Windsor and Newbury, England

For the final portion of this overseas trip, we had to begin making our way back towards Heathrow Airport where we had a Saturday afternoon flight back to the United States. Because of this scheduled flight, we decided to spend Saturday morning visiting Windsor, the home of the British royal family, which I had seen briefly on a previous trip but Liz had never experienced. Windsor is only a short distance away from the airport and travelers can often see the planes taking off overhead while exploring Windsor Castle's grounds. That in turn meant that we didn't want to stay too far away on the previous Friday evening, and Liz had the idea of staying in the town of Newbury. This is a quiet market town located in Berkshire about an hour's drive away from Windsor, however it was noteworthy for us because Liz has a family name connected to the town. At some point in the past, some of her ancestors came from Newbury and that meant that we wanted to see it for ourselves. This turned an obscure part of the English countryside into a key destination for our trip.


We had been driving east for the last two hours on the M4 highway, arriving in the late afternoon after a morning spent over in Cardiff. Liz had found a really neat place for us to stay this evening, a historic home known as the Donnington Grove hotel. This mansion was initially constructed in the 1760s in a mock Gothic architectural style, causing this manor house to resemble a medieval castle. It has since been converted into a hotel and country club, complete with a golf course where we saw people out on the links despite the light rain falling when we arrived. Donnington Grove was slightly more expensive than the places where we usually stay when traveling, but it was worth the additional cost to stay at this historic property as opposed to something like a Holiday Inn. These were some pictures taken in the oldest part of the building, near the entrance where a big staircase rose up three flights.


Donnington Grove was clearly one of those ramshackle buildings that had been expanded upon over the course of succeeding generations. When we came downstairs the next morning for breakfast, we had to walk through a series of hallways and down an additional flight of stairs to reach the area where the food was being served. This was a much more modern part of the complex, with a bar and dining area that had to be part of the country club when they weren't being used by the hotel. A full English breakfast was included with our stay and it was an excellent, if not the healthiest, start to the day. I'll also include a couple pictures of our hotel room, which was one of the cheapest available at Donnington Grove. It was up on the top floor of the manor house and had to be accessed from a secondary staircase so there's a good chance that this was originally where servants stayed before it had been modernized and refurbished. It was a very nice room nonetheless, with a big bed and a fireplace in the main room along with a full bathtub in the bathroom. The views out of the windows looking out over the golf course and the rest of the country club weren't bad either.


Backing up in time for the moment, we had arrived at Newbury late in the afternoon on a Friday. We checked into the hotel so that we could drop off our bags and then hurried to the central portion of the small town in the hopes of making it there before everything started to close down. Newbury currently has a population of about 35,000 residents which made it the largest town in the area while still being quite small in size. We parked our rental car just south of the central part of the town and walked north to the market square where these pictures were taken. Newbury's claim to fame has historically been as a market town for the surrounding countryside, having been founded late in the 11th century following the Norman conquest. (The name is derived from "new borough" or new town.) The market square was quiet when we walked through it despite being dotted with stores and restaurants. The Corn Exchange building here was constructed in 1861, replacing an older building of the same type, and originally was used for merchants trading in corn (grain) and other agricultural goods. Today it's been converted into a local theatre which didn't seem to have anything currently showing when we passed by. The stately town hall building was also present here, dating from 1881 and looking somewhat reminiscent of Westminster with its clock tower.


The town of Newbury was built on the River Kennet which flows right through the middle of town, and there seemed to be more activity after we crossed one of the many bridges to the north side of the river. Northbrook Street turned out to be a pedestrian thoroughfare with a long line of shops running down either side. We asked around for a place where we might be able to buy some merchandise with the Newbury name on it and eventually found this store that had bags, posters, coffee mugs, and even a Newbury version of Monopoly for sale. Liz purchased a number of these things to send to family members as gifts and we were happy that we made it here less than half an hour before the place closed. Most of these stores were shutting down at 5:00 PM since it was a Friday and we had run things pretty tight on the timing; it was a good thing we hadn't stayed any longer in Cardiff that morning.


