Last minute plans

Sometimes, last minute plans turn out the best. Yesterday morning, Danda and I had planned to spend the day in Windsor. We would go to the castle and have a walk around the town and over the little bridge. We were quite looking forward to it.

We walked to the train station and, as we were buying train tickets, Danda just said, out of the blue, “Do you fancy going to Westminster Abbey instead?”

Without any good reason not to, I agreed and we headed in the opposite direction, toward London instead of away from it.

I’ve never been inside Westminster Abbey, despite having been in London for eight years. It really was too spectacular for words!

The Abbey was built in 960 and various refurbishments and additions have been done since. It’s crazy thinking about how old it is. I mean, you’ll just be walking around looking at stuff and then you stumble across this on the ground.

1420! Ham House seems positively modern with its 1610 start date, compared to the things here.

Other times, you suddenly realise that what you’re reading….

…says King Henry VII, Elizabeth of York and King James I! So many people who shaped the country and society I now know are buried here with little plain stones to indicate where and who they are.

There are lots of very important people here, everywhere you look, basically.

As you walk around, you also begin to appreciate the architectural brilliance of the Abbey too.

There are lots of little pockets off the main chamber that are full of memorials to people long forgotten. They are either to people of battle-related importance or really rich people.

On this last one, there was a story about the woman dying in childbirth and so her husband created this memorial to her, symbolising death crawling up and trying to drag her down and him attempting to keep hold of her. A close-up on the death figure looks like this.

There are also a lot of historically interesting bits and pieces around, like this sword.

Just King George VI’s sword. Yeh. No biggie.

After a quick look around the burial places of Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots…

…we headed to Poet’s Corner to check these guys out.

The writing’s not clear on the last picture, but it says Geoffrey Chaucer! His actual resting place! Mind-blowing.

Up on a column, I saw one of my personal favorites.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I loved reading him at school.

After all this fabulousness and wonderment, it was time for some lunch.

My butternut soup was really very very good. All the food was good actually.

We then saw the Supreme Court and nipped in for a quick nose around.

My brain was pretty knackered by this point so we headed home for a much needed cup of tea.