{"id":8159,"date":"2015-06-21T07:05:18","date_gmt":"2015-06-21T06:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/?p=8159"},"modified":"2015-06-21T09:36:15","modified_gmt":"2015-06-21T08:36:15","slug":"21-june-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/2015\/06\/21\/21-june-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"21 June 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a great week, somewhat tempered, however, by the necessity of having to say \u201cgood-bye\u201d to Adam and Ava on Wednesday. Goodness, how those three weeks flew by!<\/p>\n

On Monday, at Nick and Lucy\u2019s suggestion, we all visited Warwick Castle. I visited it many, many years ago but it was expensive even then. When it was bought by Madam Tussauds in the late 1970s I imagined I would never set foot in it again, having little to no interest in admiring a range of wax models. Every time we\u2019ve had American visitors I\u2019ve always made a point of driving them past it, moderately slowly, so that they could catch a glimpse of a splendid castle and then we\u2019ve carried on up the road to the ruins of Kenilworth Castle which is much more of a favourite (of mine, anyway).<\/p>\n

\"Warwick<\/a><\/p>\n

However, we spent a lovely, sunny day at Warwick with a tromp through the castle, a scamper up the motte and to the top of Guy’s tower, a bountiful picnic on the lawns and a splendidly impressive exhibition of a range of birds of prey – my goodness those raptors are huge!<\/p>\n

We were disappointed, however, that the fire-hurling trebuchet was out of commission for the time being. A couple of months ago, in one of their demonstrations, they managed to destroy the medieval boathouse on the river<\/a> just below the castle. Sparks from the burning payload ignited the thatched roof of the ancient boathouse and, essentially, burned it to the ground. Ironically, it had just been rethatched. Still, no such excitement for us. This first video shows the trebuchet in action:<\/p>\n