Day Six::
We travelled the furthest distance from our holiday home we'd been all week in our quest for Roman remains! The City of Chester started out as a Roman fort known as Castra Deva, 'the military camp on the River Dee' and there are still a surprising amount of remains visible around the city. We walked the entire circle of Roman walls encompassing the city centre (apart from a section being renovated which meant we had to follow the diversion route in place), which takes you past the race track, through the high street, past the cathedral, over the canal.... it's a really interesting route to follow with information points dotted along it.
You can also visit the largest amphitheatre in England (although there isn't a lot to show for it now) as well as several other sites and museums. I didn't take very many photos on my camera as we were doing a spot of shopping, drinking coffee, eating lunch and just meandering through the town which has very pretty, antiquated buildings- lots of them Tudor looking- all sort of lopsided and un-centred. If you want to go shopping in lots of posh shops this is a good place to go! All the high brow, big brand names were there.
Day Seven::
Old Oswestry Hill Fort is one of Britain's best preserved hill forts with the ditches and ramparts clearly visible (although personally I think it could do with some lawn-mowing and trimming to make them easier to see). All around the fort site are lumps and bumps in the fields which could be signs of previous settlements- where's Time Team when you need them? There isn't much here other than these huge earthworks as there isn't anything in the flat space at the top where the occupation would have been, but it seems a popular spot for dog walking!
It would be really interesting to see some of the structures put back into this space to make it clearer what life would have been like to actually live up here. Once we'd done a quick lap of the site and discussed what the many lumps and bumps may have been in the surrounding countryside, we hopped back into the car and moved on to our next destination.
Next stop was Whittington Castle which is looked by the community and is free to enter but you have to pass the guard swans before you can get in. We still had quite a bit of duck food left so were happy to offer it up to the inhabitants as payment. Swans are a bit bullyish when it comes to feeding them food. They don't actually want to eat it themselves but they don't particularly want anyone else to have it so we had to keep circling around to avoid them and their nippy ways.
The castle was originally completely surrounded by water, with various parts of the castle on different islands which could be retreated to and cut off if they were invaded. All that's left are a couple of pools of water and a partial moat at the front of the castle by the gate towers but it would probably have looked quite lovely (like an English Venice) with a garden on one island, buildings on another island, gate towers and defensive buildings on another island....
(Headless swans in the moat!)
Since our day was spent mostly on the outskirts of Oswestry, we thought we would re-visit the town itself (we'd been there on a previous day for the market) and wandered around the church, popped in to the visitor's centre, Poundland.... I didn't take very many photos on my camera during this though.
Day Eight::
Our going home day! We'd packed the night before, had our last fire in the fire pit and used up all of the wood, said our goodbyes to the temperamental freezer, ate leftover apple and pear crumble for breakfast and tumbled into the car.
As with our journey on the way up, we had planned a place to visit on the way home again to break up the journey, and went to Coughton Court, a National Trust owned Tudor house with a really fabulous garden!
The inside of the house was very impressive and it has several royal connections through the Throckmorton family. Bess Throckmorton was Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Elizabeth I and secret wife of Sir Walter Raleigh, both of whom were sent to the Tower of London by the Queen when this little fact was discovered. Raleigh was later beheaded in 1618. In one of the towers of the house is the gruesome sight of a head in a red bag on a chair (not a real head) which stems from rumours that Bess supposedly carried his embalmed head around with her in a red leather sack. Lovely!
There is also a rather large connection to Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot, when Catholic plotters attempted to assassinate King James I by blowing up Parliament in 1605. Robert Catesby and Francis Tresham were nephews of Thomas Throckmorton, and Robert and Thomas Wintour were also related to the Throckmorton family. All four were heavily involved in the plotting of the assassination, and there is an extended family tree exhibited in one of the rooms at Coughton showing how many other members of the family were involved in the plot and subsequently executed, either caught at the time or tracked down later. It's nearly all of the men in the family at the time!
Arms, ammunition and horses were stored in the grounds waiting for the uprising that was supposed to follow a successful assassination of James I and his government, but instead it was in the gatehouse that the family and their associates received word of the failure....and their doom. Dun, dun, duuuuuuun!!!!!
What's really interesting is that you can get up onto the roof of the court! The grounds stretch out around you and you can clearly see the two churches in the grounds, the catholic one much bigger and more impressive, built after you were allowed to be openly catholic again. There is a priest hole on one of the towers which, when discovered, still had a pillow, blanket, tapestry and leather altar hidden away in it!
The gardens are particularly lovely and include a walled garden, lake, knot garden, vegetable garden, orchard and bog garden. The walled garden was opened by Alan Titchmarsh! There are areas focusing on different colours and different themes which give the impression of different rooms. You enter and leave under a walkway of grapes dripping from the vines, into a larger space which splits off into pathways dotted with roses and archways, hops growing up one support and wisteria up the next.
One particular section had a long strip of grass up the centre and a purple and pink coloured flowerbed stretching the length of the right hand side.
On the other side was a hot flower bed with yellows, orange and red flowers. It was spectacular!
It was such a lovely place to stop off and finish our week away. My camera is stuffed full of photos of the gardens and all of the flowers- very inspirational for colour combinations for my stitchscapes!
I hope that you have enjoyed travelling along with me on our little holiday!
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