Peveril Castle

Having a little princess living in our midst, we have to make sure to expose her to some proper princess environment every here and then. And boy, what a good place England is to do so. Castles, castle ruins and ruins that may have been castles plaster the whole country.

We decided to visit a place called Peveril Castle, which is only marginally more than a stone´s throw away from where we currently live. It is really, really old (founded soon after 1066) and lies on top of a hill, from where it overlooks a cute little town called Castleton and large parts of the peak district. The weather was fantastic and already the drive to Castleton was a joy. The peak district seems to turn greener and greener (with lots of white "sheepish" spots in it) by the minute and offers a fantastic scenery.

Once we arrived in Castleton, we took a little stroll around town and decided to grab a bite before climbing up to the castle. We managed to track down a really nice little pub, called The George and were lucky enough to get outside seating as well. Sunshine, good food and a Bitter shandy and the world is your friend! I could have sat there forever, especially since the kids were little angels and behaved phenomenally well.  S. had a long and very serious chat with the people at the next table while I. just sat and happily popped one pea after another in her mouth. Everything was sweet, sweet harmony, almost like in a TV commercial.

After we had refilled our energy depots we decided to get going to conquer the castle, but on closer inspection it looked like more of a challenge than expected. It was not only quite steep, but it also seemed to be "off-road". No problem under normal circumstances, but we had not chosen our equipment very wisely and stood with a pushchair instead of a baby carrier. Buhuuu, so, what to do? Go up anyways or have the princess see her castle only from afar? "go, go, go" I hear you mumble and "go" we did. After a short chat with a very friendly lady in the ticket office, we realized that it might be possible to climb up after all. In her words "a few people had managed to get up with pushchairs" and even though this sounded a bit like a king telling his knight "a few people have managed to pass the dragon", we decided to give it a shot.

It turned out to be much easier than expected. The path up was paved and though with many steps, quite pushchair accessible. It took us maybe 15 min to get to the top, and this is with S. walking on her own and blowing a little "trumpet", like the one below, approximately every 10th second. 


We finally entered the place through the remains of a gatehouse and ended up in the main courtyard of the castle. It is surrounded by the remains of a curtain wall and contains also the rather well preserved keep, the foundations of a Great Hall and kitchens and other buildings. The latter turned out to be a perfect playground for kids that love to climb and S. was kept busy for quite a while. We also had a look at the keep, which I quite liked. It would be the perfect place for a nice party.

After about an hour and a nice chat with a swedish lady, we were all quite satisfied with our visit and returned down to town. We had some ice-cream and headed finally back home to our own little castle, where the princess immediately changed from "normal people clothes" to her princess outfit, mom prepared some quick dinner and dad and I. played "put things in a box". What a nice day!


PS: Our camera batteries did not cooperate during the trip but if you would like to take a peek at the castle just check out some pictures here.