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It’s story time, folks. Settle in for things going wrong.
I might be being a little dramatic. My day trip to Highclere Castle (a.k.a. Downton Abbey) was actually quite lovely. I saw the castle; I walked around. But I did not do this day trip right. At all.
Okay, so let me set the scene. In 2016, I studied abroad in the UK and did an incredible amount of sightseeing. I traipsed up and down that country all the way from Cornwall to Inverness, but I still missed a few bucket list places. One of those was Highclere Castle.
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Highclere Castle is famous, really, for one thing: Downton Abbey. If you have watched the show, you definitely recognized the picture at the top of this post. I really wanted to see this castle when I was studying in England in 2016, but the property is actually only open to tourists at certain times of the year, and sadly, I missed the window.
Fast forward to 2022. I was studying in England a second time, for my master’s, and was determined to see Highclere Castle this time around. The timing was right. I wasn’t that far away. Tickets were available. There was just one big issue. Transportation.
The closest train station to Highclere Castle is in Newbury, about six miles from the castle. Online, they recommend getting a taxi from the train station if you don’t have your own car. So I took the train early in the morning, but a fifteen minute taxi ride was going to set me back 30 pounds each way! (That’s about $40 for all of you in the US.) Now, this wouldn’t be too bad if I was travelling in a group of four, but it was just me, and I had already bought my admission ticket, which was also about 30 pounds. I was too cheap to pay for the taxi, and told myself, “It’s just six miles. I can walk that far.”
This was my first mistake.
The trouble with my six-mile trek from Newbury to Highclere Castle was not the distance, nor the fact that I had a timed entry ticket and had to be there at a certain time. No, the issue was a baffling lack of sidewalks.
The first mile or so, I thought to myself, “Oh, this isn’t so bad. It’s right along the road, but the traffic will probably thin out as I get farther into the countryside.”
It did not.
So there I am, walking six miles on the edge of a busy road with cars rushing past me. There’s no sidewalk. I’m alternating between brief stretches of walking on the road between cars and trudging through knee high grass, thinking to myself, “I have made a mistake.” But all I could do was keep walking.
About two hours later, I finally made it to the castle. Now, if you’ve watched Downton Abbey, there won’t be a whole lot of surprises about what you will see, but it was really cool to get to walk through this place that I’ve seen on TV so many times. It is every bit as impressive in person!
(By the way, photos were not allowed inside the castle, which is why all my photos are from the exterior only.)
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One thing that a lot of people don’t know is that the Lord Carnarvon who owned the castle back in the 1920’s is the man who financed archeologist Howard Carter’s expedition to excavate King Tut’s tomb. To shed light on this period of the castle’s history, you can visit an Egyptian exhibit in the “basement” of the castle. While most of the exhibit is dedicated to replicas rather than genuine artifacts, it is still a really interesting exhibit, and totally worth the extra cost to enter in my opinion.
After exploring the castle, I grabbed myself some lunch from the café onsite and ate at a nice little picnic table. I spent maybe another hour exploring the grounds. Then it was time to head back to the train station.
Now, you’d think I would have learned my lesson and called a taxi. But the map they gave me at the castle showed a walking path that cut through the grounds instead of following the road. It would still be a long walk, but it would be in pleasant English countryside instead of traffic. I went for it.
So, for the first mile or so, all I could think was “Oh, I’m so glad I did this!” The scenery was beautiful, and I got a very nice view of the castle. I was feeling good. There was one single gravel road that I thought I could follow almost all the way back to town.
Then, I saw a sign. The sign was in front of someone’s house on the only road around, and it said “Private Property: No access for vehicles or pedestrians.”
Darn.
Now, I’m not 100% sure that this was a valid sign. Afterall, the road was on the castle map as a place to walk, but I decided not to take my chances. Unfortunately, by this point, I was already about a mile from the castle, and backtracking meant adding two extra miles to an already twelve-mile day, which would not be exactly ideal.
Foolishly, I turned back to the castle map. It had a different walking path that appeared to cut around the “private property” sign and reconnected with the road at a slightly earlier point. It wouldn’t be quite as nice, but would still be better than walking on the road.
Or so I thought.
I found the start of the walking path (I think) fairly easily. But what started off looking like a path soon vanished into brush, and before I knew it, I was firmly in the middle of nowhere. Thank goodness for Google Maps because I ended up basically cutting across random pastures and over ditches back to the road. I’m fairly certain I was not supposed to be there, but at that point, I was just trying to make it back to civilization.
In the end, I found the highway, and made it safely to the train station. I even managed to avoid the highway and stick to smaller side streets for most of the walk back. The day ended up being way more of an adventure than I had bargained for, but I always say that at least when everything goes wrong, you get a great story out of it.
So do I recommend visiting Highclere Castle? Yes. Just don’t do it the way I did it! Go with some friends, and split a taxi. But in the end, I’m so glad I put in the effort to see this special place and to experience Downton Abbey in real life.
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