2013 England and Wales Day 12: Home and Final Thoughts

Back Home: Heathrow and SFO

For our final act we had to get up pretty early - about 530AM - in order to get on the road and make the roughly 2.5 hour journey back to Heathrow airport outside London.  This meant that we missed a final nice breakfast, although we (probably) had bought some breakfast snacks at the grocery the prior night.  The drive back was uneventful, and we dropped the car off at Heathrow  sometime around 9AM.  Amusingly, they didn't notice the busted tail light.  The red plastic had broken so cleanly that it must have looked like a backup light rather than a brake light.  What they DID notice was the gash in one of the tires that resulted at some point from hitting a curb while making a left turn from the unaccustomed right-side drivers seat.  This is something that they were clearly looking for at check-in, and we realized that this must be something the a LOT of renters fall victim to.

Our flight was about 30 minutes or so late in boarding.  It turned out that the flight crew had been locked inside a lounge and it took a while for someone with a key to be dispatched to let them out!  Other than that, we had smooth travel.  We once again ended up in the upper deck economy section and had a nice quiet flight back home.  We were met at the airport by our sister-in-law, who drove our car (which, you may recall, was picked up from the SFO parking lot by Eileen's brother a few hours after we'd left SFO) to retrieve us.  We stopped by her house to drop her off before continuing back to our house and walking in the door around 6PM.  That meant that we'd been travelling about 18 hours.  I (probably) went and picked up a pizza while Eileen sorted the mail and tossed a load of laundry in the washer - but in all likelihood we would have been in bed by 9PM at the latest, tired but happy.

Overall, we'd had a great time.  We'd enjoyed most of the places we'd chosen to tour, but the real highlights included:

• London: Geffrye Museum, Tower of London
• Windsor: Harry Potter Studio Tour
• Wales: Techniquest

Without question the Harry Potter Studio Tour was the #1, hands-down winner.  All four of us had loved that!

The 2013 trip to the UK was a watershed moment for us.  We were very aware that we only had about a 5 year window, starting with this trip, in which both boys would both still be at home with us before their college and adult lives might put an end to this.  In fact, as I type this in August 2018 our oldest son Robert is right now in Bellingham, Washington with Eileen for his freshman orientation at Western Washington University, and he'll actually start his 1st quarter there in mid-September.  So 2013 marked the start of much more intensive period of vacationing for our family as we tried to maximize our time together.  This trip proved that the boys were great travellers, and in the years to come we'd end up taking a variety of different trips, many of which are found here on this blog.

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2013 England and Wales Day 11: Cardiff - St. Fagans, Techniquest

Cardiff, Wales

For our last full day we looked at our original plans and had to make a decision: did we go back to Cardiff and try to see Cardiff Castle, or did we pull out one of our Plan B's?  After talking a bit with our host, Brian, we went with Plan B.  One of the options that didn't make our original touring list was St. Fagans National Museum of History, which is an open air museum "chronicling the historical lifestyle, culture, and architecture of the Welsh people" (thanks Wikipedia).  Basically, it is a collection of roughly 40 buildings from a wide variety of time periods that have been moved and reconstructed/restored at St. Fagans.

An example of one of the older, more rustic buildings.  This is an 18th C pig sty.

There was a small farm onsite, with (at least) pigs and turkeys, plus geese like these.

One of the larger buildings was this 1917 Workmans Institute.  Also on this same square was a recreated general store that was quite interesting.

There was a group of girls inside this 1880 schoolhouse who were involved in a docent-led scenario.  Here, the girl in pink was being harangued by the "school mistress".

Regrettably, I didn't get a photo of the 19th century men's urinal, but some of the other buildings were interesting.  Several of the buildings had docents in them available to answer questions, and one of the house even had a wood fire going.  We spent a lot of time in the gift shop trying to find "the thing".  A friend at home had hinted we'd find something amusing, but hadn't told us what it was.  Instead, she'd simply said "you'll know what I'm talking about when you find it."  We spent about 30 minutes searching around without anything leaping out.  Later, upon returning home, it turned out that the friend wasn't talking about the St. Fagans gift shop, but that shop at another attraction that we didn't end up going to.

