Overland Track : Day 1 Cradle Mountain to Waterfall Valley

Barn Bluff

It's been a while hasn't it. Everyone has probably long since removed me from their RSS feeds seeing as how my last post was probably more than 2 years ago. I really should change the title and address of this blog, but see last sentence and you'll know why that's not going to happen. I'm lucky I even remembered what my login to this place was.

The main reason I'm posting now is because I've just come back from an awesome week in Tasmania, where 5 and a half days were spent walking the Overland Track. I thought I'd put a bit of a description up here so I don't have to keep telling the same stories, I'd probably end up telling the same one to someone and how embarrassing would that be.

For those who may not know the Overland track is a ~70km walk between Cradle Mt and Lake St-Clair and everyone knows how to use google maps now to decide if I've exaggerated the distance.

The church opposite the hotel room in Launceston

We flew into Launceston on Friday night and the first thing that hits you is how friendly everyone is. I don't know if it's a combination of being dependent on tourism or a small town thing, but these people were friendly than those in Wagga and that is usually my benchmark for friendliness. In Launceston I mainly spent my time eating lots, trying to preserve my feet and not getting my clothes dirty, not a good start if you manage to spill pasta sauce all over the one set of clothes you will be wearing for the next week.

Cradle Mountain and Dove Lake

I did manage to pay a visit to the City Park which for some reason has an enclosure of Japanese macaque monkeys. These are the ones who you normally see sitting in hot pools surrounded by snow. So it was a little strange to have a troop of them in the middle of Launceston, and they aren't my favourite monkey, I think that would have to be the Capuchin, but kind of cool to see.

Then it was on to the walk......

We got up super early for the 2+ hour bus trip from Launceston to the Cradle Mountain visitor centre, stuffing hot cross buns into my mouth as I knew they would be the last fresh carbs for a while, and I luuuurve carbs.

Day 1: Cradle Mountain to Waterfall Valley (10.4 km)

Lake Lilla and Cradle Mountain

We got on the track by just before 10am, ready for the 10.4 km walk to Waterfall Valley Hut. This day had a fair amount of climbing, we would walk up about 300m to reach the alpine plateau and then at the end of the day we would drop about 200m into the campsite. So not heaps of elevation gain, but you really feel any when you are carrying heavy packs.

The start of the walk was actually the non-standard start, from Dove Lake.  Normally you would start from the Ronny Creek Carpark. For some reason there was track work on this beginning section, I'm not sure why they chose to do it in the middle of the high season, but I actually really liked this start, this really gives a good view of Cradle Mountain.  I think the climb up to Marions Lookout is meant to be steeper this way though.  In the photo above Marions Lookout is at the top of the ridge in the foreground.

Climbing up from Lake Lilla

 

 

 

We actually had pretty good weather the entire time we were walking the track. Apparently in the Cradle Mountain area it is cloudy for 294 days in the year and rains on 275 days, so to see blue skies and no rain on our first day was pretty lucky.

To the left is Lake Lilla, starting the climb up to Marions Lookout.  The first part of the walk was through lovely Australian scrub. It was unusual for me to see so much water around, having done a lot of walking in NSW and Victoria I'm more used to water normally being a bit of a struggle to find.

The first part of the walk was fairly busy as there were a lot of day walkers around. Since it was such a nice day there were a lot of people heading out to try the Cradle Mountain ascent. The climb doesn't seem like much, and looking up from Kitchen Hut the path didn't seem to bad. Bad assumption. Even though the climb was only 320 m over 1.2 km, it was tough.

Another shot of Lake Lilla and Dove Lake

I'm really surprised that so many people attempted it as a day-walk, in bad conditions it would be dangerous. The climb starts off easy, but then you round a corner and the true ascent becomes visible. You have to climb over massive rocks, big as a room. It's perhaps low-grade rock climbing really, except in hiking boots. Lets just say there was a high attrition rate from most people. It just got tougher the higher you went, until your whole body was aching from pulling yourself up crevices and around massive boulders. But we got there, and the view was pretty nice. But we were late coming back down the mountain.

Crater Lake

By the time we got to the start of the walk up Cradle Mountain we had walked out of the trees and were into the alpine vegetation.  This is some of my favourite vegetation, and it being wildflower season up there just made it all the more special.

Another Cradle Mountain shot

Above is Crater Lake, this was where the usual start of the Overland Track joins up to the track we were on.  Just after this lake is the final, steep, push up to Marions Lookout.  The water here was really black.

