With enough rations to last us a month, we headed off to Belton House with Chris and Gill for a picnic and a look round. Built for John Brownlow in the 1680s and home to around 300 fallow deer, we’d last been here around 15 years ago – but as usual, I didn’t remember any of it!
Ann took the wheel and a little over an hour later, we were parked-up in anticipation of our picnic. The weather was perfect, and we were soon laying the table (complete with table-cloth) and attempting to make room for all the food! A good job we brought an extra table then!!!
Ann and Gill had split up the food responsibilities – and Chris had baked a loaf. I just sat-back and enjoyed it all!
After a very satisfying meal, we took the short walk to look round the House…
...and it was perfect conditions inside too – not too busy and plenty of enthusiastic volunteers on-duty to fill-in our knowledge gaps about this fine looking building.
Impressive! And whilst Chris tested a local seat, the girls took-off round the Gardens…
Actually, the Gardens were probably even more impressive than the House itself!
All cultured-out, we had a quick look round the NT Shop before heading home. On leaving the car-park, one of the numerous traffic-cones took a shine to us and managed to (somehow) get trapped under Ann’s car. A bit of subtle manoeuvring didn’t seem to help, so we tried the ‘brute-force’ approach (liberal amount of accelerator with Chris standing on where it protruded form the side of the car) and we soon liberated our new-found friend so it could stay behind with its colleagues!!
My turn to act as chauffeur for the journey back, and maybe surprisingly, given it was a Friday and around 5pm, we had a jam-free journey back to ours. It was cuppas all round as we soaked-up the last of the sunshine in the garden before Chris and Gill sais their goodbyes.
It’s been a great day and I’d completely forgotten how beautiful the House and Garden were.
