Because I love it and because I once loved a man who lived there, I have visited England many times (relatively) and hope (suspect) that my tally has not yet reached its peak. Because I have a fixation on photographs and a strong case of ADD, I am good at remembering the visuals of everything I’ve seen but poor at remembering their names. Because I love old ruins and history, I have visited quite a few English castles. Because I have an obsession with Tudor history, I have come across the name of Ludlow Castle many times and for a long while, every time I did, I had to look it up to recall if I had ever been there. Because the name started to become so familiar to me, it started to feel discordant to confirm I hadn’t, and then important that I change that. Because the castle isn’t conveniently located and didn’t objectively look interesting enough to build a trip around it, and I have limited time and money to satisfy unlimited interests, to go would take an effort and sacrifice that were impractical to make. Because I’ve never been a practical person, I did it anyway.

Back in January of 2020, my then partner and I decided it was time we take the plunge to move in together and I started to put the wheels in motion to relocate to England, intending to exploit the 6-month tourist visa policy for a trial run before getting married and, if/in doing so, twisting their arm into allowing me to stay for good. In the meantime, we also planned, down to the minutest detail, a vacation there mainly spent on the southern coast. However, if you noted the year you might not be surprised to learn that neither plan went as hoped. England was, fortunately, one of the few countries that didn’t restrict incoming travelers, so I was able to sneak over a few times to at least see him even within a severely more limited radius. (I did feel guilty traveling, despite taking all possible safety precautions while doing so, but we had fought so hard for our relationship through then and I knew we had no chance if forced apart for a year (or more…) and I felt that air travel would be quite safe due to both how they circulate air to avoid the spread of germs and mostly empty planes.) But I have two cats, one who is senior, and I was unwilling to put them in the cargo of a plane, so in order to transport them over for a permanent move, I’d need a second human to accompany us, as airlines dictate one pet per person in the cabin. And incidentally, we’d have needed to fly to Ireland or France and then drive to England, as England does not allow any incoming pets to travel in the cabin, no matter what, for annoying reasons unknown. But my partner was unable to get to me and I was unwilling to accept family members’ offers to risk their own selves to be a fill-in chaperone. So we stayed in a constant state of wait and see.

Anyway… I lost my comfort in traveling when the pandemic worsened and mutated near the end of 2020, so we were stuck trying to keep “us” alive via Zoom calls and chat. We gave it a decent shot, but that the light at the end of the tunnel kept getting pushed out further to an immeasurable distance started to wear on us both. We both wore the frustration in different ways and we ultimately combusted a couple of months into 2021. Incidentally, I’ve written quite a few melodramatic and awful poems about the break-up, but what I mainly leave out of them, so as not to dilute their self-righteous punch, is that I found, in more honest (and not so infrequent) moments, that I mourned the prospect of living in England more than I did him. Which isn’t to say that I didn’t miss the best of him or the best of us (which were both pretty great), but I realized that the allure of moving to England had led me to lower a few red flags in our relationship below my line of acknowledged vision that I wouldn’t have otherwise. Also, I can’t say they were totally new red flags, just that the pandemic put fiercer wind to them than ever before, so I think my slight preparation for them also helped facilitate my too mild reaction to the lurking landmines they warned of- until they did indeed explode (implode?) beyond repair.

Anyway, this is the longest possible route to say that I had for quite a good amount of time thought that I was going to ultimately live in England for a very long time, and I had plenty on my to-do list to keep myself indefinitely happily occupied while doing so. And that I had also planned a vacation there to tide me over in the meantime and had latched to the itinerary, not the least because it included a trip to an otter sanctuary that would allow me to directly interact with the most precious animals ever (excepting my cats). (Not so fun fact: I have now aggressively kicked both an otter’s and a cat’s face, without intent or malice). I felt a bit pathetic going back to England, since even though my ex was a late addition to my list of long-held attractions there, he did cast his color over all of it, and I didn’t want any bit of the trip to be about him. But… I was also left feeling like I had unfinished business and I abhor unfinished business. And in the end, the trip was a bit about him, but in a healthy way, and mostly nothing to do with him at all, in an even healthier way.

