Saturday, 21 May 2016

Windsor - a river, a horse show and a monarch celebrates

Last weekend I was in Windsor for the Royal Horse Show. I'd never been before.

The castle is right in the centre of town...

...although the show, which is in the private bit of Windsor Park, was a little way outside. The entrance to the main show ring.

The other rings were full of children with show ponies.

The judge's inspection.

There were plenty of shoppers in the horse-y stalls

This was fun to watch: the Landrovers drove up the arches and down uneven ramps. Quite scary.

Having done around 4 miles at the Show, we went out for a walk along the Thames. This was on the bridge - not sure what it is.

Windsor bridge

View east, towards London

The view west

The walk was full of interest -and swans

A Hawker Hurricane on display. The aircraft was designed by Sir Sydney Camm, who came from Windsor.



A pleasant spot for our sandwiches

We saw this boat moored earlier, where it looked huge. Out on the Thames it looked positively tiny.

The Thames is quite wide here.
I loved this sign: "we are closed owing to dangerous river conditions" I bet the river conditions are always dangerous around 5 pm, or home-time, as some might call it.

We walked back to Windsor as we had tickets for the Queen's Birthday Celebrations. This was the Royal Artillery, with the smoke from the field guns guns which they had just fired. Extremely loudly: everyone jumped.




The horsemen and women from Azerbaijan.

Canadian Mounties. Some celebrities performed, but we didn't really notice them: we were more interested in the horses!

The finale.

The Canadian Mounted Police.


A giant birthday cake.

And as we left, the magical sight of Windsor Castle high on the hillside. 

A fantastic visit - once in a lifetime really

The walk: we parked on a private driveway and walked into Windsor and out to the Horse, then along part of the Thames Path. In total, we walked over 8.5 miles. 

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