Today’s adventure would be much lighter than last weekends, visiting only a single small ruined castle and a local town. After a little bit of home DIY to fix a gate, we set off to Whittington Castle.
We arrived around lunch time, half of the castle grounds were dressed up for a wedding, though we weren’t sure if it was a morning or afternoon wedding that had either been-and-gone, or was yet to arrive. All the decorations and chairs were out, but no-one in sight. The castle itself is made up of an outer stand-alone gatehouse, also known as a barbican, and a separate castle. The barbican is still mostly intact to this day, though the rest of the castle mostly lies in ruins.
Through the barbican and round to the left, a short bridge takes you across a shallow moat to the main castle area, where most of the remaining walls are about knee-high, except for one half-remaining tower on the left just across the bridge.
In the middle of the old castle grounds, I took a panoramic picture:
Back out of the castle and across the bridge, you can also walk all the way round the base of the castle, where more of the moat used to be.
Around the Eastern side of the castle, the path went through a little overgrown area that added a lot of atmosphere to the ruins.
There was also a lot of wildlife running around the grounds too, we saw a hare that scarpered when we were fairly close, and a little family of ducks. The ducklings must’ve been very young, since they were all extremely fluffy and fuzzy (zoom in to the second picture below to see they’re as fluffy as a kitten)!
Back round to the Western side of the castle site, there’s a small hill with a wooden bandstand at the top, which used to be used as a viewing spot for the medieval gardens that were planted to the West. Unfortunately there’s only a grass field there now, so despite the information board saying the “pleasure garden” is “laid out below you”, there’s not a whole lot to see here. It’s still a nice view of the castle though.
Back round to the front, I wanted to try and get a shot of both the barbican and the one mostly-intact tower, but it was difficult to do with the overgrown reeds, the moat, and the busy road behind me. I got a couple of shots I was happy with though.
Content with having explored the castle, we got back in the car and headed off to Whitchurch, since we’d never been there before. There was an outdoor maker’s market on, so we had a good walk around checking out all the stalls. We went to check out the Whitchurch Heritage Centre and found a few little local galleries, we met one of the artists there, Lisa Lochhead. Helen really loved her artwork so bought one of her prints, ‘Eyes of Grace’, pictured below (taken from her website, since taking a picture of the framed print with my reflection in wouldn’t do the painting justice). Both Lisa and her husband were lovely people, we had a great chat.
It was surprising how many artsy shops were around, there was a little pottery and glass-painting workshop called “Doodle Alley” a stone’s throw from the heritage centre, and pretty much every charity shop had a plethora of antique knick-knacks in, from toy soldiers to Toby jugs. Not to mention the Whitchurch Antiques Emporium, which was stacked from floor to ceiling with all sorts of antique goods! After a walk around, we decided to stop in at Benjamin’s Cafe for a cold drink and a slice of cake, naturally.
The cafe was very friendly, we had a chat with the owner who was really nice, and Helen bought a couple of boxes of tea from them before we headed on our way. After this, we picked up a few supplies for the evening, then headed home.