After our rather jam-packed schedules in Oxford and Stratford, it was quite nice to have a couple of hours to just wander around Kenilworth Castle. Although it’s been a ruin for some 300 years, the building still retains some of its grandeur, which is helped by the plaques in the towers which give an idea of how Elizabeth I might have lived while she was visiting the place. The ruins are incredibly peaceful actually — I couldn’t really hear any other groups of people, so it almost felt like we were exploring the castle on our own. It actually looked and felt a lot like Palatine Hill in Rome, with the same sort of sloping landscape and architectural ruins.
A number of animals have colonized the buildings, particularly the pigeons, which we could hear everywhere. They were happy to pose for a picture too! The Elizabethan gardens at the back of the property were also beautifully designed. Finally, the exhibits at the guard house fleshed out some of the history we’d been reading about while walking around the ruins. While I’ve seen other castles during this program, they were still intact, so it was really interesting to see how those majestic buildings can become derelict and stay that way as a tourist attraction. More than anything, it just felt like a much less cultivated place than a lot of other tourist attractions I’ve visited, since there were fewer people, no obvious visitor route, or even a lot of barriers separating us from the walls. It allowed us to really step closer to history in a way, and the nice weather certainly didn’t hurt!