UK Trip Day 3 – Seeing A Castle For The Very First Time!

This is a tad bit more pricey than my normal blings, but the price tags on my latest Swarovski Grade Crystal Sticker Sheet and loose Preciosa crystals 8mm in clear and pink are there for a very good reason. 

 

Get clicking!

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Maybe I will finish blogging about my UK Trip when I retire after working as a dentist for 40 years. Maybe even then no time coz must fetch grandson from kindergarten.

On our third day, Uncle Terry and Uncle Steve brought all of us to Kent county which was just south of London. We were going to visit a real castle! It was quite exciting for me because the only castles I’ve ever seen are the ones in disney cartoons, in my misc storybooks and scoffed at at Sunway Lagoon.

The castle was called Leeds Castle and some royalties lived there and sold the house to some American woman who became a Lady who then preserved the place bla bla bla.

Grandma Doris (Uncle Terry’s mum) came along to accompany my grandma. The two grandmas managed to get through despite the language barrier. My grandma says she has no problems understanding English but it’s just the accent that she could not quite catch! Grandma Doris found grandma’s name far too difficult to pronounce (Ching) and decided to give her an english name. Meet my grandma, Dorothy Chow. After awhile, Grandma Doris shortened it to “Dot” as how people usually affectionately call those who are named Dorothy. After awhile she gave up as well because my grandma forgets to respond to her new name and she asked my grandma “Can I call you grandma?” <3 

Mum and her pretty Willy Wonka-ish hat which now sits awkwardly on top of my mess in my Kedah room. She says that I should wear it to block out the sun when I walk from my car to the dental building. I’m sure she meant well. 

It’s quite pricey but almost everything in the UK cost about as much. 😐 Don’t know when I’ll ever have the chance to go back again.

As with all my UK posts, here’s another one of the flora.

Mum, during her short lived infatuation with that hat.

Group photo! Dad is hardly in any of the pics as he prefers to be behind his big ass camera.

What is it about western countries and their gigantic ancient trees? I remember when I visited Perth in the 90s, they had a huuuge tree in King’s Park.

Not in this photo, but ducks are usually found in any stagnant or flowing body of water in the UK and the European countries. I heard that once the Malacca government released some ducks in the Malacca river and within a week there were no more ducks in the river. 🙁

Speaking of Malacca and ducks, my grandma took her driving test back in the 60s or 70s and the instructor asked her to drive on and she accidentally killed a mummy and daddy duck who were walking with their ducklings in a line. :(( The instructor asked her to stop the car and she thought she was in trouble. He went to the back of the car and picked up the two dead ducks and stuffed them into the boot, got back in the car and asked her to drive on. LOL.  POOR ORPHANED DUCKLINGS T_T

For added effect.

Uncle Steven trying to coax a duck/pheasant.

Even the drain also prettier than people. (leng kor yan)

Besides ducks, there were swans too. Sorry, no swans anecdote. Erm wait….last Swan I saw was in Perth! My cousin sister Shevie was only three years old that time and the swans who were taller than her pecked her head, making her cry. Now Shevie is a big girl and is no longer scared of swans, but instead studying law in Aberdeen. 🙂

Felt very Enid Blyton-ish. Like some canopy of shrubbery leading into the woods. 

Mum showing you the extent of the leaves! Her hat is still not helping.

Artsy fartsy shot of a dead tree.  

I’m not sure if all the lakes and creeks I saw were actually one entire body of water. 

So I stumbled upon a rubbing post! Apparently there are seven on the trail and I’m thinking that this is something so ancient and sacred. Think Aladdin with the scarab! Must touch all seven to gain access to the kingdom or something.

Looks rustic too.

So here I was rubbing it, just to layan the powers that be. It wasn’t until I went home only did my mum tell me that it’s actually for little kids to place a piece of paper over it and colour on it to get the imprint of the design. -___-

One with mum before going into the castle.

I thought this was the prettiest part of the castle. Somewhere where the princess could secretly meet a palace guard and then kau chut si/nasi sudah jadi bubur/uh-oh and then use the moat to float the baby away. Princess maybe quite bimbo coz the moat goes round and round the castle. 

More of the pretty moat. It’s not that deep actually.

L-r: Uncle Steve, Grandma, Dad, Grandma Doris and Koo Cheong/Uncle Terry.

