Hampton Court Palace

One of the perks of my wife being a teacher is that she sometimes gets free passes to visit the places that she’s going to take her girls to as a pre-trip investigation. A few years ago we had a jolly to Warwick Castle and most recently she got free tickets to go to Hampton Court Palace. As a South-West Londoner/Surrey lass, my wife has taken me here at least once before and I get a special guided tour courteousy of her in-depth knowledge of Henry VIII’s residency and all-round historical prowess. So we woke up on Sunday morning, fresh from the extra 17 minutes of sleep that the clocks going back gave us (no one gave Piglet the memo, it would seem) and headed off on the windy roads that circomvent the M25.

Obviously, by the time we’d actually managed to get ourselves together along with the stuff that a family of 3 need for the day; we arrived at Hampton Court far later than our extra hour of ‘getting ready’ time should have meant. Fresh from 50ish minutes of Piglet sleeping and me explaining the technical prowess of John Mayor (and why he has more spirit in his little finger than Brian May has in all of the guitars he’s ever made from scratch! Controversial, I know…), we parked in the car park and wandered over to the main entrance. Our first stop, such was our delay on arriving, was lunch. Actually, the first stop is to ask whether Piglet needs the toilet after an hour in the car and hope to high heaven that he’s sure, and not just being stubborn, when he says no.

There are three cafe/eateries at Hampton Court, the Privy Kitchen Cafe, the Fountain Court Cafe and the Tiltyard Cafe. The first of which is more like a coffee shop with snacks and the second is outside. We went to the Tiltyard Cafe for lunch (which you don’t need to have paid for access to the Palace to enter by the way…) It’s a bright and modern cafe and canteen with more seating than first appears from the outside. The place was busy but we were able to chose food and find somewhere to sit more easily than I expected. Places like this can be quite difficult, in my experience, for allergies. A combination of self-service and multiple hot food kiosks can make it difficult to get an overall feel for what options are available. However, to my delight, all the salad and sandwich options were labelled with allergens and choosing hot food was relatively straight forward as well. Obviously the self-service salad bar was covered in warnings about cross contamination and to be honest, on a cold day we were feeling the hot food anyway.

Me and Piglet went for the classic fish fingers, chips and peas and my wife had a soup with (gasp) dairy-free, soya-free bread! I was even chased down by the server after collecting my meal to be told there had been a mistake and I was due 6 fish-fingers for £6, two more than I’d been given. I gleefully accepted. All of the options were tasty and hot and Piglet was particularly curious to try my HP sauce accompaniment (verdict: unimpressed). However the highlight of the meal was watching Piglet try wasabi popcorn. Something I had never tried before and frankly not something that should work. However, they’re delicious and Piglet even asked for more after the initial shock had removed from his face.

Overall the lunch was surprisingly effortless and we left keen to come back at some point. Piglet has personally requested that I give it a good commendation for having pictures of the hungry caterpillar on the walls. It wasn’t at all awkward invading family after family’s personal space so that he could have a good look at each of the bits of artwork – shouting “Hungry Caterpillar” and pointing at each one. It gives you a feeling for how kid friendly it was though.

As has become customary, the first priority after lunch was to find a way for Piglet to burn off some energy before taking him around the Palace. By pure coincidence, last Sunday was the last opening of the Magic Garden, a summer installation of castles and dragons in the style of a medieval child’s play area. Piglet loved it and ran off to play/climb/chase with an abandon that surprised both me and his mum. To be fair it was very impressive. Understandably, he treated the 40ft flaming nostril and glowing red eyed dragon with caution, even with dad sat lackadaisically on one of the wings, resting his poorly leg.

I should say – I know now what I’ve done to my leg. I had an MRI the week before and this week a consultant confirmed that I’ve partially ripped all four of my adductor muscles (the inside thigh) and partially severed the tendon on the main one (the Magnus) away from the hip. In the words of my good friend, fellow dairy allergic and (most importantly in this context) physiotherapist: “Wowsers. that’s an impressive injury bro!”. Luckily no surgery is required but I’m basically to do no exercise at all for 3 months, then 3 further months of very little and 9-12 months before I’m allowed to kick a football again. I think the technical prognosis is: ‘it sucks’. Expect the website to change to “Allergen and severely dieting Dad” by Christmas.

The next stop for Piglet was to show him the apartments of Henry VIII. Specifically the Great Hall and the Great Watching Chamber. They’re quite impressive for their age but it’s a bit arrogant to call them both ‘great’. That said, I did get to find out that eaves droppers were literally people listening in from the eaves. To be honest, at this point, my leg was really starting to ache so I excused myself to the Privy Kitchen Cafe for a quick coffee. For a medieval kitchen I was impressed that they were able to get both the water pressure and temperature to make what we now know as a modern-day espresso… The plan was to work on this blog while down there, but as soon as I’d sat down with my drink, put on some music and checked the football scores, Piglet runs in (with wife in tow) apparently having been scared by one of the BeastQuest character-led tours. So that put an end to that.

A tired Piglet, a sore-legged dad and a change to the weather meant that we cut slightly short our day-trip out. (Not before a staged photo of Piglet in front of the impressive Fountain Court went hysterically wrong when he ducked under the railing and ran away into the completely out of bounds fountain area, giggling and pursued by mummy). I look forward to coming back some time soon.