Once we had managed to secure our Newbury souvenirs, it was time to find somewhere to eat dinner. We did a combination of online searching and old-fashioned walking around the center of town before settling on this restaurant named the Lock, Stock, and Barrel. The main reason why we picked this place was its location directly next to the River Kennet, providing a perfect backdrop for an evening meal. It wasn't too crowded and we were able to get a table next to the flowing water, then enjoyed a drink and a meal as we watched the water drift past. While we were eating dinner, a series of swans and then a big flock of geese swam past. We were able to get more pictures of them after finishing our food when we took a short walk along the banks of the river:


It was quite pleasant strolling along the brick walking path that followed the bends of the river and there were a LOT of birds swimming past us. This is apparently the most famous part of Newbury since we saw images of the riverfront area on a number of the souvenirs that we purchased. Historically, this was usually a prosperous area and two significant battles were fought here during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Newbury also benefited from being located halfway between London and Bath, making this a wealthy stopover town for notables passing between the capital and the spas in Bath during the 18th century. Newbury's fortunes fell when the major railroads bypassed it in the 19th century, only to rebound again when the M4 highway was built only three miles to the north, and especially when telecommunications company Vodafone chose to situate its UK headquarters here. Today more than 6000 people work in the Vodafone complex and a number of other tech companies have followed it to Newbury, helping to revive the town and bring it into the 21st century.


The next morning, we ate that breakfast at Donnington Grove mentioned above and then checked out of the hotel en route to Windsor. I remember that we were listening to one of the Harry Potter audio books during this drive which felt particularly apt as we passed through the English countryside. We reached Windsor around 10:00 AM and found a parking lot located only a few blocks away from Windsor Castle itself. It was a rather surprising sight: we were walking uphill from the parking lot, turned around a corner, and suddenly this massive centuries-old stone wall popped into view with the turrets of the castle rising behind it. On the other side of the street was an ordinary-looking set of stores, designed to cater to the flocking tourists, with a McDonalds and a Pizza Express and so on. Needless to say, this was pretty jarring in terms of contrast.


We had the good fortune to notice that people were lining up near the gates of the castle just as we were arriving. We quickly figured out that the police security was clearing out space for a military band that was about to parade into the castle. We picked out a vantage point near the statue of Queen Victoria and waited for the band's entrance even as a light rain began to fall. Unsurprisingly, we could hear the band for a couple of minutes before we were able to see it, with the musicians marching up the hill in their dark uniforms. They were followed by a group of ceremonial guards in their bright red coats and bearskin hats, with these uniforms looking pretty much the same today as they would have back in the 18th century. Windsor Castle is a great place for tradition and there's no shortage of royal pagentry on display for the hundreds of thousands of tourists who visit annually.


Windsor Castle uses a series of timed entries, staggered each half hour, to prevent the castle grounds from being overrun with too many visitors at once. We should have thought to purchase tickets online ahead of time but failed to do so; we were still able to get them on site but had to wait about an hour before our scheduled entry time. We spent this time walking around the nearby streets and exploring some of the town of Windsor; it's easy to forget with all of the tourist stuff that this is a place where people live and work on a daily basis while having nothing to do with the royal family. The closest attraction was the nearby Windsor Royal shopping mall which contained almost 100 stores and eventually connected to the Windsor and Eton railroad station. Outside of the designated shopping area, the cobblestone streets of the town twisted around at odd angles in a way that only happens in towns built before the invention of cars. We were also ducking in and out of various stores because the weather was being downright bizarre, raining hard for 10 minutes and then stopping for the sun to come out, only to go back to raining again. Some of these pictures might look like they were taken on different days due to the weather but I can assure the reader that they were all from the same morning!


Soon enough our entry time had arrived and it was time to begin the castle tour. We walked through the visitor center past a picture of King Charles and Camilla (it still felt strange not seeing Queen Elizabeth there) and then reached the castle grounds through St. George's Gate. From here we could look into but not visit the Upper Ward, the portion of the castle where the royal family has its residences and which is strictly closed to tourists. Rising up above us on the hill was the central Round Tower, the oldest part of the castle complex where the Normans first built a keep following William the Conquerer's successful invasion. A long series of English and then British monarchs have built different parts of Windsor Castle over the centuries, with far too much history for me to relate here, but most of the current castle was built by Charles II after the Restoration in the second half of the 17th century, followed by additional changes under George III and George IV a century later. One nice feature of Windsor Castle was the way that these kings tried to keep the architectural style consistent despite the long gaps in construction, which provides a unity to the design of the castle often lacking in other palaces elsewhere.


