Saturday, 24 March 2012

Windsor Castle & Heston's feasts

It was promising to be a beautiful weekend of 16 degrees (and sunny) in London on the weekend, so Booba and I decided to do a day trip to Windsor Castle, Lizzie's weekend home.

I left Booba in charge of organising the train timetables and booking us tickets, so of course we had to demonstrate our sprinting skills through Waterloo train station, and of course we ended up fare evading (approx fine £250 pounds each) after we discovered that our Oyster cards didn't work out in the country side.

Logistics aside, a mere 45 mins train ride and we were in Windsor.




We both loved touring around Windsor Castle, originally built by William the Conqueror in 1066 (!). It certainly has withstood the test of time. It has been occupied for over 900 years by the royal family, and is the largest castle in use in the world. Lizzie goes there most weekends, and hosts the more important of foreign dignitaries (such as ourselves) there.




My favourite part was St George's church, where Henry VIII is buried with Jane Seymore (why she got the honour I'm not sure).





Booba's favourite part was the State |Rooms (which we were quite fortunate to see, as they are closed most of the year due to being in use). Talk about ornate. One room had 6 Renoirs. Another had the bed specially designed for Napolean when he came to stay (standard size) with his initials embroidered on the quilt.



We stopped for a quick bite (duck pate and nibblies) at a French restaurant, then walked down to Eton about 10 mins away. Eton for those not in the know, is the school that the posh send their kids to - its a boys school and they literally have to wear tails every day. It is unbelievably a public school yet is ultra reasonably priced at £30,000 + about £10k in extras (if you want your kids to have pens and books) and who knows how much on the school uniform.  No less than 19 Prime Ministers of the UK have attended Eton, along with the royal family.

The school:



Post Eton we caught a taxi to the tiny village of Bray, about 25 mins away. It is a mock tudor town with about 20 tiny houses, 1 restaurant and 2 pubs. The restaurant is the Fat Duck, by Heston, and the 2 pubs are ... owned by Heston. They call it Hestonville.

Bray - the entirety of it


Not being able to get into the Fat Duck (3 months wait list) we went to the Hinds Head for a drink (where Booba had to duck the whole time we were inside - the Tudors were midgets) for a wine and a Guinness, followed by dinner at The Crown (Heston's other pub). We had a starter of fried whitebait and mains of steak and ale pie. Delish. Topped it off with home made Eton fudge.

The Fat Duck:


All in all we had a grand time, and Booba had a good opportunity to cultivate his posh accent, a nice change from Cockney Booba.

No comments:

Post a Comment