On 31st July 2018 I arrived in Heathrow having completed my first ever non-stop, 17 hour flight from Perth. In summary, nice new plane – very noisy.
My friend Nathan came to collect me, having taken a day off work. Our only plan was to embrace our inner photographer and trundle around London looking for photo ops. Five minutes before I departed Perth we both decided on Windsor Castle.
Being that it was 6am by the time we left the airport and because Windsor didn’t open until 10am, we drove the long way round, and ended up settling for a short stop at Widewater Lock in Uxbridge, where we took a few long exposures of the lock.
Back on the road we diverted to a nearby National Park, but given that it didn’t open until 1030am we continued to Windsor, where after taking one too many wrong turns, we settled for a car park next to the train station. Probably the only car park that charged a day over an hourly rate – bargain.
We enjoyed a quick breakfast on the water at the Cote restaurant on the western side of the Windsor Bridge.
After breakfast we wandered up the hill, saw some marching guards, paid the £20 entry fee and started walking around the castle grounds.
We explored the interior, however unlike the very awesome Warwick Castle, there was no photography allowed inside Windsor Castle. Even the chapel was out of bounds.
We enjoyed some ice cream, took some exterior photos, watched all the tourists take selfies next to the Royal Guard and then left.
En route to dropping me home, we stopped a further two times. The first was to get a closer look at the Digswell Viaduct in Welwyn Garden City.
The second was to visit Hitchin Lavender. The photos on Google looked enticing, but once we found out it was £5 entry each, and £50 for photographers, we decided we could probably take some decent photos from the edge.
