Snow, snow & -30 again

Not much news here. We got a bunch more snow over the weekend and the temperature has dropped down to -30 again. *sigh* Luckily this time it's not supposed to stay around for as long. By Wednesday we should be back in the +'s again during the day. It's so nice that the days are getting longer, it sure makes winter feel a bit more bearable!

So I suppose since I don't have anything horse or sidesaddle related to chat about, I'll continue on with my England/Scotland trip.

Our third day in England we went to Windsor. We took a train from London's Paddington station (We tried to find the statue of Paddington Bear but couldn't find it) to Windsor. I loved Windsor. It was easy to picture the town during medieval times. We stayed at a B&B and I would definitely do that if we go again. It was much more restful than the hostels.

The crooked tea house.


We toured the castle after dropping our bags at our B&B.


The gardens were magnificent.




Can't you just imagine a carriage pulling up here?


Unfortunately we couldn't take photos inside the castle but it was amazing. (And the Queen was in residence at the time!) The artwork, fancy furniture, armour etc was just amazing to see. My favorite was Queen Mary's dollhouse. It's HUGE and as ornately furnished as the real castle itself. Huge meaning it takes up an entire room in the castle and weighs over a ton I believe. It is AMAZING.
Here's a webpage with some photos of it.
http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/queenmarysdollshouse/

And a quick stop in the gift shop to paruse the wares and buy a few post cards. Meg dedided she needed a photo with the fancy pillow.


After touring the castle we had a proper english "tea" at the oldest tea house in Windsor, The Drury House. We had tea, egg salad & cucumber sandwiches, scones with clotted cream (YUM YUM YUM, I LOVE CLOTTED CREAM!) and jam and cake. Delicious! If only we'd known what our afternoon had in store for us, we probably would have eaten a heavier lunch!

We picked up a map of "windsor & surrounding area" and decided to take a walk to "Frogmore House". On the map it appeared that it wasn't that far away (famous. last. words.). So we started at the castle and started to walk the royal mile.

Do you see that speck waaaaaaaaay off in the distance at the end of the road? That's a statue of King George III.

Lesson of the day #1: Always bring LOTS of water with you. Lesson #2: Maps in England seem to never be to scale. Lesson #3: The royal mile is MUCH MUCH longer than an actual mile (or so it seemed). Lesson #4: Your feet will hurt even if you have good shoes on.

The royal mile takes you through Windsor Great Park. Remember how I said that I thought the ride in Hyde Park was a bit of a waste of money? You can also ride through Windsor Great park which is gorgeous and HUGE, I really wish I would have gone for a ride here vs. London. Ah well, next time!


And remember that speck of a statue a few photos ago? Well here's what it looks like up close.


And here's the view looking back at the castle. It was a looong walk.


By this point my feet hurt A LOT and I was ready to go back but OH NO! We were going to keep walking and try to find Frogmore House. Which we did eventually find but unfortunately we were trying to access it from the wrong way, so we couldn't get in. Did we turn around? Oh no! We kept on a walkin!

The path lead to a more forested area and a really pretty lake and a bridge. (and another monument to someone but I was too pooped to take a picture of it).


A little bit after this picture we took a break and were considering turning back. A family riding their bicycles came by and told us there was a polo game down the road a little bit further. (Little bit further = several more MILES) By now my feet were numb but I thought hmmm "horse stuff eh?" well what's a little bit further. So we walked some more.

On our way to the polo grounds we came across a Cross Country jumping course. Some of the jumps were MASSIVE!!! (eek!)


Finally we arrived at the polo grounds..... Just in time to watch everyone walk off the field! We'd missed it. What a shame. On a positive note, I did find a souvenir polo ball in the bushes to take home!


We were really hoping there would be a bus or some form of transportation back to town but we were out of luck. However, we did find a "snack wagon" that had beer & cider which made the walk back a lot more bearable!


I almost forgot to mention the herds of red deer in the park. There has to be thousands of deer that roam the park.


Windsor is definitely on my list of places to go back to!