Escaping from the conversations and chit-chats with people you don't know, have never met before in your whole life and will probably never meet again that followed Fred's funeral and declining the kind invitation to a get together with Fred's stepfamily for tea and ham sandwiches in a King's Lynn hotel, we made our excuses and left heading three or four miles out of town to this wonder: Castle Rising. Built in 1138 by William d'Aubigny this is one of the most famous castles in England or so say the people who run it. The gatehouse and keep are restored and in remarkably good condition and you can wander around inside (we'll keep that for another day). The embankments around the three baileys are also in fine shape and amazingly steep.
This place is most famous for being the retirement home/prison of Queen Isabella after she'd been deposed by her son Edward III in 1330 or thereabouts. Isabella, you will recall, had her husband, Edward II, murdered in a very particular fashion involving a red hot poker, she then set about ruling with her fancy man, Mortimer, it all ended in tears as it usually does ... she seemed to make herself quite at home here, making alterations to the buildings, running up huge debts and generally enjoying herself as any self-respecting mariticidal ex-monarch should; even her son, the king, dropped by for tea and scones.
Margot, who used to bicycle here as a youngster from King's Lynn, tells me of more recent goings on involving satanic effigies being nailed to the door back in the early 1960s, a sheep’s head with thirteen thorns stuck in it was also found... but I just call that NFN.
The weekend in black and white is here.
