Oh, Rocky!

Dave, Olga and I are on our October Break adventure, and here's where we're staying -- Oakley Court, a grand manor house on the Thames in Berkshire. We're very close to the village of Bray, where we've stayed a couple of times before. (Remember Clamato Cottage?)

Oakley Court might look familiar to you, if you've seen old Hammer horror movies like "The Brides of Dracula" (1962), or other British horror films like "And Now the Screaming Starts!" (1973). Those movies and a lot more were filmed here.

Perhaps the house's most famous role came in 1975, when it served as Frank N. Furter's castle in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," with the special-effects addition of a weird spaceship-like geodesic dome on the roof.

Oakley Court in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"

This is absolutely why I wanted to come here. I've been a fan of Rocky Horror since my college years, and I never, ever imagined I'd get to visit Frank's mysterious castle! I haven't yet seen Magenta sliding down the staircase banister or Rocky running through the grounds in his gold Speedo, and there's no pink-tiled lab with anything on the slab. But I have seen...

...the creepy gargoyles guarding the front door! They're real!

They figured prominently in the scene where Brad and Janet first show up on Frank's doorstep, sopping wet after their car breaks down in a rainstorm. Remember Janet's line: "Didn't we see an old castle on the road a few miles back?" Well, you can't see the castle from the road. Just FYI.

According to Wikipedia, Susan Sarandon came down with pneumonia during filming, partly because Oakley Court was in "horrible condition" with neither heat nor bathrooms. (As Janet, she also spent a lot of time soaking wet from the rain.)

The house is in beautiful condition now. Although the main building includes hotel rooms available to guests, Frank N. Furter decided to put us in less expensive quarters in an adjacent, more modern structure. The river is right outside our window.

We have a nice room, though there are the usual hotel quirks. The Nespresso machine, which I am forced to use for in-room coffee, seems to have its knobs reversed. The one that's supposed to make a smaller cup makes a bigger one, and vice-versa. Also, we spent about 20 minutes searching for the milk, which is in the refrigerator, which, it turns out, is in the closet.

In keeping with the old horror-movie theme, our room includes two mysteriously dead houseplants.

Here's the interior of the main house, looking from the conservatory into one of the lounge areas. We had dinner here last night. The food was tolerable but the service was atrocious. I think we waited about an hour before even ordering. Dave wanted to leave, but as I told him, "We're not in a hurry. And besides, there's nowhere else to eat!"

(Which isn't quite true -- there's an adjacent riverfront restaurant that we may try tonight.)

Olga made the journey fine, though she's on edge, as she often is when we travel. She gets overexcited and very clingy. This morning she woke me up at 4:30 a.m. demanding to be taken outside, for no reason that I could ascertain. (I took her but she mainly just seemed curious to sniff around.)

Last night I streamed "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" so Dave and I could watch it in our room. We got about two thirds of the way through before the Internet seemed to give out. Dave was asleep by then anyway (how can anyone fall asleep during "Rocky Horror"?!) but hopefully I can finish it today!