Portsmouth

11/4 – Part 2 – Arundel Castle – afternoon tour from Portsmouth
Many years ago my sister Kaye and I read a series of books by Elsie J Oxenham, the ‘Abbey School Series’ published by Collins with distinctive pale blue or red binding, and by other publishers with bright pictures of jolly schoolgirls having adventures on their covers. They followed the lives of cousins Joan and Joy Shirley, their family and friends, and were set in an old abbey (based on Cleve Abbey in Somerset which we’ve visited), a manor house and………a castle. The castle in the book is called Kentisbury and it’s based on the beautiful Arundel Castle which is 45 minutes away from Portsmouth so I wasn’t going to pass up a chance to visit.

Off we went, a group of 25, to the home of the Howard family, the Duke of Norfolk, most senior non-royal duke, who is busy in his hereditary role as Earl Marshal of England, currently responsible for planning King Charles’ coronation – he’s had a busy time lately with the Queen’s funeral, and the Duke of Edinburgh’s before that. The castle build was started in 1067, has been in the same family since 1138, has had many alterations and additions, is open to the public from April to September (too hard to heat for the rest of the year), and the family lives in houses around the estate, not actually in the castle itself.

At the gatehouse there was a pretty display of tulips and spring flowers, they are getting ready for the annual tulip festival and all around the grounds and on the slopes below the castle walls are apparently 100,000 tulip bulbs, what a sight that’ll be in a couple of weeks, there’s a bit of colour already coming out. There are also beds of daffodils, I’d never seen white daffodils before, and pink blossoms coming out.

We started in the huge private chapel, the start of a feast of beautiful stained glass throughout the house, I love all the colours and stories in the windows. The chapel is used by the family for special occasions, and the family christening gowns are in a display case. We were able to visit several rooms, too many to detail, but included an enormous ‘great hall’ which had a couple of lion skin rugs in front of the huge stone fireplaces, and even two beautifully painted snow sledges and an old and well-used sedan chair but even so you could see the lovely silk lining. It wasn’t very big so the users were either quite small or very squashed.

There was a picture gallery stretching the whole width of that part of the castle, little seating nooks looking out onto the ‘motte and bailey’ castle keep on top of the original hand-built ‘hill’ now in the midst of the gardens, a beautifully set up dining room with the family china and silver displayed, a billiard room (once a bedroom) with a huge billiard table taking up almost all the room, Queen Victoria’s bedroom (specially decorated for her three-day visit). My favourite room was the library, the photo shows only half of it, very ‘Harry Potter-ish with dark wood and sumptuous upholstery, glass-fronted book cases, cosy seating areas along one wall, some with fireplaces. It was lovely. We could only look around one main level, then down to the servants area though not in the kitchens. There were big solid black radiators on the walls and the castle was surprisingly warm, the heating bill must be horrific, no wonder they close in winter.

We had two hours to look through the castle, the extensive gardens if we wanted, and had time to visit the second chapel which is unusual in that half is a Catholic chapel on the castle side, and there’s a huge semi-opaque glass window in the middle which divides it from the Anglican parish church on the other side, no way through for tourists. It dates back to the 1300s and is partly a mausoleum for the family with stone effigies, but also has a huge stained glass window and beautifully carved seats. I took a photo of the ceiling, very detailed carved faces looking down on us.

Having spent nearly 90 minutes in the castle we had about ten minutes in the chapel and when we came out it was raining so headed back to the bus and were back on the road by 4pm. We walked back through the ‘dry moat’ (actually a bit sticky underfoot with the rain), could see some of the gardens but it would take a day to see everything in and around the castle and town. Maybe we’ll get back here one day.

And I have to say that Kaye still has the books and I dip into them every now and again, more than 55 years on. Maybe we never really grow up?
https://www.arundelcastle.org/castle-history/

Back on the ship we just made it to the daily ‘Port Talk’ giving information about our next destination, we were looking forward to Wednesday 12th, a full day ‘In the Footsteps of Monet’ taking us to his house and garden in Giverny (and the famous waterlily ponds) and on to Rouen .......BUT…….the announcement was that French ports were closed due to strikes, and we would have to spend the day at sea as there were no other ports to take us, plus the weather wasn’t great, so we would aim for a whole day in Bruges on the 13th rather than arriving at 1pm. Great, and having been to lovely Bruges in 2004 we chose a morning tour to a coastal village, confirmed our afternoon tour outside of Bruges to a castle and that was Thursday sorted.

The evening’s entertainment was a pool party: the two Filipino nightclub singers, the four resident singer/dancers and the resident band were all in top form, had a couple of songs from Francesca (classically trained/crossover singer) the assistant cruise director. We even had a bit of a dance, the music was great. Finished around 1130pm, oldies go to bed early.Read more