Norwich Castle

On Friday Misha was at work and I took the boys to Norwich castle. I was very grateful for the extra pair of hands provided by Melanie, my cousin's daughter, who's also still on school holidays.
Here's Gregor posing below the castle, which dominates the skyline of Norwich.

Inside the keep and Alastair proved to be a reluctant king. He sat on his throne, wore the gown but refused to put on the crown!

It's a great place to visit because it's not very large so the kids get a good sense of the space. We didn't visit the dungeons or the battlements - both are parts of special tours - which was just as well since there was plenty of stuff to keep them occupied. Gregor and I particularly liked the exhibit showing how the castle was built with no diggers.

There were examples of wooden scaffolding, levers and pulleys and a model design of the journey to transport the Caen stone to Norwich by boat.

You had to load the little stone blocks on and off the boats, and we liked that it all came in at the port of Great Yarmouth and then taken upriver to Norwich.

Once delivered you then had to build the castle and if you ran out of stone you had to go back for more. Alastair liked the spiral staircase and the series of passages and chambers.

He managed the steps really well and is getting quite ambitious with his climbing nowadays. He doesn't always have to hold on to something and is less likely to ask for help, something which Meli intuitively understood.

Once done with the keep we discovered some of the other galleries and exhibits on show at the castle museum. The natural history section looked a bit tired generally but Alastair didn't mind.

I soon realised you'd need at least another day just for the art galleries. There are wonderful paintings by artists of the Norwich School, some of which we saw briefly.

Gregor was spoilt by the array of paintings of ships in storms.

We'll leave the porcelain and silver and, apparently the largest teapot collection in the world, for another day. We met Auntie Judy for lunch and here she is kissing the boys goodbye and packing them off with a special halloween chocolate.

On the bus ride back to the train station Alastair couldn't contain his glee when the brakes creaked noisily to a stop every 30 seconds; Norwich is full of traffic lights.

Once back on the train for the short journey home the boys tucked into their chocolate cats with silent delight.

When I asked them what they liked best about the castle, Alastair said the train and Gregor the bus!