sad at the time and I still believe it could have had a good future here. The buildings still exist though and it makes a great science museum now!
We didn’t visit the Observatory no! We really just spent most of the time watching the show as it were, and a little bit of shopping at the stalls.