I recently travelled back to my university town in Surrey (shoutout to Royal Holloway) to clear out my student house fully and hand back the keys. Because the journey is a long one, my Mum and I decided to stay overnight and visit Windsor Castle because she had always wanted to visit and Windsor is a 15 minute drive away from my university town. Plan sorted. However, when we got to Windsor, we quickly realised we hadn’t really planned for the visit at all, and that’s why I’m here to tell you what you need to know so you don’t get stuck like we did!
Seriously, print them. We booked online, as is recommended, and arrived around 12:30pm, as they say to arrive after midday for best results. What we didn’t do was print our tickets as we opted for the ‘collect at attraction’ option, thinking we didn’t want to lose them when packing everything up at the house. As soon as we got to Windsor Castle we realised this was a mistake. We queued for hours when we could have only queued for half an hour maximum. On the plus side, we did meet a lovely American couple who kept us entertained for an hour or so, and we swapped information about the UK and the USA with each other.
Yes, we’re British, and the British love a good queue. As mentioned, we booked our tickets online, but we were still stung by over 2 hours of queuing. You start off in a queue for everybody, tickets or not, which stretched out for almost half a mile round the castle grounds. We were in that queue for about forty-five minutes, and then when we had moved a bit, we were told to head up to the castle gates as we had tickets. We practically raced up the hill, thinking we could finally get in, only to be sent to another queue for people who had booked online but not printed which was shorter but took longer. After an hour and 15 minutes of queueing, we were allowed through the gates only to be stopped and told to wait a further fifteen minutes in the ticket queue. Our tickets were checked and then we had to wait another ten or so minutes to go through security. After this we were finally fully in!
After all the queuing, which started around 1pm, we got into the castle about 3:15pm. Last entry is at 4pm. If you don’t have tickets you don’t have guaranteed entry, so if you arrive late don’t expect to get in, especially on a weekend. We visited on a Saturday, and it was truly manic. The lady at the ticket desk was very apologetic when she asked us how long we had been queueing and told us lines had been crazy ever since the Royal Wedding back in May. This is understandable, but don’t expect to be able to breeze in any time soon.
Just don’t do it. It will start to weigh you down after all that time queuing and you’re not allowed to take photos inside two of the main attractions anyway; St George’s Chapel and the State Apartments. Unfortunately, Queen Mary’s Dolls House was closed, so really there wasn’t much to take a photo of apart from the outside of buildings and you can easily do that on your phone.
After all the queuing, we were exhausted and starving and held out hope for a small café or even a drink kiosk. All we found in the whole grounds was an ice-cream kiosk – not helpful seeing as it started raining, or several shops selling expensive edible merchandise such as chocolate with Harry and Meghan’s faces on. There is no café, so don’t do what we did and expect there to be one like there is in many similar properties! In hindsight, we were silly about this one because Windsor Castle is, after all, still mostly a private residence.
This is a simple one, really. British weather is unpredictable. It started out lovely, so I left my jacket in the car. Two or so hours later the sun vanished and the rain started. It wasn’t heavy, but it was still sufficiently jacket-weather, and a lot of tourists who were dressed in breezy summer outfits and shorts got stung.
Despite all of this, I am glad that we visited Windsor Castle. With some more planning it would have been a much better experience. The Royal Collection recommend leaving at least two hours to explore the grounds fully and I agree with this. Part of this is probably down to how busy it was; there was some slight congestion for certain parts of the Castle but nothing too bad. You do get a free audio guide that comes in several languages and we spotted at least two shops selling some really nice memorabilia from the Royal Wedding and about the Royal Family in general that would make nice presents for a Royal fan or as a keepsake if you’re from a different country.
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