☆ Castles in the Sky ♬

Because we haven't been on a traditional Family vacation this year, we decided to visit various locations in England, well, sticking mainly to the East of England. The weather is always better, okay? England is full of decent history, full of fairy tale scenery and -- as long as the weather permits, beautiful blue sky and greenery.

We went to visit Tatershall Castle, July 9th to be exact. I have been here once, but this was close enough to twenty years ago (gross, am I showing my age yet?) It's rather depressing that my first thought is: How many people died here? Thus giving you that spooky aura of walking over graves, being followed by spirits and BLAH. But the day was too nice to even have negative thoughts! Here is a photo:

 

Many people expect castles to look how they do in Disney movies, big and luxurious. Looks tiny from the outside in my photo, but it is HUGE inside with plenty of rooms inside that makes you wonder what happened in that room, and what it was used for. The first room I discovered was actually a toilet, which was just a hole in some brick-seating, I suspect the toilet seat had been removed and filled with cement to stop people actually using it!

 

We climbed the bazillion thousand hundred million steps to the top, well 150 steps to be roughly accurate, no I didn't count. The view from above was stunning! It shows how flat Lincoln is too, no tall concrete jungles, the only things piercing the skylines were Churches. This is one of the few things I miss while in Japan, is lush greenery of open fields with a skyline that rolls on forever with nothing blocking your view.

 

Then we walked all the way back down to the bottom again! I took a photo but to fit as much in I had to squat down and it still doesn't capture everything hoped for. Once we reached the bottom, we did venture into the cellar, which was just a rather large open space probably used as food storage - but also a prison during the Civil War. Creepy! It was eerily cold and not really a very happy place to be in. After escaping prison we went and had a picnic under some trees looking out across at the castle. It was so scenic and I really-really enjoyed it. Afterwards we headed to the coast, since Skegness is just a hop skip and jump away.

 

Yay! Blog extras: Mm, ancient graffiti, some graffiti was from the 1800's which was pretty impressive, especially the typeface they used! Even their graffiti was artistic back then, proudly signed and dated:

 'H.Babington M.R Phillips 1849'. 

I'm easily drawn and attracted by such things, it's almost mesmerising but then something always spoils it.. of course graffiti from 2000's, mainly consisting of a badly scrawled penis, and 'fuck off' by the lesser intelligent of society.