So when the restrictions began to lift all around and it felt a bit more okay to travel, and yet, England was still one of the few choices open, I decided to adopt the perspective that going there to get closure was empowering, not pathetic. And I invited my sister and niece to join me. I was, at the time, in a job that vastly overpaid me for the very little work they asked of me, so this was one way to indirectly offset the guilt I felt over that. I’ve since been laid off as they finally caught on that they didn’t have the need for me, as over-long anticipated, so I might have waited for life to balance this out on its own, but eh… However, in broadening the invite to include my niece on one drunken night, I didn’t think through what else that would mean for the trip. I had originally asked just my sister, who had been to London before, so I didn’t feel any sort of way about eschewing the normal touristy stuff in favor of dragging her along on my more niche bucket list itinerary. But when her daughter said yes (and truly glad she did), my mentality shifted. I couldn’t bring myself to bring my 17-year-old niece to England and bypass London, not to mention a few other surrounding stops that would also be repeats for me (normally painful for me). And it would take at least 3 days to consider London not “bypassed’. So I allocated time accordingly. I’m not good at sacrificing anything, so while I cut a stop or two elsewhere out of my original itinerary, I also added a day or seven to the trip so I could keep what mattered in. It turned out that there were things originally planned just to make my then-partner happy that I didn’t care that much about, but there were plenty of things planned that I cared very much about. And all the remaining things that mattered still happened to be zig- zagged around the country. Incidentally and surprisingly though, I really enjoyed the repeat experiences so while I originally planned them out of “altruism”, I was also selfishly really grateful that I did. And it redeemed the Tower of London after my first miserable and vastly disappointing visit there as an adult seven years back, and funnily enough, right before, or really, right as, this now-defunct relationship was to take off.

I generally do have a strong aversion to traveling to the same places multiple times (again, I have to make the most of limited time and money!), so England had already been an exception- though in fairness, it was often a shorter bonus additional leg to other European trips (seeing how I was there anyway…), at least before I started to go for a personal agenda. So I made the decision, and one I have since overruled (so far mentally only), that it would be my last trip there and so I should try to cross off everything I felt was on my “must-do” list. My sister and niece could only stay for nine days, so we did London, Kent, Windsor, Stonehenge, the Cotswolds, Dartmoor, Tintagel and Bodmin. (I don’t waste time). We ended in Bodmin, in the far southwest, so we drove the 5 hours from there to Heathrow where I left them on the curb as the end of our joint adventure and the start of my solo. The Lake District was my main priority from there, but I had also stumbled on Fountain Abbey in my research and had marked that as a must-do on my way, which made some kind of sense for being somewhat in the right direction. But I found myself continuously looking up Ludlow Castle to see how I could fit it in as well, despite deciding it just wasn’t practical or important enough every time before. But as I had also decided this was the trip to finish what I most wanted to finish, I ultimately heeded this internal clue that Ludlow Castle was indeed on my list of important enough, even if I couldn’t fully justify it. They say familiarity breeds contempt, but familiarity of its name bred intrigue, so I decided, at this point, adding another 2 days to make it happen wasn’t significant. I thought even if it underwhelmed me as much as photos suggested it likely would, I’d at least not live to regret not finding out for sure and would be spared further repeat disappointments of re-learning I hadn’t. It was 2 hours from Heathrow, so I knew I wouldn’t be able to get there until the afternoon and it would be cutting it close to do so before its closing time. But it was 2 hours in the least convenient way, so I absolutely had to get there in time in order to fully reserve the next day for the 4-hour drive to Fountain Abbey, exploring its grounds, and then the final 2-hour trek to the Lake District.

As mentioned already, I can’t fully explain or justify why or how the idea of Ludlow Castle took hold of me. It comes up a lot in Tudor history, but really just peripherally as part of their secondary (yet still interesting) stories. But I consume a lot of Tudor history, so again, it got to the point that I came across the name so often that every new time I did, it sounded familiar enough for me to assume I had a personal attachment to it and must have been there already, only for a Google image search to remind me, ever again, that I was wrong. But then it somehow began to feel like I did have a personal connection to it and it was something I was meant to do, despite the fact there was no reason for this to be true other than my inability to remember that I hadn’t already.

And without knowing why or what, I began to just know that a unique experience awaited me at Ludlow Castle. The “logical” assumption was that I would somehow meet someone that would leave a mark on my life in some way. I neutrally considered it being romantic, but thought more that it would just be an unexpected connection without such connotations and that my imagination was just too limited to conjure up alternatives to the more trite possibilities. And I really wasn’t mentally focused on it, these were all just passive undercurrents of feelings/thoughts that I was definitely aware of but not actively listening to or engaging with.

