This is Julia and me at Leeds Castle, we went there yesterday and spent a good day walking round the Castle and its grounds. Admission now covers a whole year so though it seems alot at £18.50 per adult, over a whole year that's not too bad really and Julia got in a bit cheaper on her Uni Student ID. Hopefully we will pop back reasonably often and see how the place changes over the course of a year. Had a few hiccups getting there after the satnav sent us down to the golf course entrance but the chap on the gate re-directed us back to the main entrance, we've always gone by bus before and even then it was a long time ago. Not sure the bus still runs by there anymore which is a real shame 'cos its a good place to visit and is just on our doorstep.
You are free to take photos in the Castle itself now (apart from the Chapel) which I'm pretty sure you weren't allowed to when we were there last time. Grounds wise I think there may be a better selection of flowers later in the summer time and this late we've missed the spring bulbs, so opportunities for floral displays were thin on the ground. I've visited in the summer time before and seen loads of lovely dahlias so I know there's more to see later in the year. The Great Lake is being drained and repaired so even that looked a tad sorry for itself but I'm sure once it's finished it will look impressive once more.
We walked as far over as the maze but didn't go in, I've only been in there once and got completely freaked out as I lost my way. Think they have a member of staff in the centre and at the time I went in he helped me find my way to the centre and then out through the underground grotto but I'm reluctant to go in again! We sat on our car blanket and enjoyed some Spring sunshine albeit a bit too windy to be really warm. Still we watched the birds of prey show from a distance and enjoyed munching on some sweets from the small Maze Cafe that's located at that end of the grounds.
It will be good to try and go back in the Autumn and maybe even the Winter if we dont get too much snow this year. I've never seen the Castle at those times of year only on their postcards so would be good to get some photos of my own.
The photo above was taken using a new tripod I've just bought, a Hahnel Triad 30 Lite with ballhead, and a radio remote that my Dad bought me a few years ago. The tripod was pretty easy to carry round for the day, better than my new camera strap which allows the camera to hang to one side, but should be easy to bring up to your eye for shooting. Only real trouble is that the strap gets in the way of my glasses when the camera is up to my eye so most of the time I ended up unclipping one side. It's a cheaper version of the Black Rapide strap so wondering if that's why it doesn't work so well. Will try and persevere for now as it's a bugger to attach to the camera but if I cant hack it then it will be resigned to the cupboard and my old neck strap will have to go back on. Not sure I really want to fork out over £50 for the posh version of the strap and find that it's no better!
Anyway more photos of the day's visit can be found on Facebook.
