Dunster

After another lovely cooked breakfast, we headed off to Dunster Castle.  It was beautiful weather with t-shirt, shorts and jandals being the order of the day.  We arrived shortly after opening time which meant that we got a park in the shade under the trees.  Rather than racing straight for the Castle, we decided to wander the grounds first.  The grounds were beautifully presented, and had the river Avill plunging through them.  It wasn’t a very big river, but it made up for that with the speed at which it flowed.  We meandered around the gardens and walked across Lovers’ Bridge.  As with all of these, there was a story behind it.  We sat on the love seat built in to the bridge and got a nice man to take our photo.

Around the back of the Castle was an old watermill.  It was not as old as the original watermill that had been on the site.  Apparently the original watermill was listed in the Domesday Book (a national survey carried out by William the Conqueror in 1086 as a means of assessing the wealth of every landowner in the UK).  Anyway, this watermill was pretty neat.  It is still operational today, slowly grinding wheat into flour.  They could run it a lot faster, but they only run it as fast as required to keep up with demand.  Seeing the way in which they used the rotational energy of the waterwheel to perform a variety of tasks was very interesting.

The raw energy

The finished product

After the watermill, we headed back up to the Castle.  The castle was very grand and very big.  It was all in decent repair, although some of this was due to it being continually developed over the years.  It had withstood a number of sieges over the years, but Oliver Cromwell had eventually overseen the destruction of the outer fortifications and some of the exterior.  Luckily the castle itself wasn’t destroyed and was restored during the Restoration (funny that).  There was, as always, so much to see.  A couple of the rooms boasted amazing plaster ceilings that date back to 1642, and the carved timber balustrade is almost as old.  These are superb pieces of carving; each panel, long enough for 8 – 10 steps, is carved from a single piece of timber and depicts hunting scenes.

Eventually we had seen all there was to see in the castle, from the plaster ceilings to leather wall-hangings depicting scenes from Antony & Cleopatra to a silk bedspread embroidered nearly 400 years ago.  We emerged once more into glorious spring sunshine and a temperature that must have been mid-twenties.  Bliss.

Despite the fact that we had not noticed the castle as we drove through the village on the previous day, we found that the village was in fact right next to the castle – barely two minutes’ walk away.  We continued our wandering down tiny streets on cobbled footpaths and admired the red stone building we had driven past before.  We found the church, with the village Tithe Barn in its grounds; the Dove Cote (no sign of any doves though) and the Yarn Market.  This was particularly beautiful, being an octagonal roofed space for merchants to trade their wares even when the weather was bad.

Our final stop before returning to our car was a late lunch at Tessa’s Tea Shop – they make delicious cheese scones and the coffee wasn’t too bad either.  It had been a great day in a truly picturesque spot, a lovely way to wind up this particular road trip.  It was time to head to Bristol for a quiet week at Saturday Cottage.  Of course we have got lots of day trips planned to National Trust and English Heritage places; maybe it won’t be so quiet after all.

Tasting notes:

I didn’t have these all on the one night, but I can’t remember which night.  From the Dark Star brewery I had their espresso beer.  Good coffee flavour, but a bit too bitter. I'd like it more if they had smoothed it out a bit.  From the Oakleaf Brewery in Gosport, I had the Blake's Gosport Bitter. Quite a nice dark ale with nice malty flavour.  I also had their IPA.  It reminded me of Braedon.  He would have liked it. The Black Jack's porter was ok although it didn't excite me.