Keeper of the Ruins

The weather has been glorious here of late. Crisp frosts and clear blue skies; wonderfully wintry weather after the balmy Indian Summer that passed for Autumn. I do like my seasons to be clearly delineated and hate how in recent years they all seem to have melded together into a kind of climatic mish-mash. One day warm, the next cold. I guess I just like to know where I stand weather wise!

Yesterday, Ian and I decided to make the most of it, get some much needed exercise, and take an early morning ramble along the Basingstoke Canal at North Warnborough, in search of the ruins of a 13th century hunting lodge I'd been told about by an old school friend over on facebook. Despite the bad press facebook often engenders, it does have it's uses! On our ramble along the frosty towpath we were accompanied by this solitary swan;



who seemed content to glide along beside us as we headed off in the general direction of the ruins. Almost the moment we took a first glimpse of the them, concealed behind berry laden branches;



he turned tail and headed off back in the direction we'd come. Most peculiar - it seemed almost as though he were some feathery keeper of the ruins, intent on showing interested parties the exact location they could be found at!

Odiham Castle on a clear frosty morning was a lovely place to be. The fortified castle was one of three built by King John, it's location chosen because it was situated halfway between Windsor and Winchester. Just after it was finished in 1216 it was subject to a two week battering at the hands of King Louis of France which in part, led to the destruction of many of the original parts of the building, but it was recaptured again in 1217 and repaired, complete with a three story octagonal moat to give it added protection. The moat was refilled in the 15th century when the castle resumed its former use as a hunting lodge and by 1605 the lodge had been classified a ruin, no longer in use.

We were the only people at the castle yesterday and wandering around it, cut off from roads and any signs of modern living, you could really get a sense of history reverberating off it's flinty walls;



I've visited a lot of ruins over the last few years but I feel particularly lucky to have seen this in all its crumbling splendour on such a beautiful sunny day. Magical;



despite the fact that I found out in no uncertain terms that my choice of footwear for the morning wasn't waterproof and I risked frostbitten toes in order to take one final photo;



before returning home to a warming mug of coffee and freshly baked teacakes. Yes, I know.....teacakes while I'm on a diet, but I counted them into my daily allowance and I must be doing something right because I managed to lose 4.5lbs in my first week at weightwatchers. Go me!

******Apologies again for repeated editing of this post showing up in anyone's Blogger Dashboard, the site really seems to hate me at the moment, especially if I try uploading more than one photo....not entirely sure why, but hopefully normal service will be resumed shortly******