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Alnwick Castle Visit in Northumberland

We visited Alnwick Castle a few days ago. It was wet, windy and cold in this part of Northumberland but near the wonderful coastline of Lindesfarne and Bamburgh. We managed to drive in the pedestrian entrance but never mind, we did get there. We didn’t visit the gardens as one of our guests was quite disappointed with the £9 charge to get in to see the gardens and at this time of year, there was not much to see, and it was very wet with the rain lashing down.

We aimed for the State Rooms in the Castle. These were great. There were about 6 rooms to visit and there was wonderful china, paintings, even a large Turner on the wall, beautiful furniture, wall coverings etc, very stately rooms. The guides were good with a lot of information about the rooms and background to the family and history of the whole Castle. Interestingly, twice the lands have been taken back to the Crown as the Percy’s were on the wrong side of the King/Queen at the time.

There are new facilities for Children i.e. the Knights Quest and the Dragons Quest, the first is a good dressing up area, with activities, brass rubbing, making things etc, and the second a creepy (well for kids) defeat the monster type of thing.

The pavilions, which must have just been built are great examples for modern architecture and fit into the settings of the garden really well. They have fabric roofs, with lots of timber steel framings and cables for the roof. It gets a bit busy at some of the junctions but overall the building is very good.

If the weather is with you, the gardens and everything there is great, interestingly, the organisation is looking to bring activities into the night time, in winter etc so that this can be a whole year round visit.

You can find out more here www.alnwickcastle.com.