Framlingham Castle

Today we started a 15 month adventure... we purchased a membership to the English Heritage which gives us free access to over 400 properties across England.   This morning we ventured off to Framlingham which is about 2 hours east of Peteroborough (about 14 miles from the North Sea and north of Ipswich).  Our quest was the Framlingham Castle which was first built in the 12th century by Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk. 

There is a little exhibition inside the Poorhouse that showed how the poor and priveliged Tudors lived.  Kevin, Addie, and Harry check out the big brick oven.

They had some kids activities like this crayon rub that children could learn that the rich people got to eat lots of meat while the poor people at bread and veggies.

Addison loved playing with the giant chess game set up in the middle of the court yard.

Here is Addison inside one of the narrow window slits where castle guards would take position to shoot arrows in attempts to protect the castle.

The remains of the castle are thick walls which have a walkway at the top for visitors to walk around.   Harrison rode on Kevin's back while Addie got to run around and I ran after Addison to make sure she didn't try leaning out some of the big holes in the wall.

Some of the most distinctive points of the castle are it's mural towers and the decorative Tudor style chimneys.  The chimneys were all added after the castle wasn't used as a fortress and the current owner wanted it to look more like a home.

This was my favorite chimney.  Most of them were not functional chimneys...just for looks.  Chimneys were often a sign of wealth so the more you had the more well off you looked.

Here is the poor house where the exhibitions are and where we walked up the tower to get up on the wall.  It was pretty interesting getting the kids up the spiral stone stairs.  

After our castle tour we headed over to the pub for lunch which was not a pleasant experience.  The people there weren't the friendliest and they were not accommodating for young families.  It happened to be that Addison wasn't feeling the best because she was just starting to potty train and said she had to go every time I got to sit down and eat.  We went back to the toilet 3 times in a row and she did nothing.  Then Harrison was horribly cranky because he was tired and had to sit on my lap to eat.  Finally Kevin finished his food and took Harry to get the stroller while I sat with Addie and ate my food really fast.  It so happened that a group of four ladies were sitting next to us and they turned to me and said they totally sympathized with me.  They were all moms of very young children and said they knew what it was like having to eat cold meals when going out.  They reassured me that it will get better as they get a little older.  

After lunch we thought we would take a little walk around the castle.  The castle was built up on these huge earthen works and we assumed that we could walk around the base pretty easily, but we ran into a few tricky spots.

We had to get pretty creative when we hit a huge muddy patch.  I held up the front wheel while Kevin shimmied the back end.  I of course didn't have the right shoes on to be doing much mudding.  I guess in the medieval times they didn't try trekking like this with strollers for a reason.  The muddy patch was just under where an old bridge used to be...you can see the remains of the supports.