Have a go at this one for 6 dollars!
Where do I begin?
I shall begin as we step off the train..as the information before that is irrelevant.
Its Monday lunchtime; the sun is shining and the world is radiating a summer glow as we begin to struggle up to the Castle. Trees channel the way up the driveway, I have a good feeling about this!
As we reach the end of our climb, the Castle looms in to view. Its is not what I pictured. It is greyish yellow sandstone brick with a clock tower, an abundance of windows and two massive gate posts framing the entrance. It, is grand, but almost sinisterly.
We go in, collapse still with our bags on our backs. The receptionist (who I later discover is called Arthur) gets us all sorted and off we set to room 207…dun dun daaaaaaaaa!....this is on the spooky link corridor. Room is sufficient for our needs:; i.e. Sleeping(minimal) Dancing(moderate) Drinking(maximum). Also the view is pretty breath taking.
During the day we either ate, played card games, mulled about the castle looking at the hundreds of painting, statutes or wandered the grounds. It was nice not to have a routine, we were quite free to do, just about anything.
In the night, (well that was another story all together). After the goal of making dinner was scored, the rigours drinking began, mostly on home turf…our bedroom. Feeling very merry we headed down to the lounge. Having been unsuccessful at bribing the night porter in to a guided tour of the castle, I bailed out early and had a erratically-relaxing night sleep.
The second day was crazy….there was a buzz in the air of the castle. Are informant on the inside(code name Alligator) Arthur told us there was 3 coaches arrive about 7ish with 79 aussies, kiwis, and a couple Canadians. A sort of Scottish equivalent to 18 to 30. Woohoo! So like yesterday…we made and had our dinner accompanied with a couple of bottle of wine, a bottle of Cava and a bottle of peach schnapps. Then back to base camp for some good old cider(able to be used as cheap drink, paint striper, petrol..and much much more). Well oiled we depart for the lounge along with a bottle of vodka and 4 litre of irn bru. (Not so) quietly we sit in the corner and play our card game until we are noticed (when nick proceeds to break a chair and fall backwards in a roll of it…we gave him a 5.8 for it) by these aussies playing a drinking game in centre of room. They asked us to join them in playing “THE CIRCLE OF DEAD” (followed by sound affect) and naively we did!
They were brilliant, every single one! Annie gave us and them a rather drunken but still very professional guided tour of the castle…even with a stop off in Room 210(the old nursery, the very haunted old nursery) Then off to the bonfire we head, where much drinking and some singing was done. Everyone ended up lying on the ground looking up at into the sky, counting the number of shooting stars. A perfect end to one crazy night!
On the haunted front, we never saw the little girl or the nanny…but you could feel a presence as you walked past the bell tower doors or at the other end, past room 210…(both of these the only two ways you could get to our room)….The overall experience will be difficult to better and even harder to forget…guess where im going next year?
I shall begin as we step off the train..as the information before that is irrelevant.
Its Monday lunchtime; the sun is shining and the world is radiating a summer glow as we begin to struggle up to the Castle. Trees channel the way up the driveway, I have a good feeling about this!
As we reach the end of our climb, the Castle looms in to view. Its is not what I pictured. It is greyish yellow sandstone brick with a clock tower, an abundance of windows and two massive gate posts framing the entrance. It, is grand, but almost sinisterly.
We go in, collapse still with our bags on our backs. The receptionist (who I later discover is called Arthur) gets us all sorted and off we set to room 207…dun dun daaaaaaaaa!....this is on the spooky link corridor. Room is sufficient for our needs:; i.e. Sleeping(minimal) Dancing(moderate) Drinking(maximum). Also the view is pretty breath taking.
During the day we either ate, played card games, mulled about the castle looking at the hundreds of painting, statutes or wandered the grounds. It was nice not to have a routine, we were quite free to do, just about anything.
In the night, (well that was another story all together). After the goal of making dinner was scored, the rigours drinking began, mostly on home turf…our bedroom. Feeling very merry we headed down to the lounge. Having been unsuccessful at bribing the night porter in to a guided tour of the castle, I bailed out early and had a erratically-relaxing night sleep.
The second day was crazy….there was a buzz in the air of the castle. Are informant on the inside(code name Alligator) Arthur told us there was 3 coaches arrive about 7ish with 79 aussies, kiwis, and a couple Canadians. A sort of Scottish equivalent to 18 to 30. Woohoo! So like yesterday…we made and had our dinner accompanied with a couple of bottle of wine, a bottle of Cava and a bottle of peach schnapps. Then back to base camp for some good old cider(able to be used as cheap drink, paint striper, petrol..and much much more). Well oiled we depart for the lounge along with a bottle of vodka and 4 litre of irn bru. (Not so) quietly we sit in the corner and play our card game until we are noticed (when nick proceeds to break a chair and fall backwards in a roll of it…we gave him a 5.8 for it) by these aussies playing a drinking game in centre of room. They asked us to join them in playing “THE CIRCLE OF DEAD” (followed by sound affect) and naively we did!
They were brilliant, every single one! Annie gave us and them a rather drunken but still very professional guided tour of the castle…even with a stop off in Room 210(the old nursery, the very haunted old nursery) Then off to the bonfire we head, where much drinking and some singing was done. Everyone ended up lying on the ground looking up at into the sky, counting the number of shooting stars. A perfect end to one crazy night!
On the haunted front, we never saw the little girl or the nanny…but you could feel a presence as you walked past the bell tower doors or at the other end, past room 210…(both of these the only two ways you could get to our room)….The overall experience will be difficult to better and even harder to forget…guess where im going next year?