We did eat lunch at St Fagans, in a typical non-descript cafeteria.  During lunch I spent a lot of time on my phone trying to get us checked into our flight the next morning.  An elderly gentleman came up to the table to lightly admonish me for ignoring my family, although when I explained that I was actually doing something both necessary and productive (and wasn't just web surfing) he understood.

To round out our day we ended up going to Techniquest in Cardiff.  This is a science museum in the mold of the Exploratorium, and it delivered the full interactive, hands-on experience that we hadn't had at the Science Museum in London earlier in the trip.  I don't recall how to stumbled on Techniquest.  It is possible that Brian had suggested it to us that morning, particularly in light of the boys' ages.  However we ended up there we had a great time.  It was a nice touch of modern times after so many days of history, and we ended up spending about 3 hours there, finishing up around 4PM or so.

Robert and Doug use small magnets to move a large weight.

Oh no!  Where's Robert's body?!?

Andrew gets into the middle of a sound exhibit.

One of our favorites.  Most of the exhibits can be found at the San Francisco Exploratorium, but this one showing a standard bell curve distribution was something we'd never seen before.  The orange balls fell from the top, bouncing around in what was essentially a giant Pachinko machine, before settling in one of the large tubes.

From there we all decided that we had had our fill of restaurants, and we determined to make use of our kitchenette and have a "home cooked" meal.  So we found a grocery in Cardiff and ended up picking up some pasta and sauce, salad, and bread.  We took this back to The Snug and cooked up dinner to enjoy around the dining table.  We discovered that the pots and pans and utensils weren't the cleanest, since they were clearly handwashed by prior occupants.  We did some pre-cleaning, and then cleaned up nicer than the prior occupants after dinner.

Preparing our "gourmet" home-cooked meal on our last night in the UK.

Finally, it was time to settle our bill, which led to a bit more excitement than we would have liked.  It never entered my mind that Brian wouldn't be set up to take a credit card.  He's cash or check only, which he'd failed to mention when we made the original booking.  Well, we hadn't brought our checkbook, so we ended up scrambling into the car and went off trying to find a compatible ATM from which to withdraw cash.  We ended up trying 3 different places before concluding that our ATM card wasn't configured to allow use overseas.  Running around was pretty stressful, because we'd left the boys to sleep while we went out and tried not to get lost.  Finally had to slink back empty-handed, at which point Brian gave me his banking info so I could wire him money once we got home.

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2013 England and Wales Day 10: Big Pit Mine, Tintern Abbey, Chepstow Castle

Pontypool , Raglan, Tintern, and Chepstow (Wales)

We got a burst of energy today, and as a result we accomplished a lot.  Our original tour plan had called for us to tour Raglan Castle and Big Pit Mining Museum today, but having missed Chepstow Castle and Tintern Abbey we still were trying to figure out how to fit those in.  In discussion with Brian, he suggested that we got to Big Pit in the morning (rather than the afternooon as we had originally planned), then do just a drive-by at Raglan on our way to Chepstow and Tintern - so that's what we did!

After breakfast we loaded up and drove to Big Pit.  This mining museum offers free tours underground, and this was really interesting.  You have to get outfitted with a helmet w/integrated light and then down you go via a big mining elevator.  The thing that first grabs you are the closed-in dark spaces.  They talk about how they'd use horses to pull carts underground, and that these horse were born and raised in the mines, never seeing the light of day.  Young boys would be responsible for horse care.  They also demonstrated how they'd actually work the coal seams laying on their backs, usually in damp, cramped, watery spaces.  The guides were all retired miners and the thing that is striking is that it truly is "in the blood".  They'd describe what sounded to us like absolutely miserable working conditions but then follow up by saying how much they missed it!  The above-ground stuff wasn't too memorable.  We did eat lunch at their cafeteria, and that's the only place where we actually found something approximating a Sunday Roast, in that they had roast beef and (I think) Yorkshire Pudding.

Outside Big Pit Mining Museum.  I'm actually having my picture taken in order to be able to submit it and get credit for having found a geocache here.  I'm surreptitiously holding my geocaching GPS as instructed by the requirements of this particular cache... 

Here we're waiting for admittance to the mines.  They took groups of about 20-25 people at a time.  Here we're sitting watching an informational video while waiting our turn.

Following Brian's suggestion, we did do a quick drive-by at Raglan, parking just long enough to take some pictures of the exterior.  This is a surprisingly intact ruin, and I suspect that a full tour would have been rewarding, but we were still intent on going to Chepstow, which we knew offered a good set of ruins.  So Raglan was only a 10-15 minute detour before we made our way to Chepstow.

