5 days ago
The secret to an affordable family break in Kent
Leeds Castle, just outside Maidstone in Kent, was first mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086. Its 900-year history included time as the home of six different medieval queens and various wealthy families before being purchased in 1925 by the Anglo-American heiress Lady Olive Baillie.
The 500-acre estate became her weekend retreat from London during the 1930s, and the parties she held there were a hot ticket. On our tour of the castle, I spotted pictures of past guests, including Charlie Chaplin and Daphne du Maurier.
Now it's host to a new generation of fun-seekers. My husband, Douglas, and I were there with our three children to check out the Knights' Retreat, a collection of eight wooden lodges loosely inspired by the castle's medieval past and launched last month.
In the corner of the estate, each wooden dome-shaped lodge was named after a mythical beast (Dragon, Basilisk, Unicorn) and slept two adults in a double bedroom at one end and either two or three children in single beds in a separate room at the other. Between the two bedrooms was a small kitchen, plus a lounge area with a sofa and dining table. There was also a teeny bathroom with a decent shower and a picnic table next to a small patch of private lawn. The lodges were packed in tightly (but soundproofed enough so you couldn't hear your neighbours) and were accessed via a bark path from a dedicated car park. You did have your own space outdoors and could have squirrelled yourselves away there very cosily, but we did not mistake this for glamping — we were there to throw ourselves into the castle's attractions, all included in our stay.
There was plenty to entertain the kids. We started at the castle, drawn towards the moat by teasing views of its turrets and a gathering of geese the children were keen to follow across the lawn. I had foolishly mentioned the possibility of a drawbridge during the car journey and so the stone bridge came as a bit of a disappointment; not to mention the lack of knights and mythical creatures our lodge had suggested. I should have done my research: this was not a medieval castle, but a 19th-century family home styled to look like one. We were warned by staff that the audio tour that revealed its secrets was not for very young ears.
Without it though, we struggled to make sense of a succession of rooms that ranged from library and games room to boudoir and lounge. Instead, the toddler clambered on the furniture (actively encouraged, thank goodness), while the five-year-old ran at every antique mirror she could find to view the new gap in her smile (her tooth had fallen out over breakfast).
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Luckily, there were staff on hand to point out treasures such as a dressing table covered in shark's skin and enough stuffed birds on display in one room to keep the kids enthralled. There was even an impromptu piano recital in the Yellow Drawing Room. Classical pieces I was sure I should have recognised kept the children dancing for what must have been at least 20 minutes, and I found myself beaming at the sight of our eldest taking her little brother's hands, the pent-up tension of all those end-of-term events, results and meetings melting away.
Back outside, we found plenty to do beyond the castle itself. The estate that surrounded it was large enough for a proper family walk, and following those geese once again led us into dense woodland and along a small stream where people had gathered to wonder at how a sizeable pike had wriggled its way up there. The kids decided it was a shark and scampered in three different directions.
What had been jovial here became slightly more heart-in-mouth in the maze, where the girls ran off ahead, determined to get to the centre first, and we yelled repeatedly for them to wait for their little brother (and out-of-puff parents). This 1987 addition to the castle grounds appeared to be a square but somehow internally became a circle, leading us this way and that before we finally emerged at the mound in the centre, having surely passed every single one of the 2,400 yew trees that made it up.
Our reward for solving the riddle was to exit via the equally mind-bending Grotto, a subterranean wonderland covered in shells and featuring numerous rock carvings, including a red-eyed, green-lit face that filled an entire wall and had water pouring from its mouth. The kids squealed with delight and begged to do the entire thing again.
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'Later,' we said, and ushered them into the Knights' Stronghold playground instead — a chance for the toddler to crash out on Doug's shoulder and for us to sit down and regroup. This was the main benefit of sleeping on site; our two-night stay gave us three days of castle entry, no rushing needed. There was plenty of time for a round or two of Adventure Golf (a 12-hole castle-themed mini-golf course), for multiple clambers on the nets and wooden climbing frames of the obstacle course, and to catch the 2pm falconry display.
For us, lunch was self-catered sandwiches back in our lodge, but we booked ahead for dinner at the Castle View restaurant and settled in at a window table that stared straight out at the castle. We ordered a bottle of the local Chapel Down Bacchus white wine, tucked into pasta and steak, and finally exhaled at the end of another busy school year. Helen Ochyra was a guest of Leeds Castle, which has room-only Knights' Retreat lodges from £69pp, including complimentary entry to the castle and grounds, including all playgrounds, the maze, grotto, and falconry centre (
