1) For my last full day with them, the boys planned a light day seeing the neighborhood historic house: Kenilworth Castle! It’s a 20-minute walk from their home! All JP has to offer is the Loring-Greenough House, which is a postage stamp compared to this expansive ruin.
And there it was!
2) There are so many little twisty ways in and out of Paul and Christian’s little neighborhood of wide streets and big sky (I didn’t see any large old trees in the immediate vicinity). This time we went a different way, and before you knew it, a big ol’ honkin’ section of ruin came into view.
3) We three walked along, sometimes single file, sometimes three abreast as the walkway permitted. To enter the castle grounds we had to cross the roadway at a curve where I couldn’t see what was coming in either direction and NO crosswalk or traffic light or stop sign. So, since I was far too busy enjoying this vacation to get into some sort of accident requiring hospitalization, I had a bit of a moment mauvais.
Of course England looks like this.
4) The whole ruinous mass, including the approach, is just what We Americans think England is - and ought to be. (Not a ruin, of course, but of a majestic natural beauty that appears to have been tamed satisfactorily.)
The approach.
5) We paid our money and I went through the wrong turnstile or something, and then off we went into the grounds. First stop: the gatehouse, which had been used as a private residence as late as the 1930s. These were the only interiors there were to see, and this included the last room that had anything left over from the Actual Castle Before It Fell Apart, as well as some museum exhibition rooms on upper floors. What we saw was charming.
The entrance to the gatehouse.
An interior in the gatehouse. The mantel used to be in the castle.
6) After that, though, we came to the real Piece of Resistance (as the French say): the recreated Elizabethan privy garden. Opened in 2009 after painstaking research, Whoever Was Responsible For This looked not only at period documents and illustrations, but archeological evidence of exactly where the garden was, and what was planted where and how. Needless to say, I was enchanted.
My last view of the garden, but I include it at the start of my tour of it to give an idea of its scope.
We were so fortunate with the weather!
There was a great deal of lavender in the garden.
6a) This was also a helpful reminder that the Elizabethans planted their gardens for scent as much as sight, if not more so. This very day (in October) I was explaining to a friend that the Tudor court moved from castle to castle so often so they could scrub up, since all the men just pissed in the corners wherever they were. Fancy living in a toilet! Bleah! And bathing wasn’t exactly a daily custom, either. So the people of this period valued plants with a sweet smell, perhaps even more than those with a pretty blossom.
Yip, yip, yip!
6b) Oh yes, I was all “Yip yip yip!” excited going through this garden, and having inspired thoughts about my condo association’s triangular plot - just like I did in 2008 after getting to visit Versailles and the kitchen gardens of Marie Antoinette’s fantasy farm village Le Hameau. The difference now, of course, is that my time is my own in the spring!
My patient hosts.
7) Paul and Christian made it up the stairs sooner than I did (they were very patient - but then, they’ve seen it all before, more than once), and we continued our tour through the ruins. Looking at the photos now, two months later, I think “Who cares if that’s the kitchen, or what part of the castle it is? The garden is so beautiful!” But these ruins had true scope and grandeur, and it was thrilling - and a bit scary - to ascend to the windswept heights to look over the surrounding countryside.
The garden from far above.
7a) Insert John of Gaunt’s Speech Here.
The joy that is Christian. It really was windy up there!
7b) Marvelous, too, to see how the wind was carving furrows in the stones of the castle. It made me think immediately of the tombstones in Whitby, which I got to see in 2013.
8) The time came for us to head out, and of course we stopped by the shop. I was mad to get a book about the garden, but the only one they had was gulp 40 euros. Worth the investment, but sweet mercy goodness. I was hoping for a pamphlet along the lines of How We Did It.
9) Back across the road - another moment mauvais pour moi - to lunch at the neighborhood pub, the Clarendon Arms. (There were other neighborhood institutions we never did get to take in during this busy week. I will have to return . . .) I remember a pleasant atmosphere, and aperol spritzes for me.
My only shot in the Indian restaurant.
10) In the evening we boarded a bus and went across Kenilworth to a superb Indian restaurant where Paul and Christian were well known and the décor was maybe a bit Blade Runner nightclub: gold and silver brocade, blue neon. My test of an Indian restaurant is tandoori chicken or chicken tikka masala. Curry just doesn’t sit well with me; it gives me bad dreams. Everything we ordered was just superb.
11) By the time dinner ended it was chucking down rain, and the nice maitre d’ called a taxi for us. I’m afraid I created some confusion because I keep forgetting that English cars have their steering wheels on the other side.