legends · 4 min read ·
Guided Tour Script
A castle tour script gains a seventh stop that the guides are told never to show.
**Harlech Moor Castle — Visitor Tour Script (Official, rev. 4)**
*For use by trained guides. Do not deviate. Allow 45 minutes. Maximum group size: 12.*
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**Stop 1 — Gatehouse.** Welcome the group. Point out the portcullis (restored 1962). Mention the murder holes. Remind visitors to watch their step on the uneven cobbles.
*Guide's note (Helen R.): the cobbles are fine. Do mention the step down at the threshold. It's deeper than it looks.*
**Stop 2 — Great Hall.** 14th-century. Open timber roof, minstrels' gallery. The long table seated sixty at feasts. Describe the hearth and the smoke louvre.
**Stop 3 — Solar and Withdrawing Room.** The lord's private apartment. A tapestry hangs on the north wall. A window seat overlooks the courtyard.
**Stop 4 — Chapel.** Small stone chapel, 1290. Piscina and aumbry preserved. Point out the carved corbels.
**Stop 5 — Kitchens.** Great ovens. Spit. Scullery. Mention the well.
**Stop 6 — The Tower Room.** End of tour. Thank the group and direct them to the gift shop. *Do not allow visitors to linger here.*
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**Guide's notes, 4 Oct (Helen R.)**
Yesterday a visitor asked me about "the seventh stop." I said the tour has six. He said: "The one after the tower room." I said there's no room after the tower room, only the door to the gift shop. He gave me an odd look. He said: "Your colleague said she'd show us next time."
I asked which colleague. He described her. A woman in her fifties, in the castle fleece, with a clipboard and a lanyard. Grey hair in a clip. A little stoop.
It sounded like me.
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**Guide's notes, 8 Oct**
Group of eleven. After the tower room I counted them down to the gift shop. Eleven. At the shop I counted again. Twelve.
I stood in the doorway for a long time. There was a woman in the group I did not know, standing at the back, in a long coat. She smiled at me. She said: "That was lovely, thank you. May I ask, where does the seventh stop begin?"
I said: "There isn't one."
She said: "No. But you know where it would be."
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**Guide's notes, 14 Oct**
I walked the castle after closing. The tower room is the highest point. It has one window, a fireplace, a bench, and the door we came in by. Nothing else. I stood at the window looking out over the moor.
Counting the stops on the plan I realised that stop 6 is where the plan ends, but the tour does not. After the tower room, the visitors go down by the spiral passage to the gift shop. The passage is the way out. But the spiral passage has twenty-three steps. I have counted them for twelve years. Today there were twenty-four.
The twenty-fourth step is not on the plan. It is a shallow landing, at the bottom, where the passage turns, and in the wall there is a door I have never seen.
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**Guide's notes, 20 Oct**
I opened it. It was not locked. Beyond was a short passage, whitewashed, with a flagged floor, and at its end an iron-studded door standing ajar with a lamp lit beyond.
I did not go in. I closed it. In the morning I mentioned it to the castle manager. He said: "There's no door at the foot of the tower passage." He took me down. There was a plain stone wall, and a coat of whitewash, and no sign of a door.
He said: "Helen, you've been on your feet a long time. Why not take the afternoon off?"
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**Revised script (rev. 5), distributed 27 Oct**
**Stop 6 — The Tower Room.** End of tour. Thank the group.
**Stop 7 — The Lower Passage.** *Guides will not take visitors to Stop 7. Visitors who ask about Stop 7 should be told that it is not open to the public. Visitors who find Stop 7 on their own should be thanked for their visit and offered a cup of tea in the gift shop.*
*Guide's note, added in pencil at the foot of the page: Do not offer them the tea. They won't want it by then. Do say: "Mind your step. There isn't one."*
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**Guide's notes, 31 Oct (last entry, in the margin of rev. 5)**
I took the 14:00 tour. Twelve visitors. At the tower room I turned them down the passage, as usual. At the foot of the passage I stopped. I said: "Thank you for coming. The gift shop is to your left."
They all turned left. All but one: the woman in the long coat, who stood quietly beside me, facing the wall.
She said: "May I?"
I nodded. The whitewash was warm. The door was where it had always been. I held it open for her and she went in without a sound, and the lamp beyond was lit, and I understood why I'd never been able to leave, and I followed her. Mind your step.