Glorius weather for the first Bank Holiday in early May in England is rare. Normally, the weather is overcast and rainy when it comes to Bank Holidays. Although I worked one of the days instead of taking it off, I decided to make the most of it on Saturday and ended up enjoying a walk to see the bluebells just down the road from Berkhamsted in Ashridge Estate. After the walk, a short drive was required to see Berkhamsted Castle and to find a nice pub for lunch. Berkhamsted Castle is located in Hertfordshire, England, just northwest of London.
Berkhamsted Castle was built by William the Conquerer after he landed in 1066 and went to attack London (avoiding crossing the Thames at its wider points) by going around to Wallingford where the river is narrow. The lady at the visitor centre of the castle gave me the brief history of the castle. The local people of the area and London later crowned him king.
This is a motte-and-bailey castle (with a moat and a mound of earth where the tower would have stood), and not much remains except for a few pieces of walls and two wells, one up at the tower and the other in the outer courtyard. This castle built of stone in the later 1100s replaced one built of timber, which was built in the mid-1000s. A three-storey tower stood on the earth mound. The unusual feature of this castle is the double-moat, and it would have been built using local stone mixed with earth to raise it up for defense.
In the middle ages, the castle became a hunting lodge. There was a deer park near here for the kings to hunt.
A busy railway line is build next to the castle, and the building of the railway line meant that part of the moat and the barbican had to be demolished. The castle was lived in until the end of the 1400s, and it became an abandoned building afterwards. The grounds were used for hunting and Elizabeth I leased the land to Edward Carey, keeper of the queen's jewels. He also built a palace near here using some of the stones from the castle. The castle was also used as a prison in the 1600s-1700s, and then it was a romantic ruin in the 1700s. From the mid-1800s to the present day, the castle grounds are used for community events.
I walked up to the site of the old tower/keep to get the view of the grounds below and to see the other side where the double moat is.
After the castle visit, I tried to locate a nice pub that wasn't too busy and had a space to park. All of the central pubs in Berkhamsted did not have a place to park, and the nice weather meant that all of the pubs were busy. A bit further out of the centre was The Old Mill, a pub restaurant that is located on the canal and had space to park.
I had free-range chicken with garlic butter and skinny chips (fries). Everything tasted wonderful. I am usually not a big fan of chips/fries at all, but these were delicious. The chicken also had flavour with the garlic and lemon and was juicy.
After having the garlic, a sweet and refreshing treat was in order. I had the raspberry sorbet, which was very refreshing.
And that concludes my visit to Berkhamsted Castle. I would love to go back to this village of Berkhamsted and explore it and check out the attractive-looking canal.
Leave a comment