We camped in what we thought was going to be a lovely spot, underneath the trees where the ridge dropped into the valley, so out of the wind, along with a number of other campers. Also near a little stream which we could get water from, rather than going all the way back to the hut for. I later learned that you shouldn't drink from any streams in this valley, but we did have our UV water purifier with us, so hopefully that could contend with anything in the water.

It looked like a really lovely spot, but unfortunately the rain which this area is so known for settled in over night. We found out why this place is called Waterfall Valley in the morning........

Above is the track towards Kitchen Hut, at the base of Cradle Mountain, and Barn Bluff in the distance.  The night's campsite was at the base of this mountain.  The track here was in really good condition, I suppose because most people probably walk just this section.  Overall the track was really good, though some parts got a bit rougher.

Wildflowers!

Below left is the start of the climb to Cradle Mountain. This was when the going was still easy.

To the below right the track starts to get tougher, and to the left is the cause of all the boulders, it seems that Cradle Mountain is constantly crumbling.

Still going OK

The view from the top was pretty nice.

Coming back down the mountain.  You can see the many tracks intersecting around this point

The Audreys

I went to see the Audreys the other night, they are a "blues and roots" Australian band for those who may not know. I never really know what blues and roots means. But I think it must have something to do with banjos, harmonicas and fiddles (I don't think they are called violins by blues and rootsers). It was an awesome concert though, in what has to be one of the best venues I've ever been in.

It was like they were playing in your living room, granted your living room would have been pretty big, with no furniture and a well-equipped bar in the corner, but it really had that feel. There were maybe 100 people, if that, there and you were so close you could have reached out and touched them if you wanted. There was no security watching out for crowd surfers, no full beer bottles being hurled over the crowd and definitely no fights breaking out. Just generally a really great vibe, an unwashed vibe, but still very chill. I think I have very low standards for what constitutes a great vibe, no threats of physical violence is all it takes, but then that can be hard to find in Australia.

I wish I'd taken my camera with me as it isn't that often you can get that close to ARIA award winners and I don't think it's going to happen again in my life. So unfortunately you don't get to see any photos, and the lead singer was wearing a lovely sparkly dress too.

Do I Need a New Camera?

I used to like the photos I took with my little compact point-and-shoot. But then two of my brothers got those massive SLR things (and started putting the photos on the web, which is the most important point as I think I had seen maybe 3 photos total from one of my brother's last 5 years of photo taking). Ever since then I have been slightly depressed with my photo-taking ability. It seems my photos look good only when the sun is shining, not to mention the fact I find it hard to take photos when the foreground is dark and the background light.

So I'm thinking of joining the ever growing ranks of people with massive cameras around their necks. I guess on the upside it should give my muscles a bit of a work-out, even if I do look like an American tourist. It is near Christmas though, I mean if you walk into a supermarket at the moment you would think it was next week, and I do work for an investment bank now, though they are being smashed at the moment. I suppose the up-shot of all that is if I still have my job in December, maybe I'll start looking at fancy-ass massive cameras, the bigger the better I say! So maybe you'll see a dramatic improvement in my photos, and if you don't notice anything I'll just tell you that I lost my job and didn't get a camera for Christmas :).

Como

So I know I still have stuff to tell about Egypt, but I'm more in the mood for writing about Italy and the few days we spent at Como, before flying back to Australia. This area is definitely a place I want to come back to, it was so amazingly beautiful. Even though the centre of Como had been flooded in the past few days and there were fences and makeshift bridges running along the streets.

It was certainly a bit of an adventure to get there though. We had to catch a train from Florence to Milan and then another to Como. I was starting to learn by this stage that Italian trains never run on time. Our train to Milan was delayed by an hour, but then we were the lucky ones as other trains had been delayed by 5 hours.

Luckily I hadn't pre-booked the train to Como as there would have been no way we could have made those. You should have seen the numbers of people running for trains when we arrived, quite amusing. I foolishly thought that after my year in Paris and all my train-travel that I was an old-hat at the ticket buying/platform finding thing. And was fairly confident that we could just turn up in Milan and everything would go smoothly. Oh, how little I knew. The first thing about Milan train station is that the departure board only shows you the terminating station for the train, so unless you are a seasoned Italian train traveller you have no idea where any of these stations are or which one could possibly be yours.

