We visited Castle Howard a few years ago in a rental motorhome – way back before mothership I. At the time we were on a very tight schedule to get the rental beast back to the south coast, so we only did the gardens at Castle Howard and not the house. This visit is intended to remedy that injustice.
We had a nightmare finding the place. We knew exactly where we were and we knew exactly where the campsite was, but joining the two together was a bastard. Sally supposedly knows the motorhome dimensions but as you get close to the Castle Howard estate, there are quite a few narrow gateways and low arches. We ended up face to face with a stone archway that – on paper – we could fit though – *just* with one inch / 10cm clearance. What? Yes, we know. We have exactly translated the height into real units and old english fuckery, but the actual arch had two wildly different numbers. With mirrors in, we should have been fine on the width, but the height looked too close and it was clear that the arch has been hit *a lot*.
Not only that but it was a dead straight roman road and we could see another arch 500 meters further on.
So even though we were less than 1km from the campsite, we embarked on a 30 km detour. If you fancy a chuckle check out the map near Castle Howard. It’s a laugh watching the track run around and around like a rat in a maze trying to get to the campsite. Whats driving us nuts is that we came here in the rental beast which is longer, wider and just as tall as Mothership 2, so we don’t know why there were no problems last time.
Anyway, the campsite is fab. Mainly statics, but they have a touring field and a number of hard standing pitches. IT ended up great value as the camping gets a two for one entry to the House and Gardens so that was a £20 saving.
After the detour, it was too late in the day to go into the Castle, so we put that off till Monday and instead went for a walk around the Great Lake. About twenty swans and ducks plus two or three hundred Greylag and Canada Geese.
Those geese were noisy buggers – the campsite is only a few meters from the lakes edge and the geese keep up the racket all night – very noisy neighbours!
Monday and the castle was brilliant. It’s not really a castle of course – it’s a stately home. The interior decoration is brilliant.
Lunch was Castle produced Sausage Roll. And this sausage roll was huge and scrummy – so good that we bought more in the farm shop for the next day!
Time is getting on, so no second night. Instead we head off down the A1 to Rutland Water.
