Arundel and the Local Castle

 

Yesterday I wrote about an experience that occurred the last time I visited the stunning Arundel Castle that stands not ten minutes away from our home in  Littlehampton a couple of miles south of Arundel. We consider it one of our blessings that we get to see this great castle nearly every day of our lives because it so close. Yet no matter how many years we have lived with this fabulous image that hits you in the face as you drive to the top of the hill, it never fails to give the same amount pleasure at every occasion it comes into view.

 

 

Some summers, I have a bought a season ticket that allows me the wander around the grounds immediately surrounding the castle where it becomes more massive the closer you get to the base of the great towers and walls. I have spent countless hours wandering around, walking up to lose myself for a while in the Collector Earls Garden that is, delightfully mad in design with much of the imaginative, yet fairly useless structures, built for beauty and style more than shelter and made from trees that had fallen in the grounds during what we know as The Great Storm of 1987. My favourite part of the Earls Garden, are N0.1 Oberon’s Palace that is now used during the festival for the open air Shakespeare plays, a perfect setting. Then I truly madly deeply love the Stumpery; this is exactly what it says, it is a garden made up of upside down tree stumps with equally odd planting arrangements in and around them, a completely bonkers garden, a strange and brilliant idea said to encourage unusual beetles and bugs, though in all the times I have wandered through I have not seen a one. Good butterflies though. On Friday as I guided my husband along my own preferred route through, he told me that I really should stop showing it off and proclaiming a delighted ‘TA DAH’ at each corner turned. He told me that contrary to my claims, this was actually not MY garden, that it belongs to the Fitzalan-Howard family of Dukes and Duchesses of Norfolk and was designed and built by the Earl of Arundel. Well, it is my garden, in my world! It is my secret escape place. I feel that garden, it belongs to my soul.

 

 

Steve and I had not taken the complete tour of the castle for a number of years and since the summer season is about to close, we took Friday afternoon off work to be tourists for the day. We had meant to do this all summer but each time we planned to go, something or other came up and prevented us from doing so. We did two laps of the castle rooms on Friday. The tour ends at the shop and restaurant that are both also excellent. From there one only has to wander along to, and then past the exit sign and begin again at no further charge. It is such and assault on the senses that it is nearly impossible to take everything in during a quick walk around the rooms. We were both surprised at how quickly most other visitors passed along the rope guided route. May I add that I did not think much of some people’s lack of management of their unruly children either, but I am probably showing my age there.

 

 

We had actually never got as far as seeing the bedrooms before and I am not sure that the bedrooms were even part of the tour years ago but I may be wrong. I asked one of the volunteers about the bedrooms and she said that there are twenty bedrooms, each with its own adjoining bathroom. I asked another volunteer why in many of the family portraits the Duke was holding a cane. She explained that it was the Baton of Office of the Earl Marshall of England. That comes along with the title, Duke of Norfolk, since he is the premier Duke of England and his duties include responsibility for all state occasions. I knew that, but the Baton was new to me. Learn one thing a day and I am happy.

 

 

Since we took the tour, the double tour, on Friday we have asked all our friends if they had been inside the Castle. Some said they had, but not for years and others had never been inside the castle that they cannot help but see so much and so often. Many of our friends are of course fellow athlete and do much of their run training through the park and in surrounding countryside where it is pretty much impossible not to find a view of the castle pop into the frame before your eyes, even from miles away.

 

 

It is spectacular, both outside and inside and since I so love the views that I see from so many angles during my run and bike training I am definitely going to make it one of my 2017 New Year Resolutions to do the tour inside this wonderful castle again next summer, probably earlier in the year before it is filled with tourists from other parts of the world. This is on my doorstep, what a gift. It is filled with amazing treasures, and history, with astonishing rooms, ceilings, furniture and a mind boggling amount of priceless paintings, libraries, dungeons and the Keep. It is a true wonder.