They don't give you train numbers, or lists of intervening stations or anything that could be classed as useful information. Instead you have to take a punt on the departure time listed on the board and your ticket and hope that you choose the right one. Once you have hauled all your luggage to your guessed platform you can then check on the individual board which stations the train was stopping at. Luckily I chose well as the other option was at the other end of the station and down multiple flights of stairs, not fun with 40 kgs of luggage.

I had foolishly assumed that all train stations would have a departure board with semi-useful information on it. But we made it there in the end, even though we missed the first train due to an inability to find ticket machines and an indecipherable departure board. But then I think that is just one of the joys of travelling in Italy, the unknown, just be prepared to wait.

Once we arrived in Como you could certainly understand why George Clooney has a villa there, if only I was a Hollywood actor or a funds manager I would probably have one there as well. Though if I was a fund manager I would probably be having to sell my villa now to pay off my debts now that my employer had gone bust.

Even though it was cloudy pretty much the whole time we were there, it was just the perfect ending to our European adventure. A day and a half of relaxing in the middle of the Italian Alps.

Whilst we were there we went for a lake cruise up to Bellagio, which is at the intersection of the two arms of Lake Como. Really if you are planning to visit that area I would recommend staying there. It was the prettiest town I think I've ever seen, with winding pedestrian streets up the side of the mountain, in the middle of the Alps. There looked like there was heaps to do there too, with donkey rides and mountain biking and so forth. I think if (or rather when) I back there, this is definitely where I will be spending my time.


The streets of Bellagio.













The Como flood, not really that bad, but Como is situated at the end of the lake valley and I guess if there is a lot of rain there aren't many places for the water to go except straight through the middle of Como.














Could this be George Clooney's villa? There were so many lovely houses on the edge of the lake it was impossible to tell (that and I have no idea what George's house looks like)

On to Cairo

After we left Paris we had what would have to be my most memorable aeroplane flight ever with Egypt Air on the way to Cairo. When we turned up at the check in a good 3 hours early we were greeted with absolute chaos. There were people milling around the place with massive amounts of luggage, I'm talking bikes, prams, about 10 suitcases per 4 person family, kids running everywhere, it was insane. We were pretty disappointed looking at this line thinking we were going to be standing there for the next 3 hours, but luckily there seemed to also be a line for young couples with normal amounts of luggage, you know 2 bags total. It seemed to be up to the security guard's discretion as to who he would let into this super-speedy line, but after a little bit of pleading eyes he relented and let us in. So we thought we were doing quite well, but when we see on our boarding passes that boarding began in 45 minutes we were fairly sure that there was no way even half the people still in the line would make it.

Egypt Air had certainly gone for the budget route with their flight experience, either that or the French decided to reserve all the nice boarding gates for Air France, because once through security at our gate there were no toilets let alone any food outlets, slightly disappointing. Anyway boarding started on time and there seemed to be a good crowd of people also waiting to board so there was some hope that maybe we would get off on time. No such luck though as we then waited on the tarmac for an hour past our depature time as people slowly trickled on. The flight itself was completely crazy, I think that was the first flight I have ever been on where the number of children far outnumbered the adults. It felt like you were sitting in the middle of a child-care centre with kids running up and down the aisles, kicking chairs, constantly pressing the bell for the flight attendent (just to hear the noise) and screaming. It certainly was an experience and really set the scene for Egypt.

Once we finally arrived in Cairo the plane seemed to park somewhere off in the middle of the tarmac for some reason and there was then another mad scramble as everyone tried to get on the first bus to the terminal.

I'm just glad we went there with a tour company as the whole airport experience might have been too intense for me to handle by myself at midnight. Our tour guide meet us behind customs and got us the visas which was also kind of weird as we had only just meet this guy who immediately demands our passports and then disappears over the other side of the room whilst we are distracted with filling out forms. Luckily he returns with out passports and our fancy visas and we then join the passport control lines. These were some cool lines they all seemed to move very slowly and we were constantly being told to change lines by various security people so eventually it looked like all the foreigners got sorted to the back of all the lines. When we get to the front of the line you have to hand your passport over and it then disappears into the back of the room where someone else does a secondary check. The first guy has by this stage moved on to the next person in the line so you sort of stand around hoping that your passport reappears.

All in all it was a real introduction to Egypt, the end is the same as every other country, ie you get through fine with all luggage and passport intact, it's just that the means are certainly different.

