Sunday stitching.

 I said I'd tell you about our visit on the way home from Norfolk last weekend. We didn't want to be late home as we had a family meal planned but we both dislike travelling straight home when there is always something interesting to see. This time it was a castle. After breakfast we headed to Castle Acre which is a peaceful village which has a ruined castle and a priory. Both the castle and the priory are managed by English Heritage. The journey to the village was delightful as it was all along narrow winding country lanes. Fortunately we didn't meet too many cars coming in the opposite direction.

Having parked the car we headed first to the castle. The village of Castle Acre has history by the bucketful. It included a castle, village, church and priory, a Norman planned settlement. The Norman family of Warennes built the village mainly during the 11th and 12 centuries. 

The castle was founded soon after the Battle of Hastings, which took place in 1066, by the first William de Warenne who was a close associate of William the Conqueror. The castle is a motte and bailey castle and is very impressive.

There are still a lot of the walls standing.

There was an amazing view from the castle. No wonder that this site was chosen as they would have been able to see any enemies coming towards the castle from all sides.

Much of the walls are made of flint and some of the pieces are huge. I saw this large piece of flint at the bottom of a wall and it looks like a face.

We walked all round the outer walls and took photos of the wild flowers.

We walked through the village to see the priory but you needed to book to go round this property. We took a short walk so we could see the priory church and it is impressive so we decided we will visit another day. We enjoyed exploring the village and before we left we had a drink at the pub since the coffee shop wasn't open.

Refreshed we set off for home and the journey back was trouble free and fairly quick. We stopped once to replenish coffee supplies but the services were quite crowded so we took our coffee to the car to enjoy. We have another weekend away booked for the beginning of September provided Covid 19 cases don't rise and cause further havoc. I'm able to cancel our hotel right up to the day before without charge which is good.

Back to today and it's slow stitching Sunday. I enjoyed some hand stitching last night, working on the millennium sampler. I'm stitching butterflies at the moment. I'll get back to work on this later today but I want to do some cutting out this afternoon as I have a new project I want to start this month.

This week I received my fabric subscription box for the first time since March. The quilt shop that does the boxes stopped them as the UK went into lock down. This month the box contains a pattern and fabric to make a table centre. This is made using English paper piecing and embroidery. It will make a pretty present for a friend.

I'm linking this post with Kathy from Kathy's Quilts for her Slow Sunday Stitching  Pop over and see what everyone's been working on.

Take care

Lyndsey