Historic Royal Palaces

As I mentioned in my previous post, we've become members of the Historic Royal Palaces, the organisation that looks after the Tower of London, Kensington Palace, the Banqueting House, Kew Palace and Hampton Court Palace. I also mentioned that we'd been able to book places on the Tower of London new members' tour.

Tower of London [source]

But that's not all - turns out that our timing is perfect to also take advantage of the Hampton Court Palace new members' tour ...

Main gate, Hampton Court Palace [source]

AND the Kensington Palace Garden History Tour (which gets us into the normally closed to the public Sunken Garden.

Kensington Palace Sunken garden [source]

We've also decided on the destination for the second of four day trips on our BritRail passes - Carlisle. It's going to be a looooonnnnngggg day - 3.25 hours min. on the train each way - it's very close to the Scottish border.

Carlisle Castle [source]

There is evidence of people living in this area since at least the Iron Age, and the Romans established a fort here in AD72 (it was on the 'civilised' side of Hadrian's Wall). Of course, once the Roman Army was in residence, a whole town grew up around it, and Carlisle has been occupied ever since.

I'm looking forward to the train trip - I haven't been to Cumbria and the Lake District (or most of the other places on the route), so it will be lovely to see it, even if it is just from a moving train on the way through!