Why this English castle should be on everyone's bucket list

Beyond the soaring walls of Warwick Castle, families can create lifelong memories.

One problem with kids - and don't get me started, please - is that they want to live either on the moon or in a medieval castle.

I couldn't send my children into space (although I sometimes wished I could) but I was able to take them for a sleepover at Warwick Castle, a fortress founded by William the Conqueror in the 11th century.

Ironically, I used to rent an apartment five kilometres from Warwick Castle, but I had never visited the place until I lived 17,025 kilometres away in Australia.

Warwick is a picture-perfect castle on the River Avon, about an hour-and-40-minutes' drive from London.

It boasts high, foreboding curtain walls; crenulated battlements with arrow slits; a turreted tower with a spiral staircase; and a gatehouse with a portcullis and "murder holes" to spill boiling oil on attackers trapped within the barbican.

The castle has featured in movies such as The Virgin Queen and King Ralph and is second only to Windsor Castle in its beauty and completeness.

But you can't stay the night at Windsor Castle (unless you're King Charles or, I guess, King Ralph), while we were able to get accommodation within the ramparts of Warwick Castle, in the Knight's Village Lodges, a timber bungalow with a sword and shield mounted on the wall.

The surrounding heraldry inspired my daughter to create our own coat of arms, with a shield element for each family member. My son was represented by a pair of "smelly" socks; I, for some reason, by underpants.

In the castle grounds during the day, we watched a deft and inspiring birds of prey show; medieval archery with the Warwick bowman; and an unexpectedly spectacular display of catapult shooting, which bought the delicious word "trebuchet" into the family vocabulary.

The kids went to Knight School, where they learned to fence using wooden swords, but my daughter had more fun chasing peacocks around the 19th-century Peacock Garden at Warwick Castle.

We could have had dinner at the Undercroft Cafe (which was once the servants' dining hall), but we bought in a takeaway curry from a nearby Indian restaurant instead, just in case the castle catering lived up to the unappetising reputation of Medieval kitchens.

Childhood is short - although it doesn't always seem that way - but the memories of some days last forever.

My kids may never grow up to be astronauts, but for one summer's day in England they were medieval knights.