This was the view from the carpark at Raglan.  The ruins are pretty impressive.

As we moved around to the front of the castle the gatehouses and tower to the right were surprisingly intact.

We paused for a quick "we were here" photo.  As can be seen from the t-shirt attire we had a pretty nice day today!

But first, we stopped at Tintern Abbey for another set of photos.  Tintern was a real highlight for us in 1998 and both Eileen and I would have been quite happy to stop and take the boys on a walk-through, but we weren't going to have time for both Tintern and Chepstow so we made the call to focus or time on Chepstow.  So Tintern was just another 15-20 minute stop to see the exterior and take some photos.  We might have gotten a snack while in the village, but at this point I'm not certain.  One really great thing came from this stop: Andrew took a photo of Eileen and I outside Tintern that became a personal favorite for both of us.  We both had a copy of this at our desks at work!

Tintern Abbey's magnificent remains.  The cows are unimpressed.

Our favorite photo of the trip.  Eileen and I both kept a copy of this on our desks at work.

We finally made it to Chepstow about 3PM and bought our tickets to enter.  Again, the fact that they were no longer selling the great Cadw tour guides was sorely missed, but we still have a great time touring.  Chepstow is perched on a cliff and has tremendous views of the surrounding countryside.  Between the (limited) signage and our own memories from our prior tour we were able to point out some of the more interesting features to the boys.  Based upon our prior trip, we'd definitely put Caernavon Castle (in North Wales) as our #1 place to tour, followed by Chepstow.  We had also toured Conwy Castle in 1998, which was good but not great.  Would Raglan have been in our top list?  Hard to say, although Brian was certainly of the opinion that Raglan wasn't better than Chepstow, which is why he'd suggested the drive-by rather than the full tour.

The approach to the entry of Chepstow Castle.

The remains of the Great Hall.  If I recall correctly, the Great Hall was on the 2nd floor of this structure.  The square holes midway up the left wall show where the floor beams would have been.  The lower (basement) floor was like storage.  I don't recall whether the niches on the back wall were once windows in the Great Hall, or perhaps alcoves or fireplaces.

Andrew guards the wall.

The inner grounds at Chepstow Castle.  The white things were part of some kind of shade structure (kind of looked like ship sails) that were part of some kind of exterior meeting or performance space they had set up on the grounds.

No castle tour is complete without taking a picture of the toilet.  The hole simply vented to the outside of the castle.

We finished up at Chepstow around 5PM and then...????  None of us can remember what we did about dinner this evening.  Based on photo timestamps it is clear that we got back to The Granary about 8:45P, as we had taken some photos of the gardens around then.  So we'd obviously had dinner somewhere prior to that, but none of us can recall whether we ate somewhere in the vicinity of Chepstow, the B&B, or somewhere in between.

A better picture of The Granary, showing the very pretty setting.  Also of note is that this photo was taken right around 9PM in mid-June, so you can see how much light is still present this far north.

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2013 England and Wales Day 9: Caerphilly - Caerphilly Castle, The Granary B&B

Caerphilly, Wales

We LOVED Wales when we were there in 1998 for our honeymoon.  While we didn't plan to repeat the same trip, there were a couple of places we DID want to go again because we were certain the boys would enjoy them also.  So our post-breakfast plan was to get in the car and drive for about 90 minutes until we reached Tintern Abbey (a repeat visit for us), where we figured we'd be able to tour until about 1PM, at which time we'd grab lunch, then head over to Chepstow Castle (our other repeated venue) for the latter part of the afternoon.

That was plan.  Unfortunately, that plan got messed up due to roadwork somewhere outside Bristol, where the M4 branched into the western M4 to Cardiff and the more northern M48 heading toward Chepstow.  The signs seemed to indicate that the exit to M48 required a detour, and we dutifully followed detour signs for OVER AN HOUR...and literally ended up looping back through Bristol and ending at exactly the same point on the M4 where we'd been diverted.  We were totally confused about how we were supposed to pick up the M48, so we just punted and decided that our "Cardiff area day", which was slated to be a few days further out, would instead become our first day in Wales.  So instead of trying to force our way onto M48 we just stayed on M4 this time and headed for Cardiff, instead.