The drive back from the airport was also an experience, no one can ever complain about bad driving or traffic after having driven in Cairo. But actually I think the drivers were all really good, for what they were doing. We had a three lane highway but most of the time there were four or five cars abreast, the lane markings meant nothing and everyone was going about 20 km/hr over the speed limit. Add to that the people who just seemed to wander along the roadside I think everyone was doing remarkably well. A few white-knuckle moments but we made it to the hotel, phew, that was an adventure and we hadn't even seen anything yet!

The Wrap-Up: Paris

Before I left Paris after the finish of my job over there I had a little bit of a European adventure with my boyfriend. It was good timing in the end as it gave me a chance to go back over the tourist sites I had seen a year ago, one last tour of Paris before I left. Though I have to say the French really pulled it out for us, the one day I really didn't want a train strike was the day my boyfriend arrived, as he flew in at 5:55am. But of course this is Paris and so yes there was a train strike and yes it was only on the RER B line, the line needed to get out to the airport. Thankfully they did still have a few trains running from Gare du Nord out to the airport, about 4 an hour, so much less frequently than normal. This meant I just had to somehow get to Gare du Nord by about 5:15am to catch the train out to the airport in time to catch the people coming off the plane. Unfortunately the metro didn't start running until 5:30am, so I had to find another means of public transport.

Thankfully Paris has these night buses which run all night and seem to just follow the main train/metro lines. So I caught one of those at 4:30 am and managed to get to the airport gate about 5 minutes before my boyfriend arrived, perfect timing in the end, it just involved a rather early start. It was fun to catch the night bus, I was a little worried as I had heard stories of the night buses in Sydney where the people are behaving like animals, but this was lovely, true I did see a guy peeing in the street, but that was it, on a Saturday night too, unbelievable.

We then did the proper tour of Paris, I think I have had enough visitors that I've got a pretty good walking tour down pat now. Heading through the Jardin Luxumbourg , past the French Institute towards Notre Dame and the Louvre. The one thing my boyfriend wanted to see in Paris was this plaque on the Ile de la Cite commemorating the spot where Jacques de Molay was burned to death. This guy was the last Grand Master of the Templars and he was burned on that spot on the 18th of March 1314. The story goes that as he was burning he cursed the King of France, Philip the Fair, and the pope at the time, Clement V and then both those guys were dead within the year. Oooooh, coincidence? I think not.

I mentioned Philip the Fair and Clement V when I wrote about Avignon, as this period was when the Popes were tied to the French kingdom and had to do what the king wanted. So when Philip wanted to get his hands on the Templar's wealth, who were basically the bankers for the rich at that time, he thought the best way to do it was to arrest most of the knights on charges of heresy and that sort of thing and execute their leader, that way no one could complain when he grabbed all their cash. As Pope Clement V was beholden to Philip it was pretty easy to get a conviction for heresy. I can't really blame old Jacques for the curse really, having to pay the price for his king's greed.

After old Jaques it was onto Sainte Chapelle, my favourite church, and for once there was hardly any line, even though this was in peak tourist time. So we got to see the lovely stained glass windows again. As we were heading back to the Latin Quarter for some dinner after that we managed to run into a massive gay and lesbian mardi gras. That was a bit of fun, so we watched that for a while, now having never been to the one in Sydney yet I can't really compare the two, but I think Sydney's would have been more organized with more impressive floats, but this one was still pretty good. There was word that the transport workers were going to join in the march as well, but I didn't see them, I don't think French people are as accepting of strikes as they once were and so perhaps it's good that the transport people didn't show up. I don't think they would have really fit in anyway.

The next day it was onto the Louvre where we got to see all the famous pieces, I really do love the Mesopotamian section, though that doesn't seem to be nearly as popular as the big painting section. After that it was onto the Arc de Triomphe and then Les Invalides where we got to see Nappy's tomb again. That place really is an impressive resting spot.


I had to get this photo taken, it's me with a painting of Pont du Gard in the Louvre. There were a whole series of them of the ancient Roman ruins in Nimes, I guess it used to be a popular subject for artists.


