We headed over to Hampton Court Palace, as newly signed up members of the Historic Royal Palaces gang – we figure we can visit three times and make our membership fees back, so it’s worth it.
Hampton Court Palace is somewhere I’ve visited since I was very young. My Great Aunt and Uncle lived in Teddington, and we’d stay with them whenever we visited London. This would always involve a visit to Bushy Park, with a walk through to the maze at Hampton Court. Living so close to it these days, there was no way H was going to miss out on something I’d loved when I was her age – the only question was, would it still be the same?
Having the Historic Royal Palaces membership helped a lot – they’ve just finished a 50% off entry offer, and prices are increasing – plus of course there are additional things to do when you’re there. But as the gentleman who showed us to our seats in the ticket office said, “with this membership you’ll never need to queue again” (I like it already!) We also get 10% off food and any purchases in the gift shops – every little helps!
Hampton Court has a lot to offer. There are the gardens, which are enormous and largely unaltered since the early days of the Palace, as well as the maze. Oh the maze. I would go in it when I was young, and did manage to get to the middle once in record time. Today it wasn’t to be, all I could remember was keep around the outside and you get to the middle, which didn’t work at all (even though it was the right thing to do). H has decided she has “a terrible sense of direction”!
Inside Hampton Court Palace there is so much to see – and we’re going to need to go back to finish off. Somehow, weirdly, I had never been there when we’ve visited in the past. I don’t know why, but that is no longer the case. We wandered around rooms Henry VIII will have dined and existed in – H was excited about this – one of her favourite subjects at school is history. You can see a crown of Henry VIII’s however they were starting to set up in the church part, so weren’t letting people in any more – another thing to go back and do!
Inside Henry VIII’s kitchen there were displays of cookery as well as how to make ink. H got to use a quill to write with too.
We arrived around midday, and left at 4pm, tired and having walked for ages – and yet there’s still so much to see – and having our Historic Royal Palaces membership we can go back as often as we want!
I like these Pig diaries – and it marks a different style of writing to that which H is used to. Lots of “I is Pig” and “I is doing this” type of language. We’ve read some of the books together, and H has read them mainly in her head. We talked about the way it is written, and in doing this somehow I’m reading Pig out loud in a West Country accent (it does work too).
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. Stan Lee’s website is 
(affiliate link) of all the films on DVD over Christmas too.