UK trip part 13: Richmond

[ilanarama]

We had a layover day in Richmond, which is something many C2C'ers do, as Richmond is a relatively large town with many things to see and good shops. Our group had been parceled out again among several B&Bs; Britt and I stayed at the Frenchgate Guest House (our room was the one in the center photo in the photo bar at the top of the page) which is a lovely old townhouse. Ralph, the owner - a retired engineer who's owned the place for eleven years - said that among the building's legal papers are the original deeds for the two houses that were combined to form the current house. From 1457. In Latin.

In the morning we met for a city tour given by a volunteer who, alas, was not a very good tour guide. A lot of standing around, a few rambling stories, a few indications of what might be interesting without actually going in or seeing these things. And then it started raining. But we did get an idea of what we wanted to see during the afternoon, which we had free.

First we went down to The Station, the shopping mall-cum-arts center in the historic former railway station, where we bought some mini-quiches for the next day's lunch and visited the facility of Richmond Brewing. Incidentally, I mean 'down' in the literal sense, as our B&B was high on a hill and The Station far below. We descended the hill via 'Lombards Wynd', an alley which has certain similarities to Lombard Street in San Francisco - it's ridiculously steep! On the way we passed a house under construction, and chatted briefly with the man who was working on it, who was eating lunch next to it. The interesting thing we learned is that the reason even the new buildings look so old is that many of them are made with recycled stone from old buildings that have fallen down or been demolished. The house he was building was to be finished with 40% recycled stones.

After returning our purchases to our room, we had lunch (with beer) in the Town Hotel, one of the many pubs, then visited the Richmond Museum, a tiny but very nice museum with displays on the area's history. It also included the original set from the TV series of All Creatures Great and Small, which was filmed here. Then it was on to the castle!

Richmond Castle was begun in 1071, added to in the 12th century, mostly abandoned by the 14th century, and a ruin by the 16th century. It's incredibly picturesque, and visitors can climb to the top of the keep for great views of the town, so we took a LOT of photos.





In the evening we had dinner at the Black Lion pub, which...you may have noticed a theme in the names of British pubs? This makes one red, two white, and one black. Anyway, we had a private room upstairs for our group, and a performance of mostly-folkish music by Jon (our guide on the previous day) and four of his friends on guitars, concertina, banjo, and dulcimer. They were really quite good!

Nine photos, mostly of the castle