Our fantastic stay at Warwick Castle and War of the Roses

As full-time working parents, I was dreading the summer holidays, and by that, I mean how I was going to cover 6 weeks of care for my son!  It nearly broke me (mentally) to have to put him into summer club for nearly 2 full weeks!  After those initial couple of weeks, he then spent time with us and a few days at summer club which was much more manageable and to be honest, he needed those crazy mad days at the leisure centre.

The point of my rambling?  We bought Merlin passes to help us through the holidays as we were not going away or spending much time together as a family unit of 3.  So whilst the price may seem high (it certainly does to us) it is no more than many families spend on a holiday abroad and with several visits to the Merlin attractions already has seen us get our money back for the price of the passes.

One of the (many) perks of a Merlin pass is free entry to Warwick Castle, 20% off food and shops and a discount on staying over!  And that's just what my son and I did.  We stayed the night in one of the fabulous bell tents.

This was the first 'camping' experience for my 5-year-old and he loved it!!!  He loved the whole experience.  The whole event was about Team York or Team Lancaster.  I loved that!

We chose Team York.

We completed the maze 4 times over the 2 days so Max could collect the pop badges!  We watched the birds of prey, and the archer at the front of the castle, we climbed the stairs of the castle but most importantly we watched the War of the Roses.

My son thought it was a real fight (due to watching A Knights Tale the evening before we came up) and was slightly disappointed when he realised it was just a show.

He loved the show and was completely buzzing at 5pm when we'd made it back to the Knight's village for dinner.  The staff were all so friendly and talked about team York and team Lancaster.

Dinner was buffet style and Max felt very grown up choosing his food himself, walking around the dining room back to our table, and getting his water on his own.  That's how child-friendly and safe the dining room and Knight's village was.

The War of the Roses was a stunning show, but what topped off our stay was the evening entertainment in the Knight's village.  After dinner, we walked down to the entertainment arena where my son went to sword school - and was knighted (again).  He was given archery training and joined in with the jester school tricks.  We also watched the knights fighting with the crowds cheering for either York or Lancaster and even when it started to rain at the end of the evening it did not deter anyone from the evening's activities.

I wanted to share with you a snippet of  Sword school.  The Knights were fantastic and so funny the kids loved them, but the quality is shocking due to the fact I filmed this on Facebook live for my partner to watch too.

The 7.30pm bedtime went right out the window and my boy was still bouncing off the tent walls at 9pm.  I didn't think my boy was ever going to settle down to bed!  But by 10.15pm he finally nodded off before getting up at 6am (so normal time for him then!) for another full day at the castle!!

I surprised myself with how much fun we had.  I'm also rather surprised at how we could go through that maze 4 times and get lost every time too!!

Looking forward to going back next year.

Go Team York