That meant our first day was going to be at Caerphilly Castle.  "Cardiff Day" was supposed to also include Cardiff Castle, but since we'd lost so much time on the detour to nowhere it was obvious that we weren't going to make the 2nd location today.  We put Cardiff Castle on the back burner for the time being and finally arrived at Caerphilly around noon and found the castle's carpark.  We found a place within sight of the castle that had sandwiches and filled up before going over to see the castle.

In 1998, all the places we'd visited had little site-specific guidebooks published by CadW, the Welsh government heritage group.  At the time, these were all about $5-6 (US) and they were wonderful.  Filled with information that enhanced our self-guided walks through various places, we'd purchased them every time they were offered.  Disappointingly, we didn't see those on this trip.  As a result, we were limited to just whatever signage happened to be posted for our information.  The available information was still interesting, but not as rewarding as those guidebooks had been.

The day was particularly dreary and a bit colder than others on the trip.  We were pretty chilled at the outset and that impacted our enjoyment a bit.  That's a shame because it is a pretty impressive ruin.  Caerphilly is one of the more famous examples of a concentric castle and was the first of that kind in the UK.  It heavily influenced the later Welsh castles built by Edward I during his pacification campaigns in Wales.  We pushed through the grounds in about 60 minutes, and then spent a bit of time browsing the small shop without buying anything.  We were tempted by the pad of paper that claimed to be made from recycled sheep poop, but in the end (he said "end" - heh heh heh) we moved on empty-handed.

It was damp and COLD during our time at Caerphilly, which motivated us to move fast and limit our time there.

It is a magnificent ruin.  Not as good as Chepstow Castle, and certainly not as good as Caernavon - but still impressive in its own right.

In the foreground are the ruined gate towers.  On the other side of the moat is the outer curtain wall.  The concentric walls of Caerphilly were an architectural innovation at the time.  The modern roof just beyond the foot bridge is the ticket office/gift shop.

As in the recent prior days, we weren't feeling obligated to cram in "one more thing", knowing that this would just completely exhaust us - and we were all tired enough by this time as it was.  So, like I said earlier, we didn't try to add Cardiff Castle to today's events.  Instead we decided to go find our lodgings for our entire stay in Wales: The Granary in (wait for it)...Llanhennock.  We'd learned during our honeymoon trip that "Ll" is pronounced as "Cl", so that town name sounds like "Clan-hen-uk".

We were using our Garmin GPS to navigate around and it was doing pretty good - thanks to those latitudes and longitudes I'd researched before we left.  If I hadn't done that the GPS would have been a boat anchor.  But here's irony for you: in 1998 we rented a car and used paper maps, while in 2013 we were using a GPS.  And you know what?  We got lost MORE with the GPS than we did with the maps!  A lot of that is because the GPS frankly knows more about the roads then any of the road signage does.  So the GPS will tell you to turn on "such-and-such street"...but there's absolutely no street signage ID'ing that that thing that looks like a deer track is, in fact, such-and-such street.  So with the GPS we often found ourselves saying "...was THAT gap in the bushes we just passed where we were supposed to turn?"  With a map we tended to be more observant of the roads regardless of how they were signposted.  Go figure.

Anyway, Brian (the owner of The Granary) had advised us to give him a call when we got in the area and he'd give us the final set of directions.  This we did, and he started by asking me what buildings I could see.  Nothing in this part of the country has a street address, so I was telling him I was seeing "...a house names Clairborn Lodge..." (I just made this up, but you get the idea) and based on that info he could figure out where we really were and guide us in.  The final road into The Granary was a narrow, single width lane between tall grasses.  In the time we were there I managed to miss that turn multiple times because it just looked like a place you weren't supposed to take a car!

The Granary was a very nice country home B&B that I'd picked due to a combination of its location - well situated relative to the places we intended to visit - and also because of The Snug.  In addition to bedrooms in the main home, The Snug was a separate neighboring building that slept 4 in an upstairs bedroom and a downstairs sofa bed, with a kitchenette and private bath.  This was just perfect for us and I grabbed it as soon as I first saw it.  We really enjoyed our stay here.  Brian was a great host, and offered an excellent morning breakfast.  He also gave us some really helpful touring advice as needed.

