Kenilworth Castle

Back in March Adam and I purchased English Heritage passes. These passes allow us to visit English Heritage properties free of charge....I use the term "free" loosely, of course we had to purchase the passes in order to have free access....but I digress.

Over the bank holiday we put our passes to good use, we set off for Kenilworth Castle and the Elizabethan Gardens. It was a gorgeous day in between the rain and hail.

See the beautiful blue sky? Does it look like it rained and hailed on us? Well, looks can be deceiving:) We got wet every 30 minutes or so, but it was usually just a light sprinkle. Only once did we really get soaked.

Here we are walking the outside of the castle. It was a very peaceful walk because we were away from the crowds, it was just us and a cute elderly couple.

Kenilworth Castle is my favorite castle we've visited so far. It is the first castle we've seen that hasn't been reconstructed. I loved seeing and walking through the ruins.

Of course the castle had to be more than just ruins or no one would come to visit or spend money. There was a "Queen" at Kenilworth that day. She made a big entrance with her horses and guardsmen. All the Queen's Horsemen and all the Queen's men wore funny clothes and cracked lame jokes.

To entertain the Queen there was a jousting tournament. These two fine English specimens faced off. One round they competed with swords and the second round they used lances.

Where you stood determined which knight you cheered for. Unfortunate for us, Adam and I stood on the side of the loosing knight. Furthermore they didn't joust like depicted in the movie "A Knights Tale." Instead of using their swords and lances on each other they used them to strike cabbages off a pole. It was still cool but very G rated...

After the jousting tournament we walked through the Elizabethan Gardens...

The English take great pride in their gardens and work very hard to keep them looking immaculate. It is a perfect time of year to walk through gardens because all the flowers are in bloom!

After stopping to smell the roses we moved on to a falconry show. It was quite impressive. We watched how birds of prey, particularly hawks and owls were trained and used for hunting. We would have taken pictures but it was during the hail and rain storm...We really wished we hadn't left our umbrella in the car...

As always, Spencer did really well on our outing.
He enjoys being outside and he wasn't put off at all by the rain.

We've got another bank holiday coming up at the end of this month.
I wonder which English Heritage property we'll explore next...