Having Fun Stormin’ The Castle

From David’s Perspective:

If you have spoken with Christina or I for more than 30 minutes, it is apparent that we are huge Princess Bride fans. Somewhere in the conversation, a quote or reference from the movie will be tossed in. So when we found out that some of the filming locations were only two hours north of us, we just knew we had to go explore.

For those of you that don’t know, the movie is set in the mythical kingdom of Florin and is led by Prince Humperdink, who is trying to force Buttercup to marry him so he can kill her and start a war with the land of Gilder. For more information, watch the darn movie…..you will love it!

Humperdink’s castle, where much of the movie was filmed, is actually a place called Haddon Hall and is located near the quaint little town of Bakewell, England, situated in the Peaks District. Upon entering the main gate of Haddon Hall, we found ourselves standing in the central courtyard. Christina and I immediately started movie-geeking out, pointing out scenes and movie shots. We were trying to figure out where Humperdink was standing when he announced his marriage to Buttercup (because we had read that they added an extra tower behind him to make it look more impressive). Within a few minutes we recognized the doorway where Buttercup was introduced to her subjects and called the “Queen of Putrescence”, and I just had to have Christina pose for a picture there so I could taunt her as such! Inside, we found the room that was used as Humperdink’s chambers, where he sent his 4 fastest ships to alert Dread Pirate Roberts (Or not)…

(They added another tower behind prince Humperdinck to make the castle feel a little more impressive for the movie.)

Haddon Hall has been the set for many well known movies such as Jayne Eyre and Pride and Prejudice, but very few people here in the U.K. have ever heard of Princess Bride. As we were exploring the rooms, we overheard “Look, that’s where they rode away on white horses at the end of the movie…” I immediately asked, “Are you talking about Princess Bride?” Of course they were, and the family of four were so excited to find fellow movie geeks in the crowd that had actually heard of THEIR favorite movie. We spent a few minutes talking about the movie details, locations, and shared a few movie quotes, and then we were off to the wedding chapel.

(We know that part of the wedding scene was filmed with this window as a backdrop, but we think a different room was used to film the crowd scenes in the wedding, because it is a completely different space.)

After a few hours at Humperdink’s castle, we headed to our 2nd filming location. About 15 minutes south of Haddon Hall, across a large sheep pasture and over some stone walls, is a beautiful glen called Robin Hood’s Stride. Movie fans would know it as the rock outcropping where the “Man in black” had his epic, and very sportsmanlike, battle to the death with Fezzik. Walking up to it, the scene immediately came to life. I found myself talking in a deep Andre the Giant voice, and saying things like “I don’t even exercise” and Sleep well, and dream of large women”. At one point, I looked at Christina and said, “Where is my rock, I gotta be Fezzik for a moment, and we have to recreate the battle scene”. Christina set up the tripod with the camera, I found a large heavy rock, and the scene was set. Then she set the timer on the camera, jumped on my back, and proceeded to choked me for some selfies.

(We noticed that they added some extra trees to the movie set so that it would block the sheep and farms off in the distance……they also had so cover up some initials that were carved into the stone that was done in the 70’s.)

With the sun getting low in the sky, satisfied that we had geeked out long enough, we trudged back across the sheep pasture to our little car. Along the way, we talked about how many of our friends and family would be jealous of us today. I told Christina, “Kimmy & Joshua are gonna hate us for going without them!”