Our car, parked outside The Granary.  When I wrote that we had a Mercedes Benz, I bet you had a different image in your mind than this car, didn't you?  This is apparently MB's "generic car" model.

The front entry to The Granary.  The door at the extreme left is the entry into the main house.  The door at the extreme right is the entrance to The Snug.  It is a detached building, but abuts the main house.

The lower floor of The Snug.  I think the couch turned into another bed - I recall that Brian turned the couch 90 degrees after we got there, which gave it room to open up into a bed.  

We settled into the Snug and relaxed.  And now we made our SECOND GREAT CULTURAL DISCOVERY of the trip.  Back in London we'd discovered the TV show QI, and tuned in whenever we had the chance.  On one of the channels, QI was often preceded by a show we'd often noticed in the on-screen guide of our DirecTV service at home.  However, we had NEVER watched it at home because it was a car show, and there's nothing of less interest to us than a car show.  Well, in tuning into QI we happened to catch the last 10 minutes of so of this "car show".  Turned out that it wasn't really a car show.  It was, in fact, a hysterical show of 3 guys who just happened to drive cars a lot.  And that, friends, is how we discovered Top Gear!  In Wales we now had two TV shows to watch in the evenings: Top Gear and QI.

During my pre-trip research I had determined that finding a restaurant open on a Sunday evening was going to be a real challenge, as most places are closed this day.  There are some places that offer a mid-day "Sunday Roast", but finding someone open after about 4PM on Sunday was tough.  As a result, we ended up having to go to a hotel (Clarke's at Glen-Yr-Afon House Hotel) for what was a pretty expensive night out - certainly to most expensive meal of our trip.  Fortunately, the boys were able to find something that they could manage on the menu, which tended toward wild birds and game with heavy sauces.

Bellies full, we headed back to The Snug for a night's rest.

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2013 England and Wales Day 8: Hampton Court

Windsor: Hampton Court

We work up from a very restful night and went down to the breakfast room, which overlooked the beautiful green lawn and talked with our hostess about breakfast options.  She was offering Eggs Benedict (always a huge favorite), something else that I don't recall...and then nervously mentioned that she was trying out a new french toast recipe.  We all jumped on that option, which made her even more nervous.  What if it didn't work out, she was obviously thinking?  But we were game to try it, and she didn't disappoint.  Thick bread soaked in custardy goodness, served with maple syrup and English bacon.  Yum!  It was so good that we repeated our order the next day, too.

Our plan for the day was to visit Hampton Court until early afternoon, then swing by Windsor Castle in the late afternoon.  So with that outline, we piled into the car and drove about 30 minutes until we were at Hampton Court.  Both Eileen and I had been when we had each toured the UK with our families as kids - so in my case, that meant I'd last been there in 1972.  Of course, I recalled the hedge maze as a highlight (and I also recalled the indoor tennis court). 

What they have now - and maybe it has always been this way - is signposting that provides you with some optional, self-guided "themed" tours.  We followed a couple of different ones.  If I recall correctly, one of them focused on the state rooms and private apartments and we did this one first.  We also followed a path that was focused on food and drink, and emphasized things like the kitchens, wine cellars, and even the back stairs by which things were delivered to the noble occupants.  We thought that they did a nice job of explaining things on signs without overwhelming you with text.

The Coach Yard at Hampton Court.  Today, it was setup to host a concert that was going to happen that evening.

Hampton Court is somewhat famous for the melding of both Tudor (early 1500s) and Baroque (very late 1600s) architectural styles.  Here you can clearly see the older solid wall brick Tudor next to the much more ornate, airy Baroque

At age 13, Robert was starting to develop an aversion to having his picture taken.  Andrew, of course, never saw a camera that he didn't like - and that didn't like him in return.

Around noon time we were ready for a bite, and were already feeling a bit fatigued, so we stopped at one of the food places on the grounds (probably the Privy Kitchen).  In keeping with the historic traditions surrounding us, the food was awful.  At least it made up for it by being overpriced.  On the other hand, we had low expectations so they managed to meet them.

After lunch we headed back outside to the gardens went and saw the tennis court and then made our way to the hedge maze.  Ironically, pretty much the only rain of entire trip occurred while we were in the hedge maze.  Go figure!  I didn't recall just how narrow that maze was.  In my memory it was huge, wide boulevards bordered by giant, thick greenery.  Of course, it is actually really narrow paths bordered by well-tended, but hardly lush, shrubs. 

