There was a fire at one train station and a bombing at another on Friday so Kings Cross Station was inundated with people making our train ride to Grantham beyond appalling!
Us Capetonians aren't terribly good at public transport at the best of times, let alone when the train is full to bursting and you have to practically stand on your suitcase in the aisle with no room to even scratch your nose for an hour and a half that felt like 5. Finally we fell out the train and found the taxi waiting to take us to the castle to meet the others. I had already told mum that sometimes it's only about the destination and not the journey which applied all over again when our semi asleep taxi driver got us lost for nearly an hour in the middle of Lincolnshire with no cell phone reception! Thankfully we ran in to a farmer with a little more brain power than our driver who directed us to the castle.
We met up with the others and made our way to the front for our much anticipated tour of the beautiful pile that is Belvoir Castle!
Our guide was a lovely woman called Claire who has been giving tours at the castle for over 19 years. She was incredibly knowledgable and put up with our raucous gang with the patience of a saint!
She took us through the history of the castle and it's 4 rebuilds in various styles and under various ownerships. She showed off every detail with great pride as we slowly made our way through the many breath taking rooms. The castle is currently owned and occupied by the Duke and Duchess of Rutland who are cousins of the groom, hence offering their beautiful home as a venue for the wedding.
Every room has been meticulously maintained and the team of restorers ensure all details remain as close to their original glory as possible.
The room in the above picture for example is not entered unless absolutely necessary to protect the beautifully embroidered carpet which is hundreds of years old. The ceilings in every room were utterly magnificent and showed the architects ecclesiastic style luring your eyes upwards at every turn.
The bride's party were staying at a lodge on the estate and we only felt momentarily envious when we entered the dining room to see where the groom's party was going to be held that night.
As wonderful as the groom is, his family are a bit stuffy and it was apparent they slightly disapproved of our loud, loving and rambunctious group. As a result we all turned up our South Africanisms in protest! :) Some people take themselves far too seriously! Unfortunately for them their son has already become one of us and he and his bride had pushed for a wedding of their liking which we knew was going to be totally off the wall and fabulous - we didn't however realise quite how fabulous it would turn out to be!
As our tour came to en end Claire, who also looks after the many birds of prey employed to scare pigeons off the roof of the castle brought out her favourite bird, a beautiful and incredibly friendly barn owl called Percy.
He loves to have the back of his neck tickled and I dutifully obliged, amazed by the softness and sweetness of this special creature. We said our thank you's to Claire and made our way out of the castle and into the waiting cars to take us to the lodge to commence the evening's festivities.
We made it back to the lodge and settled in to our rooms before congregating upstairs for a well deserved glass of wine.
The rest of the evening was a beautiful testament to just how special she and Rambo are. We kept it relatively tame in preparation for what we knew was going to be a huge party the next day and by about midnight everyone had packed up and gone to bed with mutual excitement for what was to come.
Aside from having to sleep with my mum who had picked up a cold on the plane and coughed the whole night, we were comfortable and woke up the next day too excited to be tired.
I can't wait to share with you the out of this world fabulosity that was the wedding!! But you'll have to wait for tomorrow's post, I promise you it will be worth it!
Love,
Daisy xx
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I loved it, very detailed writing and the pictures add a lot of value.
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Nice owl, nice castle.
Did you get any pics of the nasty train ride?
I bet the taxi ride was expensive!
hahaha that's quite a picture! We eventually made the guy stop the meter, his phone died so we were without GPS driving in circles in the middle of the country side! Sadly I was too hot and bothered to remember to take photos on the train :( thank you for reading!