Castles

V isitors to Victoria, B.C., like to tour Butchart Gardens, stroll around the Inner Harbor and shop along Government Street.

Maybe that’s why a trip to the town of tea and biscuits doesn’t sound too appealing during winter weather and when gardens are not in bloom.

But Victoria is also home to some gems that don’t mean wearing Wellington boots or walking in soggy grass with rain dripping from your nose.

Craigdarroch Castle is a must-see when heading to Vancouver Island any time of the year. In winter a few hours spent at the warm Victorian-era mansion built in the 1880s, takes tourists far from gray skies and back in time to a story as good as any soap opera.

The impressive Craigdarroch Castle (Craigdarroch means rocky old place in Gaelic) sits on a hill overlooking Victoria, and was built by Scotsman Robert Dunsmuir. The home welcomes about 140,000 visitors a year.

IF YOU GO… Craigdarroch Castle 1050 Joan Crescent Victoria, BC, Canada V8S 3L5 250-592-5323 www.thecastle.ca Hatley Castle at Hatley Park 2005 Sooke Road Victoria, BC, Canada V9B 5Y2 250-391-2666 www.hatleypark.ca

Take the self-guided tour of the four-floor castle with its more than two dozen rooms that are dressed in Dunsmuir fashions of the day complete with mannequins in Victorian garb.

The impressive building looks a little like the Addams Family house to some. Dunsmuir, who died before the home was completed, had the interior constructed of warm woods. The grand entrance, the staircase and walls are all beautifully kept and feel inviting.

The library is a favorite room with Scottish touches such as the bust of Sir Walter Scott in the library and a stained glass window in a thistle pattern. Well-versed volunteers are always within earshot to answer questions about the house for visitors.

Out in the main hall is a beautiful stone fireplace with the inscription “Welcome ever smiles and farewell goes out sighing” from Shakespeare’s “Troilus and Cressida.”

The Dunsmuirs loved fireplaces; there are 17 throughout the home, and seven chimney stacks on the roof.

The wood stairway through the middle of the home provides balconies for visitors to look down on the impressive organ added to Craigdarroch after the Dunsmuirs.

There are dining rooms, children’s rooms and a billiard room upstairs. There are no elevators at Craigdarroch, so it is not wheelchair accessible.

The smoking room with fireplace draped in tartan has black leather chairs and a stained-glass likeness of Sir Walter Raleigh. Its dark and masculine feel makes it easy to imagine a few men with their fob watches hooked into their waistcoat pockets standing ‘round the fire puffing on cigars.

The castle provides a fascinating look at a family whose members could have been the soap opera family of their times: One daughter became engaged to a man who was already married with children, another spent much of her life in an insane asylum, and an alcoholic son had a mistress of 20 years who was not welcome at Craigdarroch or by the family because she was divorced. And that’s just for starters.

All the family information is housed in one of the rooms at Craigdarroch on reader boards.

One Dunsmuir son, James Dunsmuir, went on to build his own castle, Hatley Castle, about 25 miles outside downtown Victoria in 1908.

Visitors can arrange guided tours of this Edwardian home no less grand than Craigdarroch and on a spectacular 565 acres. Guests to Hatley Castle must be on a guided tour or participating in a preregistered program.

Spend hours in the gardens, rain or shine, that edge up to the Strait of Juan de Fuca with a view of the Olympic Mountains. Hatley is a spectacular backdrop for garden tours offered by the estate. Simple plant identification tours combine well with visiting the Japanese and Italian gardens.

Visitors can bird-watch or sign up for an old-growth forest tour before heading to the castle for a look at the few rooms open to the public.

James Dunsmuir, like his father, favored the wood feel. The staircase in Hatley is as grand as it gets and the dining rooms look out on the long, green lawn that stretches down to the sea. You feel as if you might fall off the end of the Old World.

Christina Harper is a freelance writer. Send e-mail to harper@heraldnet.com.