Our point man leads us during our explorations.

Success!  As mentioned, about the only rain we saw during our entire visit came down while we were outside in the hedge maze.

By this time it was about 2:30P and we were running about 30 minutes behind our nominal plan, which had us arriving at Windsor Castle by this time.  A quick survey of the boys indicated that vacation fatigue, which had started appearing a couple of days previously in London (but was put aside for HP Studios), was setting in.  Interest in Windsor Castle was weak - and truthfully Eileen and I were in the same boat.  We would have been happy to see it, but since we were already a bit behind schedule it would have been a rushed affair and that's not something we like to do.  So with that choice we retreated from Hampton Court and made the drive back to Rainworth House.  I would have liked to stop at Runnymeade, which we passed on the motorway...but I knew that there was a small hike involved and the historic site isn't actually very visually interesting.  This is a time when my minor in English History would have been happily fed, but at the expense of everyone else's happiness, so I just kept driving.

When we got back to Rainworth House we took advantage of the beds for naps and the common room to do some reading.  The bedroom and common room photos on the previous day's write-up are actually from today.  Dinner that night was, I believe, at a pub recommended by our hostess that was 15-20 minutes away (and was VERY good).  I've scoured Google Maps and looked at countless photos trying to figure out what place it was, but to no avail.  All I can recall is that it was up some country lane (in other words, she didn't send us into the town).  For all I know it is no longer in business in 2018.

We closed out our pleasant stay in both Windsor and England with this meal, as we were going to be off to Wales in the morning.

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2013 England and Wales Day 7: Harry Potter Studios

Leavesden: Harry Potter Studios

As the day dawned we were all quite excited.  We were leaving London today headed toward a nice B&B in Windsor, but the big event for today was that we were going by way of Leavesden to see the Harry Potter Studio Tour.  We're all big HP fans and the chance to see the sets, costumes, props, and other things involved in making the movies was something we HAD to do!  The studio offered a limited number of timed entry tickets each day, so I'd purchased our tickets several months in advance.  We didn't know how much time to allot for our visit, so I'd arbitrarily put it down for 4 hours (including lunch) and had some additional destinations we could visit on our way to Windsor, just in case.  We ended up spending just over six hours at the studios - and frankly could have easily spent another hour or two.  It was FANTASTIC!!

When we went in 2013 the studio hadn't yet built out a significant on-site food presence.  They offered Butterbeer and drinks and had a few snack-type items, but you couldn't at that time get a substantial meal.  (By 2018 this problem had been fixed with a large cafeteria being up and running.)  The website made it clear that if you wanted real food you had to bring a picnic lunch, which they indicated you could eat at the midway point, which was a courtyard area between Studios J and K.  (J&K - an homage to JK Rowling.  Get it?)  So first thing in the morning we walked over to a Subway sandwich shop that was conveniently near the car park and picked up sandwiches and chips for use later that afternoon.

But first we had to get there, so with food packed for travel we went and picked up the car and started our journey.  To get to Leavesden from London was a straight shot up the A5 motorway.  Very conveniently, we exited the carpark by turning left on Edgeware Road...which is the A5!  So simple!  Even better, Edgeware Road was the border of the London Congestion Zone.  What that means is that, had we needed to go even one block to the east we would have been subject to having to pay a large fee.  Essentially, central London streets are a toll area.  But we didn't have to do any of that.  We just kept following the A5 signs until we reached Leavesden, at which point we followed the signs to the Warner Brothers studios.

We pulled into a mostly empty parking lot around 10:15A, with time to spare before our 11:00 entry.  They did check our tour ticket at the parking lot gate, so I suppose if you show up too early they might tell you to come back later, but we had no worries.  From the parking lot you don't see much - the only major HP items were a few of the oversized chess pieces from the Sorcerer's Stone.  But even that small touch was enough of a teaser to keep the excitement level up.  Entering the lobby area you see mostly a ticket counter, a large shop, and then the rope queue area for ticket holders.  Around the high walls were displays of some larger props, such as the Weasley Ford Anglia motor car, and luggage items from platform 9 3/4.  Near the queue was the Closet Under the Stairs set piece.

The main entry.  I'll be adding a LOT of photos to this page, so going to use smaller thumbnail images.  Click on the photo to see it larger size. 