I had underestimated how early my sister and niece like to be at the airport, but while this made for a painfully early morning for someone who doesn’t fall asleep until 4am every night, it was also a bonus as it gave me some breathing room for the rest of the day. But I then overestimated the dawdle opportunity of this breathing room, so made an impromptu stop at Anne Hathaways’ cottage, after the 3rd sign for it broke down my resolve against, and believed indifference to, it. I then spent too much time there, largely due to an enthusiastic tour guide cornering me to spill the tea on her and Willy’s love story and my not having the heart to tell her I only cared about photos. In truth, and against my will (no pun intended (for the first time in my life)), I did find it interesting. Though all I remember now, I think, is that she was older than him. I could probably scrounge some more facts up with some effort though (I hope). For the record, and in the pursuit of redemption, I do like to learn about the places I go to; ideally, beforehand, but will look them up afterwards, if not. I just hate learning about them while I am actually there as my ADD and photo obsession kick into full gear and I just want to see as much, and take as many shots, as I physically can. I do sometimes (often) kick myself for how much cooler somewhere might have been with more in-depth knowledge of what I was seeing and/or to find out that I missed a detail due my ignorance, so I can’t endorse my mentality for anyone else to adopt. I regret I have it, but I have it and it’s unfightable in the moment it counts.

Anyway… I did manage to make my escape and finally made it to Ludlow Castle at 3:15pm. When calculating the bonus “dawdle” time, I hadn’t thought to factor in the time I’d need to find parking in Ludlow, so it was a gift that the one open street spot I saw in the town happened to be the one right in front of the castle’s entrance, which perhaps added to the sense of “fate” playing its hand, as otherwise, I’d have been screwed. And as I got out of the car, I found that my gut was rumbling louder and myself wondering again what unique story was about to unfold. But I pushed this thought away and went to pay for admission. I was cautioned they closed at 4pm, which was not news to me, and it was not a surprise that I seemed to be the only person heading towards the door at this hour. I’m absolute shit with tracking time, but for perhaps the one and only instance in my life, I was super responsible about it here. Perhaps only because there was a known crunch from the start, and not just one thrust upon me after I let minutes, if not hours, slip by unnoticed for too long, as is normally the case. But while I was mindful of its passing, I was also about making the most of what I had. And based on what Google Images had shown me, I thought 45 minutes was maybe not ideal, but enough. Google should be ashamed.

Ludlow Castle is amazing. There’s more of it left than I had expected and what is left is so cool. And there was almost no one there while I was; I maybe saw 15 other people collectively, at most. As someone who always wonders how much money it would take to rent unrentable places out, despite the fact that I will never have it, no matter the answer, I felt it was as much of a dream come true as I realistically could have hoped for. But it would work against me in the end. I covered the ground thoroughly but as quickly as I could and, with 11 minutes to spare, reluctantly decided to make my way from the back towards the front. And then decided I had time to run up the stairs just to the right of the front gate to see the aerial view from a rare section still intact of its second floor. As I reached the top of the short staircase, I heard some clanging, and thought passively that it must be a 10-minute warning signal. But I then rethought hanging out up there in the most recessed/hidden area overall, so descended right back down with 8 minutes to go. The fact that I did not take any photos from up there says it all about the speed at which I changed my mind about being there. I crossed the very short distance to the exit and instead came face to face with a closed door. I wasn’t necessarily planning to step through it at that exact moment, there were still some pictures to be taken from that spot, but I was suddenly concerned that I might not have the option to.

But it wasn’t 4pm yet, it was 3:52pm to be exact, so I mostly expected the door to open when I tried it. It didn’t. So I thought surely there must be a second door somewhere still open and thought I had spied earlier where it would be, so went there. There wasn’t. So I assumed I must have been wrong that the front door wasn’t openable and I had just done the wrong order of steps (there’s only one…), so came back to try again. I wasn’t. I thought whoever locked it must not be far from it, as, again, it was still before 4pm, so I tried shouting through the cracks into the enclosed courtyard in front of the castle and between it and the final exit from its overall grounds. One thing to know, is that I have a terribly weak voice that does not carry far at all. A second thing to know, is that there was no one around to hear me anyway.

