A trip to the Tower

On Friday evening we decided to spend Saturday visiting the Tower of London.

We took a coach to London (much cheaper than the train), which should have taken us straight there, but roadwork confused our driver, and he skipped our stop at Tower Hill. Instead he dropped us off at Kings X station, from which we took the Underground to Tower Hill. The trip had been irritating enough that I'd begun to think we shouldn't have bothered, but then we emerged from the station to see the Tower looming in front of us. My anxiety was replaced with awe at the sight of its northern face (the picture doesn't do it justice).

Then we wandered around ...

... toward the entry gate, on the southwestern side.
(The green grass is where the moat once was - they have lovely lawns in England!)

According to the Tower web site:

In the early 1080s, William the Conqueror began to build a massive stone tower at the centre of his London fortress. Nothing like it had ever been seen before.

Through the centuries that followed, successive monarchs added to the fortifications. This short history charts the different stages of its construction and explains its role as fortress, palace and prison.

The central tower he started building, called the White Tower, is well within the outermost walls there today, as can be seen on this map (you can see the entry gate at the bottom of the map, and the tower is the big building in the middle).

In the photo, the wall to the lower left is an earlier Norman ruin that was used as part of other construction. Across the street from the Tower is piece of a Roman wall. Reduce, reuse, recycle, don't you know! (And "restore;" notice the right side of the White Tower is covered with white plastic, to cover up a renovation.)

Everyone had a good time. The boys particular enjoyed the hands-on weapons display.


We also ran into some employees dressed in 12th century attire. They explained to us the process of how a boy became a knight, starting as a page. "Sir John" used Tim to demonstrate some of the page's functions, such as carrying the knight's weapons.


Notice in the foreground the gold noggin. That's Colin wearing his knight costume that Kim made him for Halloween last year. It was his idea to bring it but he was too shy to wear it at first. After Sir John seemed to be a fun guy, Colin put it on. Sir John immediately started calling him "Sir Colin" and observed that he must be a very rich knight to have gold mail, as most knights could only afford steel!

After seeing a lot (but less than we should have, if not for the bus mishap) we caught our ride home without a hitch. Our first visit to an English castle!