I met a few "lads" at breakfast this morning. We were talking about visiting castles and so naturally, I brought up Highclere Castle - the one where Downton Abbey is filmed. Downton Abbey is basically a soap opera that takes place in England during WWI. It's terribly overdramatic but I love it. So naturally, along with many middle-aged British woman, I wanted to visit the castle where it's all filmed.
Surprisingly, Michael, one of the guys at the hostel was down for the adventure. Who is Michael? Some 32 year old guy from Sydney Australia who wanted to see the same castle as me. I guess that information was enough for me to commit to a day-trip with him. Did we know where the castle was? Newbury. Where is Newbury? South somewhere. How can you get there? Public transit... somehow. Where in Newbury is the castle? Close- I hope. So off we went.
We took a train to Reading (pronounced red-ing) and then again to Newbury (pronounced noo-burry). We figured that of course, once we got there we'd see plenty of signs and flyers for the castle featuring the famous and very popular British melodrama. Were there? Of course not. The British are far too classy for such things. So we started walking in the direction we thought the castle was in.
About 2 miles later, we finally saw a sign for the castle.
As you can see, the sign doesn't even really say where the castle is, except for to the right of the roundabout. What street is it on? How far to the castle? We didn't know. And the worst part was, every person we'd ask would say "Oh that's about 2 miles down that way." Sometimes they'd point in different directions, and no matter how many miles we'd walk it'd still be "about 2 miles."
So we kept walking. We walked a good mile down this road
and a mile down this road
before we finally saw another sign for Highclere castle. I couldn't get over it. It's not like this is a vegetable stand on the side of the road (which I would've wanted to visit as well) I mean, THIS IS A FREAKIN CASTLE! A castle from a popular (by British and American standards) television show! Wouldn't SOMEBODY want to post a sign???
I'm still trying to find the American equivalent to a British castle, and I can't. I mean, even if something is not impressive to us, but we can still make money off it, we'll post a freakin sign. We want to make money. But the British hate eyesores (as I learned from their plain trains) and I appreciate that- now at least. At the time, it was driving me absolutely insane. But Michael and I were persistent, we tried to find the humor in our neverending walk. And even try to smell the flowers and appreciate the English countryside on our maddening journey.
Eventually, we started to see signs for Highclere castle more and more often. Finally, after 3 1/2 hours of walking, we saw the castle.
It was absolutely beautiful.
We took a tour of the castle and grounds, we made it half an hour before the castle closed! For those of you Downton Abbey fans, I found out that the servant's quarters, as well as Lady Mary's room are not filmed on location, but on stages on set. =(
At the end of the tour we celebrated in English fashion, with tea and scones.
I can't believe I liked clotted cream. It looks like milk that's been sitting out for a month. But paired with strawberry jam and a scone it's absolutely delicious. I loved it. I've been doing tea the British way too- usually Earl Grey with cream. I'm starting to get used to it, it's not bad. I do miss my monkey picked oolong tea though.
We took a cab back to the train station, not daring to make the trek again. I have to say though, the ridiculous walk there made it that much more enjoyable. It was a really fun day. On our way out of the castle we saw the Duchess who lives there driving up the grounds. I guess she lives in a small cottage with her husband on the land. Can you imagine such a life?
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