Arundel Castle & Cathedral
Wednesday, May 25
Arundel is about an hour away from Brighton by train. It had two things I wanted to see -- a castle and a cathedral!
It wasn't rainy this day, but it was not sunny and not warm. And it was very windy, which made it feel colder than it was! I wished I had a winter coat instead of just a jacket. It felt like early October in the Midwest and definitely did not feel like almost-summer at all!
So I ride the train to Arundel; there was a change at a town called Barnham. The rail system in the UK is very well-organized, but since it was my first time doing it in 2.5 years, I was a bit stressed this time! Train switches can be particularly nerve-wracking since you usually need to change platforms which can involve quite a bit of walking and stairs and ramps, and just generally figuring out where you're going next and making sure you're in the right spot. Otherwise you might be waiting 30 minutes or more for the next train, or you might be going to the wrong destination!
But I made it to Arundel and once there, I had about a mile walk to the castle. There was a cute little town center to walk through and I stopped into a shop called The Tea & Biscuit Club.
It was stashed from floor to ceiling with glass jars of loose leaf tea of all varieties and flavors! I bought some shortbread biscuits that rivaled the Walker's brand. I do love a plain shortbread cookie. There were so many cute teapots, too, as you can see. I wish I would've had room in my carry-on for one.
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| Here's the town center, or what is called the High Street in any town |
I made my way up the high street to Arundel Castle and couldn't find the entrance, so backtracked and finally found where to go. Not great signage, but I got there in the end!
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| Castle gate |
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| First view walking up; kind of imposing! |
The castle keep opened earlier than the castle rooms, so I started with the keep! A castle keep is the walkway between castle towers, used for looking out over the landscape for intruders.
Many narrow staircases are ascended to get to the keep.
And creepy hallways.
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| The views over the town and into the countryside were nice! |
Arundel Castle dates back to 1068. It is hard to imagine how old these types of buildings are!
Back inside, here's the castle's chapel and some of the other rooms.
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| I always like to see the loo :P |
I audibly gasped when I walked into the next room -- the library.
And then you led out into the gardens, which had a lovely view of Arundel Cathedral.
English gardens really are something to behold, even on a day that is not beautiful.
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| I saw this design on a tree on the castle grounds; I'm sure it's from insects or something! |
Next, I headed over to Arundel Cathedral since it was only about a five minute walk from the castle.
This cathedral isn't really on the radar for cathedrals, I believe. It is large, as you can tell from the photos above, but since it's Catholic I think it's not really visited like other cathedrals are. I would venture to say that Arundel is more of an obscure tourist destination, as well. It was almost completely empty when I went in!
Little bit of a story: I was sitting in a pew near the front just taking it all in (with the photo above as my view) when I noticed a woman coming up to me. I smiled at her, knowing she was someone who worked at the cathedral. She smiled back and asked me, "Are you here for the funeral, dear?" I said no, and asked her if I should leave. She was totally nonchalant and said that I didn't need to leave, but that I might start to feel uncomfortable because the family would start coming into the cathedral in about 15 minutes. I thanked her for the information and she walked away.
I sat for just a few moments more and exited the cathedral the way I came, the door at the back. When I opened the door, the first thing I see in my line of vision -- about 20 feet from me -- is a black car... the hearse! And about six people are unloading a casket! And a large crowd of people all dressed in black are watching the hearse be unloaded! It was clear that they were about to carry this casket into the cathedral, using the door that I was just now exiting through. I put my head down and walked through the crowd as quickly as I could. And once I was past everyone I just had to laugh to myself. So awkward.
After all that, it was about 1:00 pm and I was starving. I had asked someone who worked at the castle if they had any recommendations for food in Arundel and she recommended an Italian place called La Campania that was right on the high street.
Usually when I'm in England I try to eat very authentically English food, or just cheaper sandwiches. However, I wanted to take this woman's recommendation so I went to the Italian restaurant and I'm glad I did because I got margherita pizza and it was delicious! The pizza was £9 and probably could've fed three people. I did take the leftovers with me, but ended up throwing them out before I got on the train. It really pained me to do that because I hate being wasteful and it really was so good, but I just couldn't picture myself carrying leftover pizza onto a train for an hour. I'm glad I didn't take it with me because the train was full and that would've been embarrassing to be carry around a pizza box. In the grand scheme of things, who really cares, but sometimes I am self-conscious.
I made my way back to Brighton and my AirBnB. I think I relaxed for a bit. I headed back out for a smaller meal before an event I had later that night. I stopped into a pub that was just a couple doors down from my AirBnB called Battle of Trafalgar. It was a pretty standard pub -- nothing out-of-the-ordinary cute about the décor. I ordered a scotch egg because it was something I had on my list of things to try!
My final activity for the day was "Whisper of the Stones," a series of talks about Stonehenge that was a part of an event called Brighton Fringe. The event was at Spiegeltent and I'm not exactly sure what Spiegeltent is, but it was a big tent set up in the middle of a park in Brighton and apparently there are Spiegeltents in different cities? I couldn't quite gather what was happening, but I was impressed when I walked in!
For some reason I didn't take a photo of the inside, but this is what it looked like! It was really neat.
The talks were very interesting. It wasn't exactly what I expected, but they had one woman talk about "10 ways to get to know a stone," another speaker was a professor who talked about the geology around Brighton, and the "headliner" was Ronald Hutton, a historian from the University of Bristol. Look at Ronald...
He's so cute. He's written a lot of books, but the focus of his talk this night was the different ways that Stonehenge has been interpreted through time. We now think of Stonehenge as kind of this mystical place with energies and whatnot, but there were times in history where it probably had no real meaning to the people around. And we can only guess what it was built for. We still have really no clue why people did it! He had a nice, dry sense of humor, and it was a great way to end the day.
A woman sitting next to me talked to me at the interval; she was American too -- originally from California but lived in Brighton now -- and her name was Sal. I think it was the first time someone has come up to me asking if I was American. (She heard me speak to a couple of people next to us.) So that was nice to make a little connection for a moment!