Welcome to the New Castles 4 (Big)Kids
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This website is aimed at sharing our experiences of visiting castles with our two children . We have listed some of the castles we have visited as a family with photos, tips and comments. I have thrown in a bit of history of each castle as well, although mostly this is gleaned from guide books- sadly I can not claim to be a qualified historian!
Our visits span a period of more than ten years , so the children were young when we started, but not so young now. I think our photography has improved over the years too! As this is an ongoing project the site will be updated whenever we have more castle reviews to add, so do keep checking back.
Most of the castles featured are within day tripping distance of the South West of the UK, which is where we live, but there are some holiday visits too which are further afield. I have included the date of our visit, the information I state was current at that time, but if the visit was a few years ago now you may want to check out the current situation yourself. I would certainly recommend checking prices/opening times before you embark on a trip. The official website of each castle is listed at the bottom of the page for your further information.
News From The Gatehouse
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- Category: News
News from the Gatehouse- Our Blog
February 2026
Well, what can I say? A whole new-look website! Actually it is both new and yet somehow familiar, as we have used the same template as prevoiusly, but that has been updated over the years. It took a while but we transferred all the existing articles, and added some new visits for this year- which you will find listed under 'recent' on the left hand column. Hopefully you will enjoy getting to know our new look website, and the new reviews from 2025! We are already planning our adventures for next year; so don't forget to keep checking back for more updates. In the meantime- enjoy our new site!
January 2025
In our 17 years of visiting castles we have clocked up an impressive number of visits in England & Wales, but in recent years also Ireland and mainland Europe. This year we dipped our toes into the large pool of Scottish castles too, with hopefully more of those to come in future. But as well as castles from the medieval times we have visited:
Ancient hill forts
Roman forts, palaces & even an amphitheatre!
Town walls
Tudor castles
Palmerston forts
Folly castles
Martello towers
Various other towers
A castle with absolutely no remains left above ground
A twentieth-century-built castle
Abbeys and religious sites (including two situated on islands)
Some of the sites are still being used today, as homes, museums and one is even used as a university classroom. Others are in ruins, or have no stone work and just have earthworks survivng. Some castles are built of brick, not stone.
In short, there is something to suit every taste, every style, every preference on our site.
But it is still not enough. Despite all this we have only just scratched the surface of castles to visit. So on we go. Even though the kids are no longer kids. We hopefully have many more years of exploring yet to come. Of course we will continue to share our visits here on this site! In the meantime we have just uploaded the final reviews for our 2024 trips. Hope to see you out and about at a castle maybe?