I really wanted to get up the Notre Dame towers one last time as well, as I think the view from up there is one of the better ones in Paris. My guide books said the towers opened at 9:30am but I think the church workers had got a bit slacker since that section was written as the sign outside said they opened at 10am. In the end they really opened at about 10:20am, but I got to have one last look around inside before getting in the interminable line about 20 minutes to 10. I think with Notre Dame you just have to accept the fact that no matter how early you get there, you will always have to wait for about an hour. There was already a decent queue forming by the time we joined the back and then we had already been waiting for about 40 minutes by the time they slowly started letting in the first few people. Even though we were probably only 30 people from the front it still took at least another 20-30 minutes before we got through the gate. Still I think it was worth it, and it is perhaps less discouraging if you get there early as even though you have to wait for ages, at least you can actually see the entrance, as opposed to those people who get there a bit later and are already miles down the block.

Then it was off to Sacre Couer where for once I didn't get bothered by the string guys who were staking out all the entrances, I don't know, perhaps I was starting to look like a local. There was a really militant church attendant inside the church, which I kind of like as it stops people make a massive racket and taking pictures of everything. I was watching the guy and he was doing a very good job of also making sure everyone took off their hats as they came inside. A very different feel to the inside of Notre Dame where they actually have vendors inside selling souvenirs, now I'm not too sure, but didn't Jesus take a kind of dim view of that sort of behaviour?


Here we have Notre Dame at sunset and the obligatory gargoyle shot and also a pseudo-arty shot of Dave in Montmarte, but then I suppose we are in the arty area of Paris, aren't we meant to take these sorts of photos?



There was a wine tasting event that evening so we headed out to the Republique area, making a stop to rest by the canal before the tasting started. This is something that I think is quite typically Paris, there is a canal in the north east of the city, which goes underground for a while and then eventually joins up with the Seine, but out in the Republique you can actually see the water. There are trees growing alongside and it is quite peaceful out there and the Parisians love to come out on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon and drink some beers while sitting on the concrete beside the stagnant water of the canal, I find it slightly strange, but they seem to enjoy themselves.

We were sitting up the end where the canal starts to head under the city where there is a lock to lower the boats underground. Whilst we were sitting there a tourist boat actually headed through the lock, full of tourists, and headed into the pitch blackness of the canal under the ground. Now I'm one who quite enjoys little boat trips but I think a pitch-black ride underneath a city is not one I would really enjoy. The wine tasting was as good as ever by the way.

We had planned to go to the Musee d'Orsay on the next day, but the tickets I had ordered on the 17th of June still hadn't arrived by the 1st of July. Pretty impressive really, it takes more than 13 days for a letter to travel about 10 kms in Paris, not bad La Poste. So instead we headed off to the zoo and the Jardin desPlantes, though it was a stinking hot day and we spent most of the time there just hugging the shade. Our choice of viewing animals became more a question of which ones had the coolest enclosures (temperature-wise).

We then headed out to the Eiffel Tower to see the symbol of Paris. After climbing up and down I wanted to go to the Trocadero to get the best viewing angle of the tower and as you walk through the Trocadero gardens there is a big fountain/pond area running the length of the avenue. This seems to turn into an unofficial bathing area when the temperature starts to rise as there were heaps of people frolicking around, but then when you get closer it turns out the water is green with algae, which put paid to my thought of sticking my head in. My feet did enjoy the cold though, I just wasn't too keen on catching some terrible middle-ear infection.

On our last day in Paris we headed out to the Museum of the Middle Ages were I got to see the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries again which I just love. This time round I got a free audio-guide too which was a bonus as you learn heaps more about the history of the pieces that way. And as this museum is really about history it's kind of important too. Apparently a lot of the pieces there are from Notre Dame which the peasants really took a disliking to during the revolution and tried to destroy most of the facade. The church became a bit of a symbol of the French royalty during the revolution and I suppose when you consider that a couple of the Louis king's got themselves sainted you can see how the church and the monarchy became intertwined. I'm not sure what miracles these kings performed in order to get themselves that sainthood, perhaps it was something to do with squeezing ever increasing amounts from the peasantry without them complaining earlier. When you see some of the castles they built I would say that's a bit of a miracle.

Then that was it, my stay in Paris and the Cite Universitaire came to a finish, I packed up the rest of my stuff, threw out 6 massive bags of rubbish and then it was off to Charles de Gaulle airport for our plane to Egypt. Thankfully there was no train strike that day.

Hi Guys!!

I'm back, well it's been a long month and a bit, but a lot sure has happened in that time. There was the end of my job in Paris, a European adventure and 3 job interviews. But now I have a little time to update everyone. I was thinking I'm going to have to change the name of my blog now that I'm back in Australia, but "Taking on the Aussies" doesn't really have the same ring to it. Maybe I can try and throw in a few insults towards the Europeans every now and again to justify the name.