Windsor Castle has a fantastic tour that takes visitors through almost two dozen of the different rooms in the state apartments. There's an audio tour that accompanies these sights and visitors can spend hours inside if they stop to listen to everything; certainly it was packed with tourists on this Saturday and we could see why the castle had to use timed entries for the crowds. Unfortunately, Windsor Castle does not allow photography inside the buildings so I can only post these pictures of the exterior grounds along with the two of us posing at the gates to the off-limits Upper Ward. We would highly encourage anyone reading to visit and take the tour and I wish that I could highlight the luxurious interior of the castle as well; try doing a Google image search for "Windsor Castle interior" to get a sense of how this place tries very hard to compete with Versailles for opulence.


The other great highlight of a visit to Windsor Castle is St. George's Chapel, the home to innumerable royal weddings and funerals over the centuries. St. George's Chapel was initially constructed by Edward III during the 14th century but greatly expanded 150 years later under Henry VII and Henry VIII, with most of the current building dating from that later construction. This chapel is the official home for the Order of the Garter, the prestigious chivalric order which was founded during the War of the Hundred Years as somewhat of a joke but has survived down to the modern day as one of the highest honors that can be bestowed by the monarchy. Despite its relatively modest size, St. George's Chapel is generally considered to be one of the most beautiful Gothic designs in English religious architecture. The chapel was closed during my previous visit to Windor Castle in 2005 and I was very pleased that we were able to go inside for this trip.

The other thing that St. George's Chapel is known for is its burials, with only Westminster Abbey in London holding a more notable series of famous English tombs. The general pattern is that most of the medieval royalty is buried at Westminster while almost everyone since then is entombed here at St. George's. This chapel contains both Henry VI and Edward IV, the two main rivals for the throne during the Wars of the Roses, along with Edward's queen Elizabeth Woodville. Henry VIII is here along with one of his six wives, Jane Seymour, as is the ill-fated Charles I who was executed in 1649 by the victorious Parlimentarians. George III is buried here along with his wife Queen Charlotte, probably better known these days from the TV series Bridgerton, along with a whole bunch of their children including George IV. Queen Victoria isn't buried here but almost every reigning monarch since her time can be found at St. George's Chapel, including George V, George VI, and most recently Elizabeth II who was laid to rest here in 2022. To visit St. George's is to step through centuries upon centuries of British history, and I would have loved to take pictures of all of these final resting places for the various royals... but of course photography isn't allowed in St. George's either, argh! Images of these tombs can all be found readily via an online image search but I do wish that digital photography wasn't prohibited.

Once we finished the walking tour of St. George's Chapel, we had to hurry back to our rental car and drive to the airport in time for our flight. This experience was slightly marred by finding a parking ticket on our rental car, as we had apparently exceeded the time limit by a mere 10 minutes and had to pay a large additional fee for the parking. (The stupid online parking system then refused to accept an American credit card and I ultimately had to pay even more money for a banking wire transfer after returning back to the USA.) At least our flight was on time for once and the weather was finally beginning to clear up as our plane took off from the runway at Heathrow. Our flight path took us to the west and immediately after taking off I happened to be in the right location to spot that we were flying over Windsor Castle. There it was down below us, just to the south of the Thames and split into its distinctive Upper and Lower Wards. Given that we passed through the cloud barrier less than a minute later, it was a real bit of good luck to cature this last aerial view of Windsor as we were departing.

That brought our brief trip to the southwest portion of Britain to a close. The whole excursion only lasted for six days and I think that we managed to pack about as much as we could realistically see into that period, especially given that Liz spent most of the time tied up at her work conference. I was exceedingly pleased that I was able to use this impromptu trip to see a whole bunch of historical sites that were slightly off the normal tourist path, places like Salisbury and Winchester and Cornwall and the little towns of the Cotswolds that I had read about for various reasons over the years but wasn't certain that I'd ever get to visit. We plan to come back to Britain again in the future, hopefully next time with our children old enough to come with us! Until then, thanks as always for reading along and sharing in some of our travels.