Category Archives: Castle Acre Castle

#SEWES2016 ~ Sept 17 – Castle Day and Pub Supper

#SEWES2016

Sept 17 – Castle Day and Pub Supper

Not one of the nicer days we’ve had weather-wise but since returning to England from Wales, there have been cooler, rainy days.

Our first stop of the day was Castle Rising Castle.

Sept 17
Castle Rising Castle from outside the gift shop
Sept 17
Inside Castle Rising Castle – notice how the ceiling isn’t perfectly centered between the windows and the one is partly obstructed
Sept 17
Castle Rising Castle
Sept 17
Castle Rising Castle
Sept 17
“Monty” in the centre of the car park from the keep

The brisk wind, as evidenced by the billowing flag, made it feel even colder when I took to the top of the curtain wall to get a photograph of the castle keep.

Sept 17
The keep from the stop of the outer curtain wall

I’m a junkie when it comes to collecting interesting rocks when on vacation and despite the weather, I found an interesting one.

When we’d had our fill of this castle, we visited the toilets one last time and ventured down the road to Castle Acre Castle.

Sept 17
Sign in the car park about Castle Acre Castle
Sept 17
Castle Acre Castle
Sept 17
Tower house sign at Castle Acre Castle
Sept 17
Remains of the tower at Castle Acre Castle
Sept 17
Remains of the tower at Castle Acre Castle

We could have walked to Castle Acre Priory from here but with the weather threatening to close in, we opted to drive.

In the end it wouldn’t have taken any longer because dear Satnav Sally had a very hard time finding the place.

I don’t have pictures of the bailey gate but we did drive through it a couple of times.

We’d almost given up on the priory altogether, when we spotted an English Heritage sign at the main road so followed it instead.

Sept 17
Model of Castle Acre Priory
Sept 17
The other side of the model showing the reredorter or latrine
Sept 17
Castle Acre Priory
Sept 17
Castle Acre Priory
Sept 17
Sign describing the reredorter or latrine
Sept 17
Looking inside the remains of the reredorter
Sept 17
The end of the redorter showing both ‘canals’ that ran through it

We made a quick stop in Swaffham on the way back to Old Catton for a stop at a bank machine for some cash followed by another stop at a different services – this one located right on a roundabout.

When we got back to Catton Old Hall, I took my laptop down to the dining room where I connected to the Wi-fi and got the blog post up and scheduled for Monday. I didn’t like leaving it quite that long but I assumed that these places that offered free Wi-fi, it really did work everywhere in the building.

Don’s cousins were picking us up to take us to the The Fur and Feathers Inn for supper.

I got a number of pictures of all of us but there always seemed to be one person in each shot that turned out to be ‘not-so-good’ so they won’t get posted.

We had a lot of fun, a lot of laughs, and when we left the restaurant we went back to theirs for a drink. Since they wouldn’t let us even chip in on the bill from the restaurant, when we got back to theirs, I sneakily signed and presented Susan with a copy of The Secret of Hillcrest House as a thank you. We also had bottles of maple syrup for them but forgot them back at our room.

Don and I could have walked home but Andrew, who was the DD for the night took us back to Catton Old Hall.

Tomorrow, we’re moving on to Market Rasen with a stop for lunch at my writer friend, Nicky Wells’s house. But first, we’ll have to swing by Susan and Andrew’s house to drop off the maple syrup.