The job interviews were a bit of fun, that was the first time I've been interviewed for a job since I was a checkout-chick at Woolies and Big W. Lets just say the process was a little different this time round. I'm not overly confident I will get the job, in fact not very confident at all, as the last interviewer didn't seem particularly enthusiastic as to my application. I get the feeling they had already made the decision and it wasn't me, oh well I'll just have to try again somewhere else. I did get to do the freaky psychometric testing though, which apparently a lot of big companies use to weed out the crazies and the liars.

They test your numerical, verbal and abstract reasoning as well as a massive personality questionnaire. I even got the added bonus of a salesman questionnaire. I think really though, the reasoning tests are really testing your ability to go out and by a book on this stuff and study up. The maths is not difficult, percentages anyone, it is more the fact that there is quite a short time limit placed. It was strange doing these tests though as every time I've done an exam you have a fairly good idea as to how you went, you did all the questions you could, you know where you were unsure and where you couldn't do anything. But because these were quite easy it all really came down to how well you read the question, and it is quite possible to walk out thinking you had done great when in actual fact you had barely passed as you had read everything wrong. I get to read my report in a week or so though, so I'm looking forward to that.

The personality questionnaire was also really boring, I was at least hoping for some interesting questions like "Do you ever feel like screaming when in a quiet place?" or "When standing on the top of a tall cliff do you ever feel like throwing yourself off?". Those would have been fun to answer. Instead there were a total of about 15 questions and these were asked about 200 times in various guises. And they were all like "Are you ambitious?", "Are you confident?", "Do you look towards the future?", Boooring! So I just answered honestly and moved on, it was funny seeing the rest of the group, all straight out of uni, and you could see them pondering over each question, thinking "which one would they most like me to pick?".

But I think the salesman questionnaire had to take the cake, it was all about whether you could ever be in sales, and your views on salespeople. There were these questions like "Would you sell a product to your grandparents even if you didn't believe the product was very good", that kind of thing, so that was pretty easy to answer, but I don't think they are ever going to get me to sell stuff, thank god! I was filling it out thinking, what sort of job have I applied for?

But enough about that, I can give you another taste of summer in Europe, even though I am now in winter in Australia, as I went on one last trip to England before the European adventure.

I visited Hever castle whilst I was over there (the first photo), this was the childhood home of Anne Boleyn, but after she married Henry VIII and subsequently died, it passed into his hands and he gave it to another one of his wives, Anne of Cleves, after he divorced her. It was later (very much later) bought by the Astor family (of the hotel fame) and they actually used it as a residence, so there are the renovated parts where the rooms have modern wallpaper and beds and then the original parts which have been restored. It is now owned by the Broadland Properties group (how romantic) who use it as a conference centre, though the castle is still open to the public. They also have on display here a rare portrait of Catherine Howard, and thus have portraits of all 6 of King Henry VIII's wives, which is not a very common thing to have in a single collection.

Though the underground art-historian rumour about this painting is that Hever castle probably paid a lot more for it than what it is actually worth because a well-known BBC art-historian guy (Starkey) did this big piece on this lost Catherine Howard portrait just a few weeks before it re-appeared and was bought by Hever. So the rumour is (I think) that Starkey knew who had the portrait and wanted to push the price up for them (knowing that Hever would want to complete their collection) and so did the TV piece on it. Ohhh, these underhanded dealings in the art-historian world, how juicy!.

Anyway on to some pictures, it really was a lovely place, with fantastic grounds, complete with a massive lake (second photo), Italian gardens (to display the Astor's Italian sculptures), a yew maze, a water maze (not particularly impressive, or difficult and is the photo to the left), topiary and flowers all over the place. I think the most impressive thing about it though was that it really did look and feel like a proper castle, with the proper battlements and moat and everything. And the gardens were just what you expect it England, lovely and green, manicured and lots of flowers.

Unfortunately you weren't able to take photos inside the castle, but what do you expect from a group called Broadland Properties. They did have one other impressive thing, apart from the complete portrait collection of King Henry VIII's wives and that was a personal lock of King Henry VIII. When he would go travelling around the country, and he did spend some time at Hever castle before Anne lost her head, he would take his own locks with him. These would be placed on the doors and that way he could be sure of security, as only his personal locksmith had the keys to them, so I guess he only had to keep that guy happy, rather than the whole country.