Since the preparation of Thanksgiving dinner kept us inside most of Thursday, we decided to spend Friday with a little day trip. Since Mini hadn’t been to a castle ever (unless you count Gillette Castle in CT), we decided to head on up to Carlisle to check out the castle there. Carlisle is located very close to the England/Scotland border, and therefore has a lot of very interesting history associated with it. Much of the city lies on top of Roman ruins. The ever elusive Hadrian’s wall goes through the city. It was also the site of a number of battles during the Jacobite rebellion of 1688-1746. Therefore, it makes sense that the castle would have been a very important part of the city. Due to the huge influence that the castle had, it was kept up a lot better than many of the other castles that Kevin and I had been to. In fact, I think it was the best castle I have been to thus far.
The castle was originally built in 1066 by William II of England while the area was still part of Scotland. He promptly took over Cumberland (what is now currently Nothwest Cumbria), made it part of England and caused it to be fought over for the next 700 years. Mary, Queen of Scots was briefly imprisoned here from May to July 1568. Before you start feeling sorry for the red haired Queen, she had free reign of the castle and 30-40 servants !During the 2nd Jacobite rising, Carlisle castle was captured and held by the Jacobites until the Duke of Cumberland and his forces drove them out and held them prisoner in Carlisle Castle until they were executed.
Mini-Deal was obsessed with moats, but disappointed that this one no longer had water and contained no crocodiles
An extremely large portion of the castle was open to visitors, including the former prison/keep, and one of the buildings where people lived. Kevin and Katie made a rookie mistake and left Cailin and I alone with our cameras.
Mini jumped in here and started singing “Everybody look at me cause I’m standing in a moat!”
This was a problem
Katie and Cailin got sent to Jacobite jail
This was called the “licking stone” since the prisoners would lick it to get water, so obviously I needed to demonstrate
Bring us some meat!
I’m protecting the castle from Mini
A Dwarf door for the dwarf!
Mini desperately wanted to get through this trap door
What’s in this hole?
Eye see you! (Katie gets in on the ridiculous fun)
Mini is imitating the exit signs over here (see the green sign in the right side of the picture) 
After we had our fill of ridiculousness, we headed down to check out Carlisle Cathedral, had a quick bite to eat and headed home. Carlisle Castle is definitely worth a visit if anyone ever gets up that way.
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