Some chess pieces from Sorcerer's Stone.

Mr. Weasley's flying Ford Anglia.  This is hanging from the ceiling of the main lobby.

The Closet Under the Stairs.  This is near to the rope queue line where you wait for your timed entry.

You're held outside until your entry time.  (Actually, I believe that the 11:00A entry started letting people in around 10:45.)  Once the room is filled the doors are closed and everyone is standing in a large room where things are projected onto the high side walls.  Here they talk a bit about the global impact of the movie series, showing things like movie posters from around the world, and videos from various global premiers where cast members would be in attendance.  When that presentation concludes the doors open and you exit into a sit-down theater where you're welcomed in a short film by Harry, Ron, and Hermione.  That presentation concludes with the screen retracting and you find yourself facing the door to the Great Hall at Hogwarts.  That is opened to reveal the Great Hall set, and in you go.  They do control access to this room, because they want each subsequent group to see the Great Hall devoid of people.  So at some point they ask you to clear the room because the next group is about to arrive.  You can go right back in as soon as the next group gets the "big reveal".

The Great Hall is revealed!

A small sampling of some of the things on display in the Great Hall.

The House Points tracker.  You get some sense of how expensive these movies must have cost to produce by noting that this large set piece is buried in the corner of the Great Hall, which is (I think) where it was in the movies.  And yet it must have cost a pretty penny to build this!

Once you are done with the great hall you enter the rest of Studio J, which has a huge number of set pieces, costumes, props...and on and on and on.  You carry around headset-based narration, which was issued to us as we sat in that small theater room outside the Great Hall.  In the event that your batteries died they instructed you to simply grab any staff member and they'd issue you a different unit.  I had to do this with my headset somewhere around hour three, and it was a really smooth process.  I found a staffer to give him my headset, but he found me for the swap, meaning I didn't have to stand around doing nothing while the swap happened.

The range of things to see is so vast it exceeds my ability to document here.  The photos - which are a VERY small subset of the hundreds we took - can serve as a reminder to what we saw.

I was intrigued by a display of actor wigs.  When you stop to think about it, over the course of a multi-week shooting schedule the actor's real hair would vary in length.  By wearing wigs, the character's hair would be under control.  They seemed to have wigs for pretty much EVERYONE.

A series of jackets for Harry from a single movie.  Each one was progressively more distressed than the other and therefore could be used in a series of scenes showing the progressive wear and tear of Harry's activities.

A portion of the Gryffindor boy's dorm.  There were parts of dozens of sets on display throughout both buildings.

The Gryffindor common room, with typical main character costumes.

One of many display cases showing off smaller props.  Some of the props were of interest because you could see their construction.  The destroyed version of Tom Riddle's diary, for example, was clearly some kind of casting.  It most definitely was NOT a leather bound book!

Dumbledore's study.  When viewed up close, many of the items on his shelves appeared to just be simple geometric shapes.

Hagrid's cottage interior.

One of the practical locking doors at Hogwart's.  This piece was about 12' tall.  Behind the door you can see a bit of the supporting frame which has a significant amount of "plumbing" for pneumatic valves that drive the locking mechanisms.

A portion of the Ministry of Magic set.  It isn't clear whether these were the only sets of windows they built or this was just a sample of the larger set.  So much of the films are digitally composited it is sometimes hard to tell what is real and what is computer-generated.  I suspect that there were actually more physical window pieces built.

A tableau showing successive generations of Professor Umbridge's dresses.  As she gained power her costumes took on deeper tones of pink.

Near the exit of Studio J were a couple of display cases against the wall.  One of them was stuffed full of items that were created to stock the shelves of the Weasley's magic store.  Clearly the designers were allowed to let their imaginations run wild and create some fun, whimsical stuff...almost none of which you can distinguish on-screen!

Once you finish Studio J you reach the concessions area.  As noted previously, the big attraction at the time we went was their Butterbeer.  We bought one cup and shared it amongst us while also enjoying our packed lunch.  In addition to some tables (a small number, considering the potential crowd sizes), the outdoor area also has a number of items from the movies, including the Night Bus, the Dursley house exterior, the ruined Potter house exterior, a section of the Hogwarts covered bridge, and the death angel sculpture from the graveyard seen in Goblet of Fire.