I had to accept that I was definitively locked inside Ludlow Castle. And I couldn’t decide if I thought it was a hilarious or a ‘fuck, fuck, fuck” situation, and settled on not having to settle on one or the other. I should mention that while Ludlow Castle does have more of it left than I had originally expected, two parts of it that it has, respectively, almost and absolutely none left of are its ceiling and its floor. A lot of high walls remain, but that enclose absolutely nothing except those seeking an exit. Ludlow is putting up a better fight than many, but nature is slowly winning the battle to reclaim the space and, with it being abandoned in 1689, has had a few hundred years to wage it.

I am as introverted as people come, so I eyed the four emergency numbers listed on the door with resigned defeat and tried the first of them at 3:56pm. I left a voicemail. I tried the second one, and left a voicemail. I tried the third that seemed to route to same voicemail as the first and the fourth that seemed to to the same as the second. I waited a few minutes staring at my phone willing it to ring back. And found myself getting condescendingly paranoid that they wouldn’t know how to call back an American phone number, as if mine would be the very first one that managers of a major tourist attaction had ever come across. But for reasons that I’m sure were just about any before that one, they were not calling me back in pace with my amplified timetable.

So I crossed to the back of the castle where there were reachable windows that looked over the town. However, on that side, the castle sat on the edge of a slope and the windows accessible to me were some height away from where people would be walking. I could hear them passing below well enough to know some were having conversations that I would have loved to hear the rest of, but I also could hear them clearly not hearing my attempts to interrupt them with shouts of “hello, I’m up here!”. In the end, I may have really ramped up the volume of ghost stories told about Ludlow, but I couldn’t ramp up enough volume to convince anyone there was a living spirit trapped beyond the walls above as well. Or I could, and they just couldn’t be arsed to care, and I truthfully can’t say I blame them. It’s not every day that someone is handed the opportunity to rescue a damsel in distress being held captive in a castle, but it’s not every person’s dream to be a white knight to a weak-voiced American tourist. And who would know how to help anyway?

I found myself getting stupidly self-conscious about yelling (something to perhaps work out with a therapist…) so didn’t try for long, but I also recognized that it was futile anyway. So I crossed back to the front door and tried the first two emergency numbers again, and again with no luck.

It was just a few minutes past 4pm at this point, but the sky was starting to get darker as the days were still on the shorter side that time of the year and rain clouds were rolling in fast. I didn’t know what to do, so I turned to face the castle grounds and just took it in. Mainly what I took stock of were the cawing crows circling the tower, with their murder (conveniently dramatically named) growing by the second. Their’s being the only noise at all in the otherwise eerie quiet that had taken over the grounds was… eerie. I tried to remember what ghost stories I had heard, if any, about the castle, but though I couldn’t come up with any specific ones, it was built in 1075, so would defy odds to be without them. I normally really like crows and love eerie places, especially when haunted, but, as I learned, only when I have access to an exit.

So I turned and instinctively tried to kick down the door. Twice. And I’m like a yellow-belt in karate, so it was a good testament to the craftsmanship of whoever made it that it held strong (cough). This was actually more of a relief than a disappointment, as I immediately imagined the resulting ‘another “one of those” American tourists’ headlines had I been successful in felling the centuries-old door. I didn’t try a third time. I instead walked the perimeter of the castle trying to find a scalable section of the ruins only to confirm that they were not quite ruined enough for me to have a chance of surviving an attempt. So I then scouted the grounds for the best place to sleep for the night and mentally rationed out the sole candy bar I had with me to see me through it. I determined instead that there was no good place to sleep, it was already getting too cold for the layers I (uncharacteristically) didn’t have on, and there were now far too many crows descending onto the grounds, so around 4:25pm, I sucked up my pride and called 999. It’s funny how the perception of the passage of time is so altered based on circumstances. I’d only knowingly been trapped in there for 33 minutes by then, but usually entire days go by faster to my mind than they did. I still don’t know if my calling 999 at that point was justified or a foolish use of their resources. It felt like enough time had passed while in the midst of the experience, but with hindsight while sitting under a warm blanket on my couch a year later, it feels like I might have allowed the Ludlow employees a few minutes more. Everyone was gracious about my decision though, so I’ll cling to that…

