Exploring Warwick Castle

Dann and I had previously stayed in the Knight’s village of Warwick Castle last year and said that we’d take the kids there at some point. When they had their Christmas Light Trail, as we were trying to hit every light trail possible, so we decided to spend the afternoon at the castle. During the time we went, they did have Christmas at the Castle going on, as Warwick Castle always has a bunch of different events. This event included a large Christmas market and some ice skating outside.

We entered Warwick castle and started walking around the grounds, to get a lay of the land. We walked up a bunch of steps to get to a view of above, while stopping to read all of the different signs about weapons and how the castle was used along the way. I must say, Kai was much more interested in this when he was younger, so part of me does wish we went then, but he still said he enjoyed it and is glad we went. They grow up so fast!

After walking around the grounds, we went in the Time Tunnel, which I honestly thought wouldn’t be as cool as it was. The beginning looks like a particularly lame, old video about the castle, but then the door behind us opened up and the video encouraged us to hurry to the next bit, which showed a model of the castle that actually looked like it was being destroyed, which was fun to watch. We moved to the next section which had a bunch of picture frames with videos in them, all talking and walking us through the history of the owners of the castle, which was extremely entertaining. This was a highlight of our visit, as everything felt really neat.

We then decided we wanted to go inside the castle and walk around the rooms. There are a bunch of different staged rooms in the castle, some set up like how people used them and others with wax models or armor for people to look at. We found the armor to be very impressive and the tapestry to look interesting as well. All of the wax figures had fantastic outfits and looked really realistic. It was interesting to see the Lego-models of the weapons as well, which Robin thought was extremely funny for some reason. After we had our fill of the inside of the castle, we wanted to attend one of the events that was taking place. As we went during the wintertime, there was a panto and a winter version of their bird show. The panto was for slightly younger children, so we went along to the bird show.

The bird show at Warwick Castle was very entertaining! The first owl that came out, we were told, was meant to retire but their replacement was afraid of everything; ducks on the pond behind them, water, the color yellow, humans. So this owl continued to be in the show, despite not really doing any of the hunting games and just being a cute guy. The next bird that came out loved flying right above our heads, in big gusts, which was very fun to watch. The final one did a hunting game where they dived from far away, grabbing into the rope the trainer was spinning. We all enjoyed that very much and it ended with just enough time to grab some food before our light trail slot.

We didn’t do everything you could possibly do at the castle; the Maze was shut early, there was some sort of Horrible History eye-spy riddle thing, and there were a few rooms we didn’t take the time to see, so there is plenty to do to make it a full day if you are looking for a historical day out.

You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!