Castle Sterkenburg! History from the 13th century!

In the Netherlands we have castle weekend once a year! That means that most of the castles are open and have some nice events or festivals going on!

Some castles in the Netherlands are privately owned and conferred to bed and breakfast of congers areas! They only can be visited if you book a room or is you are attending an event there!

So a couple of years ago i discovered castle Sterkenburg and i saw it wasn't open for public! This year they opened the doors during castle weekend and i went there and took a tour.

(This is a picture i took last fall! It was to rainy to get the drone up in the air! more drone pictures at the end of this post!)

The castle founded in the thirteenth century. The castle is on a island, surrounded by canals. It's located in national park Utrechtse Heuvelrug, a countryside with meadows, fruit orchards, forest and water.

On the estate you will find not only the Castle, but also outbuildings like the Coach house and the Gardeners house surrounded by canals and a lot of monumental trees. The storks have their nest next to the castle, the chickens are walking through the garden, the ducks are swimming in the canals and sometime deer's will show themselves in the orchard in the twilight.

Different family's still life on the compound and they maintain the area and the castle, they clean the castle and they welcome the guests who stay the night in the castles B&B! They also look after the fruit orchards and from the apple they make juice and they will turn the plums in to jam for a fresh breakfast!

You can take a lovely walk trough the gardens witch have monumental trees in them such as oaks, plane trees, lime trees and cypress trees. That day the weather was very wet so i didn't walk trough out the whole garden but this will give you a little impression!

At the entrance there is a little watch tower! This was the first line of defense of the castle!

walking down the entrance way you soon will see the castle!

In the back yard there is a little pond! There is also a small rowing boat that you can take to go on to the water! The weather was very bad as you can see so most of these pictures i took with my Samsung S21 ultra telephone! It is more water resistance than my Canon camera!

Here a view pictures of the Coach house and the Gardeners house!

This old couple was walking in the rain in the garden! they took a lot of pictures of themselves in front of the castle! I love that very much!

I did't take many pictures inside! The tour group was about 25 people and the castle wasn't that big on the inside.

But we did go on top of the tower! It still was raining a little bit but i did capture a couple of pictures with my camera! In the distance you see the city of Utrecht! It was a very grey day!

And here some old drone pictures i took last autumn and winter!

So if you have a change to stay here, really do that! I didn't took pictures of the rooms but trust me, you really think you are a prince or princes if you stay here! Go check the website of Castle Sterkenburg!