Warwick Castle (II): Jousting

For me, the highlight of the day was the jousting tournament. I thought it might be a bit tame, but they worked pretty hard.

Warwick Castle (I)

Last weekend was a bank holiday, so we loaded up the car and bootled over to Warwick Castle for a day. It's a castle, but it's owned by an amusement park company so it's extremely commercialised. They have a different event happening every half hour.

Because it was a holiday, the place was absolutely packed.

The trebuchet at Warwick is the largest in the world. It fires a fireball 150 metres.

Harry Potter (II)

The door to the Chamber of Secrets.



Bellatrix costume worn by Helena Bonham Carter.



The Riddle family tomb. We sat on this for 10 minutes to drink our butterbeer.



One of the pawns from the wizard chess scene in the Philosopher's Stone.



One of the outdoor sets: the Potter's House.



4 Privet Drive. The number on the front is not the original because Rupert Grint pried that off and kept it after filming.



Fawks.



An animatronic of one of the merpeople.



A head-mounted werewolf animatronic.





Diagon Alley.





Fred and George's shop.



The scale model of Hogwarts. It's bigger than it looks. You can see some people on the extreme right of the shot.





They made a scale model of the Weasley's house (the Burrow). It took 14 weeks to make, and then was deliberately destroyed in 6 minutes to film the fire scene.

The last room has the wand boxes from Ollivanders. Each box has a distinct label that has the name of one of the people who worked on the films: 4000 of them!



Overall, it was excellent.

Harry Potter (I)

We went to "The Making of Harry Potter", which is a tour of the studio where the movies were filmed. Whereas the Harry Potter tour in Florida is a theme park, this is a huge display of props and scenery. I think it might actually be of more interest to adults than children.



The cupboard under the stairs. You can see a pair of spectacles worn by Radcliffe on the lower shelf.



Statues from the entrance to Hogwarts. I believe they became animated and fought in the Final Battle of Hogwarts.



A sculpture on the wall in the Great Hall.



A dress worn by the ghost known as the Grey Lady (Helena Ravenclaw).



Slytherin costumes. Draco wore the robes on the left.



Hagrid and Filch costumes. The Hagrid one was worn by a 6`10 ex-rugby player with an animatronic head and stilted boots.



A rack of duplicate Harry outfits.



A forced-perspective corridor. It looks long, but is actually only a meter or 2 deep.



I think this was the Weasley's living room.





Dumbledore's office.



Potions in the potions dungeon.





Locks on a door at Gringotts Bank.