Staycation Day 3 - Roses at the church

We headed to Portchester Castle today - it's a place that we've been to before but not in quite a while and I hardly remembered it. This shot was from the church in the grounds - the castle is actually nestled in the corner of a much larger set of walls that used to encompass a small Roman settlement. Just about everything in here is Norman with later adjustments, including the church and the castle.

We explored outside the walls to start with, and you can actually see right across to Portsmouth, and there was a sort of misty haze over the city so I was able to get some unusual photography of the Spinaker Tower! We had some enthusiastic guides in the church pointing out the important bits, and the castle we had almost to ourselves, not many tourists today! There were some fascinating old inscriptions on the walls from when it was used as a prison in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The biggest thing for me was climbing the tower, which was something that I've dreamt about many times! It used to have see-through steps going all the way up that I got utterly terrified about when I was young and I had to be taken back down in tears! This time I conquered it (with some prayer!), and even looked down over the top, muwhaha. It's a very impressive place and still has a great amount intact, including a lot of the Norman stuff, and it was cheap to get in too.

I also managed to instruct Dad on how to take a decent picture of me with my SLR, so expect a new profile pic soon (finally!)

Many thanks for the enthusiastic and kind comments/stars on yesterday's entry! Apologies in advance for not commenting you back right now, we got home late tonight as we went to Grandad's for tea again.