My first castle!!

Me and a really old door.

This was of course taken with dad’s awesome DSLR. His wide angle lens was really useful throughout the trip!

Some pipe thingie back in the day. 

Nah slowly read la. I thought it was rather interesting. Such a big deal was made about Henry the 8th’s sleepover. The dolphin seems so out of place. One dolphin enough meh?

Posing with dad’s camera pretending that it’s mine.

Remnants of a duck.

I thought this was great. This was before I went to Paris. *sigh*

Those books actually had old english writings in them. 

At this point I was rather curious as to what dad and Uncle Steve were up to.

Comparing their watches with a sundial.

A sundial. Rather accurate too! It was about noon! Without the daylights saving and stuff.

You wouldn’t be able to resist the sprawling greens as well!

More of the colourful flowers that were in bloom everywhere. Towards the end of my visit, almost everything was turning into shades of brown and orange. :\

This one seems to be flowing. Hm.

Look at how cool Grandma Doris is!! She loves being silly in pics too. 🙂

Remnants of another duck. 🙁

Duck’s eye view.

On the way back to Sutton where my Aunt and Uncle stay, we passed by a tiny village which was not unlike what you get in Cameron Highlands. You know Camerons like to simulate the whole English feel? This is the actual thing! 

Comes complete with flash retro cars.

This hotel has a damn cute name but I think my grandma is even cuter. Already accustomed to the fact that dogs do have hotels to stay at while their masters were away (at that time, Angel was staying at a dog hotel in SS15 for a whole month!) she was very concerned that bears were allowed to stay in the same hotel. I had to explain to her that it was just a very cute name, bears and dogs don’t actually put up there for a night or two.

Seriously wonder where the name came from.

There was a junk yard sale going on!

Full of nonsense that no one needs but still very pretty to look at!

Like a proper junkyard sale should be.

An actual red telephone booth!!

I’d get a little claustrophohic. Don’t know how the locals do it.

An old graveyard was situated next to a rather grand looking church.

Another strange name for an establishment. 

See all the quaint names of the various restaurants and motels.

This one is for Chee Kiang! Bet he would loooove to one day work at a thatch cottage (not quite in this pic) with wooden and brick walls dispensing drugs!

A red postbox! Complete with postman somemore! Wah must have been my lucky day.

A random pub that we knocked back a few pints at. I kid. I had orange juice.

Me, orange juice, the name of the place and a whole lot of tummy sucking.

I thought this was seriously nice!! This goes into the list of “Things I Wanted To Do So Badly After Staying In The UK For A Month”. I wanted to paint my future door a bright colour. This or maybe red or bright yellow or smartie kind of orange. And then have a plant in the matching colour next to it. Other things I wanted to do is like cooking steak and painting. Nothing of that sort happened ever since I got back. 🙁 It’s always the case.

More of that pretty pharmacy.

If we have something like this in our country, it looks wannabe. So I’m a little bit undecided about this. Wannabe or authentic?

Inside a real english pub!

With some gambling machines at the side.

Uncle Terry and Uncle Steve drinking proper lager.

It was more of a beer garden actually. Or are all pubs equipped with beer gardens?

Thanks to dad I have a nice photo with one of the street signs.

There was a handyman going about his business. Yes, that fit looking fella behind Grandma Doris. I winked to mum to check out the hottie and Grandma Doris and my grandma understood what I meant. Grandma Doris caught my eye and pointed to her fourth finger with a wink. Damn!

 

Showing you some of the promotions just in case you happen to drop by that quaint village.

Instead of palm trees like back here, this is what they see as they drive along the freeways. 

At my Aunt’s and Uncle’s, we were treated to gourmet meal almost everyday as my Uncle Terry is a huge fan of Jamie Oliver.

I can’t remember what’s the name of this dish but I think it was a filling for some casserole that my Aunt Judy was making.

There was a raspberry pie as well!

She made some designs with the left over dough.

Aforementioned casserole.

And she let me sprinkle the sugar and do more designs with the left over crusts. From the looks of things, good thing I took up dentistry. 

But who cares how it looked right? As long as it tastes DAMN GOOD. 

I actually wanted to put a whole FB album on all the food I consumed throughout my one month trip. But you know la, Jolene Lai the famous procrastinator. Haih. Next up! Day 4! (Hoo boy.)