Hever Castle

Since we were still living in a hotel and it felt kind of like a vacation, we went somewhere new and different every weekend in November. The first weekend we traveled south and a bit past London. Jared and Abigail went to the London LDS Temple while Natalie, Samantha, and I explored nearby Hever Castle which was the childhood home of Anne Boleyn. It's pretty small as far as castles go and we actually didn't go inside the castle itself at all and instead explored the grounds. The castle is surrounded by TWO moats and some really fantastic gardens. 






You guys, there was an actual maze on the castle grounds! Just like in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Yes, I am a little bit of a geek. Also, it took us much, much longer than it should have to navigate the maze because we let Natalie direct us for most of the way.



Can you believe how humungous those leaves are? Natalie was making plans to fashion herself clothing and shelter from the leaves of whatever plant this is. You know, in case she got stranded in the Hever Castle gardens.


It was cold that day and unfortunately and we were dressed for the temple, not for traipsing around 125 acres of magnificent gardens. Here Natalie and I are huddled together for warmth in the Italian Garden which was lovely even in the cold. There were grapevines trailing up the walls and over our heads and a beautiful column-lined pathway leading to an enormous lake.



No self-respecting castle is complete without some beautiful swans gliding along through the moat. The swans were happy to eat the duck food and the fish food for that matter since we never did find any koi to feed. 


Here Samantha and Natalie are dreaming of what it might be like to live in a castle. Or maybe they were dreaming of the hot chocolate I'd promised them at the castle cafe? Either way, it was a pretty dreamy day and we'd definitely go back to Hever Castle.  If the weather were warmer we'd probably enjoy it even more.



When we returned to the temple we had some time to fill while we waited for the youth group to finish up with their baptismal session. Since exploring beautiful gardens had been the activity for the day we decided to keep the trend going and look around the London Temple grounds. Mostly we played in the leaves and giggled and were sweet girls. I'm not sure how much longer the "little girl" stage will last for these two but no matter the age, it's always heartwarming to see our kids being friends.

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