To the operator’s credit, he half-heartedly tried not to laugh at my “emergency” but failed so was forced to confess mine wasn’t on his list of expected pleas for help. I confessed in turn that it wasn’t one I was expecting to make, but would still love to be rescued, if so possible. He seemed to care and took my number before promising to call me back asap. Then lo and behold, about 5 minutes later, both of the people on the other end of the Ludlow emergency numbers, independently of each other, called me back. They were very well aware that police had gotten involved, though they at first tried to pretend otherwise. The man, who was first to call me, was super pissy with me, with his first question being “how the hell did you manage that?” And he seemed rather unfazed by, and disbelieving of, my protestations that I had tried to leave before 4pm. However, I can only assume he checked his call log after we hung up as he called me back a few minutes later, without an outright admission of guilt, but with a very different and contrite attitude that very much implied one. In that short span, I seemingly had gone from an annoying fool to be safely ridiculed for causing an unwanted hassle into a liability to be placated. In truth, I wasn’t angry at anyone; I had been in the most hidden part of an otherwise empty castle and felt it fair that they thought it safe to lock up early, so was just grateful to anyone who might let me out and he seemed willing to accept the responsibility of figuring out how. In the end, I bounced back and forth between calls with him and a woman, who was his peer, and they began to work in tandem on finding a solution.

Their typical after-hours groundskeeper was, of course, out sick this day, so they didn’t have an immediate answer for me and couldn’t commit to when they might. They called every few minutes just to say they needed more time to figure it out. So for awhile, I was still envisioning many different outcomes, including being dramatically airlifted out by a helicopter, and subsequently becoming front page headlines for this reason instead. This is the first time I thought of my ex, as I imagined him reading the news article over breakfast the next morning and choking on his granola. And regardless of our outcome, as a testament to my ego and maturity, I didn’t wish for this to come true. But I then decided that, more “realistically,” they might catapult a sleeping bag and some food over the wall for me to camp out more comfortably. Or resignedly, just tell me “sorry, we tried, but no luck, so best of it until we open again in the morning”. And thus, I hadn’t ruled out the unwelcome prospect of sharing my night with the murder of crows and Tudor ghosts living within the inevitably pitch-black abyss between these ancient walls.

In the end, the two individuals from the castle, despite initially being at a loss for an available viable course of action, decided they would both come to rescue me at about 5pm. And they could not have been more apologetic, or more relieved that I couldn’t have been more thankful to be released. In hindsight, I now expect they laughed at my jokes for reasons that had nothing to do with the quality of them.

I will say that once I got the call that help was definitely on the way and I could just enjoy having the grounds entirely to myself (be careful what you wish for!), it was actually quite an awesome experience despite it maintaining its eerie feel- or maybe more so because of it. But I still ran for the door the moment it opened. Again, I typically really like crows, creepy, and camping, but this experience taught me that likes are entirely circumstantial. I wish I had thought to get a video of the crows though. Photographs don’t always do the moment justice and it was too dark under the storm clouds to capture recognizable images of the fast-circling mass of omens.

For all the instincts I had about Ludlow Castle turning out to be a memorable visit, I can’t say that this possibility ever, or would have ever, crossed my mind for why. My mom still harbors some suspicions that I have made up the experience. Incidentally, these are suspicions I have heard confessed by others over the years in regards to other stories, but those who know me better know that I seem to have an uncanny knack for winding up in “only me ” scenarios. In fact, I once spent a Tahoe weekend with a co-worker who told me on the way home that she always thought that the exploits I’d share at the office were wildly exaggerated, if not entirely fabricated. As she saw it, these things just don’t happen to people, especially as often. But those few days together restored my credibility as she witnessed first-hand that I was an exception without having brought any of the “weird” on myself (definitely not always the case). Fortunately, while not every scenario is enjoyable to experience, they usually are in hindsight, they have (almost) never been dire and they almost always go on to serve as my go-to story- at least until the next one unfolds. Despite my lengthy over-blown build-up to this story here, I don’t know that my Ludlow experience ended up being as dramatic or its consequences being as significant in the long run as I had expected. I thought it would be somehow life-changing, and I’m pretty sure it didn’t actually alter my overall path, but it is certainly a memory that will be seared into my mind for the rest of my time and I honestly wouldn’t change a second of it. So I’m grateful, in this (and in most) case(s), that I am prone to prioritizing my instincts over my logic.

And Ludlow Castle is truly amazing and I would recommend it to anyone who likes such things, though I’d also recommend getting there in time to leave 15 minutes before closing. Though the idea has occurred to me to intentionally recreate this scenario when armed with a friend, a sleeping bag, snacks, a strong flashlight, and perhaps a spirit box. It might be the best opportunity to learn, once and for all, if Catherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur ever consummated their marriage, wherever their room happened to once exist there- and nosy minds want to know. Gossip is history when it’s ancient.