The Slower Road

For our group of CAA travelers, today was a free day. Some people went shopping, some explored the towns of Windsor and Eton, and some went to the showgrounds to watch the opening day of the show (preliminary rounds of some of the events) and the first horse inspection for the FEI driving event. Several horses and ponies were, sadly, deemed unfit to compete at that first “jog.” You can read about it here.

Some trip participants, myself and A.J. included, decided to tour Windsor Castle, along with a whole lot of other tourists.

Here are a few photos of the outside of the sprawling castle, including some windows and gargoyles. No photography is allowed inside. The garden in the first photo is in what used to be the moat around the Round Tower. The final photo shows a window at the beautiful St. George’s Chapel.

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Early this evening, the entire CAA group, plus several invited guests, sat down for a lovely dinner at the Harte & Garter hotel. Because there are so many people on the CAA trip this year, this was probably the only time during the trip that the entire group will be together. To see a few photos from the dinner, visit the CAA’s Facebook page.

The show starts officially tomorrow. Throughout the show, I’ll be posting photos here to try to give you some of the “flavor” of this fabulous horse show and its spectacular setting. To follow news and results of the FEI driving event, stay tuned to www.hoefnet.com. You should be able to find results from the rest of the show at the Royal Windsor Horse Show’s official website.

The CAA group on this year’s trip to the Royal Windsor Horse Show met for afternoon tea earlier today. Our “headquarters” hotel — The Christopher Hotel — couldn’t accommodate the entire group of nearly a hundred people, so there were two seatings for tea: one at 3:00 and a second at 4:30 p.m.

There were tea and coffee; a variety of delicious tea sandwiches; scones, clotted cream, and jam (yum!); and several kinds of cake.

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The Christopher is an old coaching inn, and the rooms on the left in this photo are in the portion that used to be the stables.

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Our CAA group now fills the entire Christopher Hotel (and blocks of rooms in several other hotels), so I’m sure that members of our group will be gathering each evening — for drinks and/or dinner — in the Christopher’s friendly bar & restaurant.

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Our trip to Windsor started perfectly, when we managed to fit all of our cold- and wet-weather clothes and shoes, and all of our other supplies for a week in England, into two suitcases and two carry-on bags (one for each of us). Then, we had the quickest, easiest, friendliest, and least crowded check-in and trip through security that either of us have ever had an airport other than Lexington’s. And, as if that weren’t enough, the largest and heaviest of our two checked suitcases weighed in at 49 pounds.

The perfection continued when we arrived at Heathrow and had literally four people in front of us in the passport control line, and that after the horror stories we’d been hearing lately of three-hour delays.

And the sun even came out this afternoon! Let’s hope all this perfection and lovely weather carries forward through the week … fingers crossed!

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Windsor Castle’s Round Tower, with the Royal Standard flying and a beautiful blue sky and impressive clouds overhead (photo by A.J.)

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Tomorrow, we’re going to tour Windsor Castle. And in the afternoon, the CAA group has afternoon tea not once but twice. (The group is so large that Jill’s broken it down into two smaller groups for the getting-to-know-you teas.)