By now all of us were feeling a bit tired of sightseeing but knowing it was our last day we wanted to make the effort just once more to visit Windsor Castle.
A short drive and easy car parking close to the centre of Windsor made the journey more pleasant. The weather was on the change and although we had sunshine, there were noticably more clouds and rain was in the air.
Windsor in all its splendour however, did not fail to impress, even me as a native Britain! We collected our now customary multilingual hand sets and proceeded through strict security into the grounds of the castle. After making our way following the guided tour points, we entered the castle to first see Queen Mary's Dolls House that was not created to play with but to show royalty what was possible to make on such a small scale. There was a working hoover that was only 3 inches in size and all the furniture was an exact replica of the full sized versions made by renowned craftsmen of the time, orignal miniature paintings and fine china tea sets with places just measuring 1 inch in diameter (1.5cm approx) adorned the miniture rooms.
After walking round the dolls house twice we then moved onto the impressive state rooms with swords, suits of armour, paintings and sumptiously dressed rooms in bright colours and gold leaf. After spending 2 hours in the castle we moved on to St Georges Chapel, where a number of important royal figures are buried including the Queen Mother. The chapel itself was designed and built by the brother of the person who built Bath cathedral, just in case you are interested!
After a sandwich, we left Windsor, returning home via Reading to collect some liquorice (I have a terrible passion for a certain type of liquorice that you cannot buy in France, so as I had a suitcase allowance this time I decided to stock up!) Then on to Basingstoke to sort some car stuff and then back to Newbury to meet a number of girlfriends and their children for tea at Pizza Hut, which by the way, was enjoyable but chaos with 8 adults and 12 children, the noise was deffening!
Tesco, the large supermarket chain in the UK was frequented on our visit a number of times and the final task before returning to France was to get all our purchases in the suitcase without being over the weight limit............believe me the liquorice was coming with us whatever!!
Home on the Thursday morning in the rain was time to reflect on what we had achieved in such a short space of time and to plan a girly weekend away without kids for the next trip!
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