28Feb2009: Day 278: Belvoir Castle

Today we travelled to Belvoir Castle (pronounced Beaver - no idea why!?). Teri says it has something to do with the people of the time being unable to pronounce it correctly in French. It is about 3 hours away from where we live. It is in the Midlands of England in Leicestershire. It is a beautiful castle over looking lands that stretch for miles and miles of fields. Very secluded. It is the home the Duke and Duchess of Rutland. It has over 300 rooms, 100 of which are open to the public and 200 which are still the private residence of the family. They said most of the rooms are bedrooms as they have a huge number of extended family that regularly visit the castle as well as a large number of fancy friends: Beckham and Posh, Sir Elton John, and numerous others are among their close friends that would regularly visit. It was interesting to walk up the stairs of this grand estate and look over a partition and see paper mache projects and boots as well as a child's truck as there is an area where you can just see over into the private area. I wonder what it would be like to live in a Castle as a child? It is a fairytale of a property.

The walls are covered with expensive and rare paintings, one of which was burned on one side as the castle prior to this one burned to 1/3 its size in the early 1800's. It is actually the fourth castle to be on the same site. So, this castle is relatively new, but it was built in the style of the old Gothic castles with the ornate carvings and intricate archways.

They recently filmed the Young Victoria movie here and they did several of the bedroom scenes in rooms we got to see today. They replaced one of the beds at a cost of 26,000 GBP! The Duke bought it for a fraction of the price after the movie was over and it is still in the room. Apparently, if you get married here you can stay in some of the rooms. So, there are hotel like water heaters for tea around and towels and nice looking bathrooms built in, so they have put in modern conveniences to help their guests enjoy all the old atmosphere. I guess it isn't appropriate to have Beckham and Posh over and ask them to relieve themselves into a hole that drops down into wheel barrow.

So, the movie is coming out here next week and they are giving tours around the castle describing how the movie was filmed here. Apparently, the Queen would not allow them to film in Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle, so they started a 12 week search around England for Castles that match the Victorian period and filmed most of the movie at these location "doubles" of which Belvoir was one. It also was the castle where the rich guy lived in the Davinci Code, but you only saw it for a few seconds. For the Young Victoria Movie, they actually turned the patio into a seaside town with water lapping up to the wall by digitally adding it. The actual Queen Victoria did actually visit here with her husband when she was doing a tour of the midlands. Also, James VI of Scotland (James I of England) stayed here on his trip down from Scotland to take over the throne of England. He was apparently fairly poor when he started down from Scotland but by the time he got to London he was one of the richest people in England. Apparently, Knighthood is actually a purchased title and he knighted 45 people along the trip or more. Even today it is purchased...a little brown envelope with money in it is given to the Sovereign.

It is unfortunate that they don't allow pictures inside the place, but the rooms we saw are quite amazing. The ceiling in the ladies drawing room was all gold and painted with fine works of art. There are famous paintings everywhere. There is a famous painting of Henry VIII by Holbien, which I think everyone who sees it would recognize it. Supposedly, if Duke & Duchess put pictures into public display the inheritance tax goes down, so they rotate the pictures out of the personal area into the public rooms periodically.

The video at the bottom is of Makenna in the nursery that they had in the castle. It had some really old toys, and some newer ones. She especially liked pushing the pram with the baby doll in it, and she kept wanting to get into this really old car. They also had a tea set and oven with cooking pans that she liked. We had to finally tell her that there may be other areas with toys to get her out of there without throwing a major fit.

Makenna was pretty good today, only having a minor breakdown, but the biggest problem we are having with her right now is that she likes to run away. She runs off laughing away and I have to chase her down. We haven't figured out how to stop this behaviour yet.