Our Butterbear.  The bubbles have some real structure to them.  It takes a good 20-30 seconds for them to pour out each cup, so the line to buy this was pretty slow!

Eating our lunch with the Hogwart's bridge in the background.

The ruined Potter house in Godric's Hollow from Deathly Hallows Part 1.

From there we then entered into Studio K, which had more of everything, but with a particular focus on creature effects and set design.  So while there were still large set pieces here we also saw stuff like the Phoenix animatron, a Hagrid animatronic head, grindelows, Buckbeak, and goblin prosthesis.  The major set pieces in this building was Diagon Alley, with dramatic theater lighting.  In the latter parts of the tour (you can go anywhere at any time, but there is a definite programmed flow to the order you see stuff - and that's encouraged by the ordering of the narration) we also saw lots of design sketches and prototype models.

A shelf of goblin masks, used for the Gringott's bankers.

An animatronic head for Hagrid.  I'm not sure exactly when this was used, but I know they had a really tall (like 7') actor stand in for some scenes, and it is possible that this was placed on top of him.

The Weasley's joke shop on Diagon Alley.  The alley was the single largest set piece of display, and included most of the shop fronts found in the movies.

The Puking Pastilles display.  This was a really humorous piece, with the figure perpetually barfing into the bucket courtesy of a conveyor-belt type of arrangement.

The penultimate piece of the tour is a room wholly devoted to the massive Hogwarts model.  This was a living model, in that it evolved across the entire series of movies with parts being added as needed.  For example, when Deathly Hallows introduced a need for a boathouse, the model had one added.  Between interior fiber optics and exterior scenic lighting they could simulate any time of day and, in fact, they cycled between day and night on a timed loop so you could see the model in all lighting conditions as you walked around.

An example of one of the dozens of white card models on display.  This was the model used to help convey the look of Hogsmeade to the creative teams.  Artists sketches and, in some cases, blueprints line the walls.

The great model of Hogwarts, with lighting in the range of sunset.  This thing is about probably about 12' tall at its highest point - perhaps taller?

Another side of the model.  In this picture the lights have cycled to represent night time and the fiber optics inside the model are on, simulating lights inside the castle.

A close up of the Owl Tower.  There are small owl models in several of the windows.

The final display on the tour is a room with hundreds - maybe thousands - of wand boxes, each labeled with the name of a person involved with the production of the movies, from actors to crew and staff.  They have someone stationed there with an index book so you could say something like "where is <name's> box?" and they could point you to the proper section.  While tourists tend to ask about actors, apparently a lot of friends and family will ask about someone they know who was involved.

As expected, you exit from there into the large shop where you can purchase stuff for OUTRAGEOUS prices.  I don't recall exact details now, but I think something like a set of Gryffindor robes was in the range of $500!  So, needless to say, we didn't buy anything.  Our tickets did come with a commemorative booklet but we totally forgot this and failed to pick it up as we left.

Overall, we had an AMAZING time.  For technical theater types like us who love Harry Potter it was such a perfect match.  Would do it again in a heartbeat, confident that there'd be more to discover.

From the studio we still had about a 45 minute drive to our lodging, the charming B&B of Rainworth House.  This was a wonderful choice, and far and away one of the nicest places we've EVER stayed.  The house and grounds were beautiful, and the hospitality simple but effective.  We checked into our room, which had a comfy King bed and two twins tucked under the sloping roof, and then spent a bit of time exploring the grounds and sitting in the common room before we finally went to grab some dinner.

The back yard at Rainworth House.  

The twin beds in our room.  The foot our our King sized bed is in the foreground, bottom left.

The common room.  Guests were welcome to come have a relaxing sit down...

...which is what we did!

Dinner this night was really meh.  We had been worried pre-trip that the boys might be jones-ing for something more American, so we purposely picked the Windsor Lad, which is part of the Harvester chain.  Basically, it is like Chili's or Appleby's...except not as "good" (sic).  The restaurant was kind of a dump - lots of food on the floor, in particular.  This was just a sign of the large amount of kid traffic.  On top of all this, I had a problem parking the car and ended up wedged up next to a hedge at the back of the parking lot.  When backing out at the end of the night a branch broke out the red tail light on the passenger side.  Grrr.

We finally returned to Rainworth House (where our hostess bemoaned the fact that we hadn't asked her for a better dinner recommendation) and called it a night.

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