Enchanted trees
After we both liked the grotto at Leeds Castle so much - something that could have been tacky, but was actually awesome - I decided to give Enchanted Osborne a go. This promised to be a magical light-filled night-time trail through the grounds of Osborne House. We bought tickets for yesterday in advance (funded by my parents as a late birthday present), which was a good thing in a way, since the weather was perfect for it yesterday (clear and very cold) but less good in other ways, since Pellinor currently has a horrid cold. So yesterday we joined the huge hordes that were surging into Osborne House, and followed the trail.
I tried to take photos, but I don't have a steady enough hand to cope with the darkness. Oh well. Here are some pictures, anyway, since they show the sort of atmosphere.
This chap below was a talking tree, who mostly snored, but occasionally woke up to tell us about fairies. His eyes moved. His mouth opened, revealing disturbing teeth, but I am protecting you from the sight of them.
I liked this set of trees, although the picture really doesn't do them justice.
A pretty path, speckled with ammonite-ish patterns.
Somebody - fairies? - had been dining out in the woods, but they had vanished before we got there. Pellinor expected a dormouse, but I was nervously looking out for zombies, since the scene looked suspiciously like a scene from a haunted house themed Left 4 Dead mod that we sometimes play. No zombies came, though. Neither did dormice.
After some more trees, we came to lots of small ornamental bird cages hanging from the trees. They had real fairies in. Real fairies in cages, it seems, are very hard to photograph, even harder than trees.
Finally we reached the house itself, where we found that it had shrunk since we had last been there. Either that, or we had grown significantly, probably due to fairy magic.
It was all rather brief and less exciting than I'd hoped, but quite pretty, nonetheless.
I tried to take photos, but I don't have a steady enough hand to cope with the darkness. Oh well. Here are some pictures, anyway, since they show the sort of atmosphere.
This chap below was a talking tree, who mostly snored, but occasionally woke up to tell us about fairies. His eyes moved. His mouth opened, revealing disturbing teeth, but I am protecting you from the sight of them.
I liked this set of trees, although the picture really doesn't do them justice.
A pretty path, speckled with ammonite-ish patterns.
Somebody - fairies? - had been dining out in the woods, but they had vanished before we got there. Pellinor expected a dormouse, but I was nervously looking out for zombies, since the scene looked suspiciously like a scene from a haunted house themed Left 4 Dead mod that we sometimes play. No zombies came, though. Neither did dormice.
After some more trees, we came to lots of small ornamental bird cages hanging from the trees. They had real fairies in. Real fairies in cages, it seems, are very hard to photograph, even harder than trees.
Finally we reached the house itself, where we found that it had shrunk since we had last been there. Either that, or we had grown significantly, probably due to fairy magic.
It was all rather brief and less exciting than I'd hoped, but quite pretty, nonetheless.