Check that one off the list

As I mentioned in a previous post, one of my bucket list items for this trip was to have English tea in England.  Boy Howdy did we do that in style!  It was accomplished in a pub that is older than my country and with a view looking out at Windsor Castle.  Yes, THAT Windsor Castle, the worlds oldest and largest inhabited castle.  The one you see on shows like The Crown and a bazillion others.  We are specifically at the western end of Windsor looking across the street to the Curfew Tower which was built between 1227 and 1230.  The walls are said to be 13 feet thick at the base and are 100 feet high.  After lunch I made a bee line for the tower wall.  I did for the first time what I did many times during this trip - put my hands on the wall of some ancient edifice and listened.  

I have done this many times with rocks, mountains and nature in general, always finding an old and wise voice.  But I had never done it to an ancient structure made by humans with their various intentions.  It was so strange to feel the energy of something that old that wasn't nature made.  The voice was old and full of many experiences.  I didn't go too deep as that would have been too much for me.  It was a prison at one point and the tower had also experienced centuries of war and all kinds of atrocities, I am sure.  I got a nice surface feel without going into too much detail.  I would probably still be there heaped in a puddle on the ground if I had, with an energetic overload of brutality and human suffering.  I know my limits.   

 

The Curfew Tower, Windsor Castle

By the way, this grassy knoll is where the band preformed their concert later in the day.  Not too shabby for a venue! 

After the band concert

Susan outside of Windsor Castle's front entrance - for tourists anyway.  I'm guessing the Queen and family come and go elsewhere on the grounds.  I would if I were them, to avoid the gawking crowds.  What a constant down-side of being royalty - gawking crowds and having to use the back door to your own home. 

And what was for lunch?  A splendid melt-in-your-mouth mutton shank with mashed potatoes and carrots in a divine gravy the likes of which I have never tasked.  Sandy is displaying their traditional brown sauce of which I am not yet a fan.  Give me time.