Kimbolton Castle, a Sleepover and Swimming in Sand!

Kimbolton Castle minus the moat!

A few days ago, I went to Kimbolton Castle in Huntingdon! Kimbolton Castle is where Catherine of Aragon lived for the last few months of her life. Catherine was Henry the VIII's first wife. and a Now, Kimbolton Castle isn't actually a castle, it's a school! I admit, I would quite like to go to school in a castle!

The gallery where Catherine was held prisoner

Me, Tilly, Lavinia and some other home-educators had a tour of the castle, and there were even a few questions to answer and a Tudor Trail questionnaire to fill in. The day before, I  had researched everything about Catherine of Aragon, so I knew most of the answers! There was a man who showed us what the Tudor's used to wear. Apparently, little boys wore girls dresses until they were about 6 years old and didn't get their hair cut so they really looked like little girls! Really rich children wore mini versions of what the adults wore, like dresses and expensive jewels!

The stairs up to the main banquet room

The castle was really awesome, it was just a shame so much of it was changed over the centuries. A whole corridor full of portraits and pictures had been removed!  Even an entire wall had been moved to fit in a giant staircase! We did get to see what the wall used to look like! It was made from massive rocks and stones which were cracking and it looked very cold!

The exposed wall and tiny widow

In the Tudor times, it was often very dark and cold because they only had candle for lights and a single fireplace to warm up the entire castle! Also, the windows were so small that they didn't let in much light or warmth from the sun.
The water in the Tudor times was very dirty and contaminated, so poor people drank beer and rich people drank wine! Even the children drank the wine and beer!


A few years ago, there was a burst pipe in the castle and they had to remove a wall, which uncovered the original stone castle wall in a corridor! Catherine of Aragon would have walked down that corridor and looked out of the tiny window into the outer courtyard! When mom imagined Catherine walking down the dark, damp and eerie corridor she felt a shiver down her spine! Maybe the castle really is haunted!

The creepy corridor and genuine Tudor wall!

Actually, people say that they see and hear the ghost of a mysterious man in the castle grounds shouting angrily and shaking his fists in the air. He is wearing Tudor clothes and he is the ghost of a previous owner. He was a horrible bad tempered man and one day he was so angry he threw his own baby out of a top floor window on to the concrete below!

Anyway, it was really awesome to see a castle up close! It was a bit eerie though, I kept expecting to turn around and see the ghost of Catherine!

There were lots of stone carvings around the castle including  ugly gargoyles and griffons.

After that, we went to Grafham Water for a play for a bit. Mostly me and Tilly just messed around on the swings because there wasn't much else to do and I didn't feel very well.

When it was time to go home, Tilly came with us for another sleepover! It was only for one night, but it was really fun! Tilly got to hold the guinea pigs and we played some Nintendogs instead of Sims and Minecraft because my laptop was acting up!

Noah!

Dan

The next day, we had to get up early to go swimming at Oasis. When we got there, the queue was massive because the schools were out.If we waited in the cue, and it would be a l-o-n-g wait, we would only get one and a half hours swimming which isn't nearly enough time to swim about!
So instead we went to a park that's basically just a gigantic sandpit with a slide! It was so much fun there, but a little, bratty schoolkid kept annoying me! She kept kicking sand into my face and filling in all of my holes that I dug! Thankfully, she left us alone after a while (well actually, Lavinia told her to go away and it worked!)

We dug a deep hole and it took ages!

Lucky we had our swimsuits on already!

I loved playing in the sandpit and digging holes, but in the end there was sand all over me!
We decided to go back to Oasis, hoping that the queue had gone down, but it hadn't! Pesky school kids.

Since the queue at Oasis hadn't went down at all, we decided to go to another park! I've forgotten the name of this park, but we've been there before! Oh wait, it's Priory Park! It has a gigantic forest at the back of it, so me, Tilly and Lavinia just played in there. We decided to be survivalists and we had to get weapons (sticks!) and make our own shelter! In the end we didn't actually have time to make a shelter because we spent too much time just collecting sticks, but it was still really fun!

Me and mom got home really late so we had takeaway for tea.