Yes, off again to more castles. I know Chris thinks I’m still really enamoured by them, but truth is I would rather find really nice fancy houses to look at so I can marvel at the wealth these people publicly flaunt in their homes. The unfortunate thing is that I don’t know if there are too many of them here in Wales and there is an over-abundance of castles.We drove two hours south west along the coast of Wales to Picton Castle. It’s half a fortified manor house and half fully developed medieval castle. It was first built around 1300 by Sir John Wogan. We weren’t able to take any pictures inside but in all honesty, there wasn’t anything spectacular to take a picture of.
The castle came into the hands of the Philipps family in 1697 by way of inheritance and was in the family until 1988 when a trust was created to offset the cost of inheritance tax. I think the guide called it “death tax.” There is still one Phillips heir that lives at Picton in a house outside the garden. He said the castle is too warm in the summer and way too cold in the winter to live their.
The guide took us around the first floor and the basement. We couldn’t go up on the second floor where the bedrooms are because, according to the guide, it’s not handicapped accessible so they’re not allowed to let people up. The first floor just had your basic dining room, living room, library, and drawing room. It mostly had pictures of the Phillips family and some other pictures. One believed to be from Renoir and a picture of either Princess Elizabeth or Princess Mary (Henry VIII’s daughter). The guide thinks it is Princess Mary. There was some furniture too but nothing too grand. He liked, and so did I, that the furniture had a “used” aspect to it and not some pristine piece that should be in a museum.
The basement level he showed us a few rooms that contained some old things such as an old kitchen. There was a rolling pin that made ravioli, and things to churn and make butter, along with a lot of other things. Then in the next room were things to do the wash and cleaning. A lot of the things that he showed us were things that were actually from another museum that when it closed, they donated it to Picton Castle, so they weren’t things collected from here directly.
I guess it also had some grounds and gardens but we didn’t walk around as we wanted to get to the next castle as they said the last tour at the next castle was at 3:30pm and it was already 1:30pm. Plus, it was windy and rainy so walking around wasn’t something we were too into. Surprisingly, Makenna was “decent” in her behavior here. When we first got here, she was a screaming miserable mess. Then we put her in the cart to try and sleep, which she didn’t, but she calmed down. When she started to put up a fuss in the castle we gave her some crackers.
We had stopped at the café they had here to grab a bite to eat and got her a ham sandwich. She ate a few bites in order to get chips but she quickly decided she didn’t like to do this anymore. That’s why we agreed to crackers when she asked.
Well we got to the next castle and it was ruins. There was no “formal” tour as we thought. Pembroke Castle in one of the largest in Wales and is on a site that has been occupied for the past 12,000 years! They say this because there is a “wogan” which is a cavern deep in the rock beneath the castle and it was a shelter for cave dwellers during the Ice Age conditions of the Paleolithic period. They know this because of the stone tools that were left behind. Chris and I took turns going down to this cave and it was pretty neat. I was surprised how big it really was and how it was underneath this castle and grounds we had just been walking all over.
The castle started to take shape after the Battle of Hastings as King William II (son of William the Conqueror,) came into Wales and by 1090 all of Wales had become under Norman rule in some sort of fashion. In 1093 a timber castle started to take shape. King Henry I had Pembroke Castle during his reign and this was the Tudor Line (or Tewdwr as it’s spelled in Wales). That was something that Chris and I learned yesterday was that Henry VIII and his line of family is from Wales. In fact, Henry VII (Henry VIII's father,) was born here in Pembroke Castle in 1457.
This castle also played a part in the civil War from 1642-1648. As war broke out, and Wales was known to be strongly in favor of Parliament and the mayor at the time strengthened the castle and town walls. Unfortunately, in 1648, they still lost and surrendered and Oliver Cromwell decreed that the defenses of Pembroke should be destroyed. He had sections of the town wall demolished and at the castle the towers were filled with gunpowder and blew out their external faces. It wasn’t until 1928 that it was restored including the towers being rebuilt.
We went up and down a lot of spiral staircases at this castle. Due to the restoration, a lot of it was still accessible and I thought it was neat how I could go up one spiral staircase, and walk along and be in another section of the castle and come down that spiral staircase and be someplace else. It was a bit confusing at the same time. They had some displays set up to show you how the castle had been used in the 1800’s along with the history of the castle. Unfortunately, the history was very confusing to follow on the story boards.
It wasn’t until we finally relented and let Makenna out of her cart that she really perked up and was happy. We figured that she desperately needed a nap and straight away put her in the cart when we got here. This made going up and down some of these staircases a real treat. But she was yearning to go into the puddles as she finally had her wellies on. Unfortunately, she also fell a few times and is not the quickest to get up so she got quite dirty and wet at both castles.
At one point, I went up to the top of the Keep (a heck of a lot of spiral steps,) and Chris kept Makenna outside. When I came down, she was talking about “did” “did” and sleeping. I couldn’t follow and Chris told me that they found a “dead” bird. Then Makenna went on to say how it was sleeping. I guess Chris tried to explain to her how the birdie wouldn’t wake up and was now with God. When he told her that it was with God, she said they should say a prayer. I thought that was really cute and insightful. I guess I could’ve talked to her about the dead bird from last week at the house. Maybe when it comes to the birds and the bees talk, I’ll have him do the explaining and she can say we should have a prayer about that too.
We walked around the grounds some more and then took off to head back to the hotel. We knew there was a carvery near the hotel and we were anxious to go but smart enough to stop at Burger King to pick up some chicken bites for Makenna, or so we thought. Well, we were smart enough it was the carvery who was of a different opinion.
We were brought in the BK bag with us, and were seated. When the manager saw it, he refused to let us sit and have her eat it in the section we were in. Chris tried to explain that it was like “baby food” in a sense and I said, she won’t eat food off the carvery. The manager said we could eat it in the bar but Chris didn’t want to have Makenna sitting the bar section and I agreed. Chris again tried to tell the guy that it was just for Makenna and it was food for her. The manager didn’t budge. He said, “I don’t think BK would like it if I came in and sat down with carvery food.” I thought that was a stupid example because BK probably wouldn’t care or notice, and it wasn’t us who was sitting there eating it, it was a child. We left.
We drove around quite a while to find another place to eat. I was really not in the mood for fast food but finally relented when all other options looked as though they were closed. At the last minute, Chris found a pub like place and we had a pretty good meal and we all three shared a very chocolaty piece of cake with ice cream. Again, Makenna was really well behaved here. Especially considering she had eaten most of her chicken bites from BK as we drove around looking for a place to eat. By the time we were done with dinner it was 9pm, but we didn’t get here until 8pm with all our driving around so that wasn’t too bad.
When we got out to the car, Chris asked Makenna if she had enough chicken to eat today and she said, “Yes,” quite happily. Then he asked her if she had enough ice cream and she very distinctly said, “No.” Then he asked if she had enough cake, “No,” was the reply again. I think what was funny was the way “no” was stated as if it was a sense of surprise when she realized she didn’t have enough ice cream or cake. It gave us a good laugh to end the day.
Makenna kept asking on the way back to the hotel if it was time for bed and she and we were definitely ready to have an end to this day. I have to say I truly love this child as she loves to sleep and so do I.
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