Tuesday 16 April 2019

Meeting up with an old Friend - Hidcote Manor Gardens NT

Hi there everyone 😀

I'm taking a break from my Yorkshire holiday posts today to share the day out I had last week with you, whilst it is fresh in my mind.

When I left work back in 2014 there were a few people that I really wanted to try and keep in touch with, in spite of us living a fair distance apart. I'm really pleased to say that we've managed really well to do this, by meeting up at locations 'halfway' between us for days out a couple of times a year.

Over the last few years we've had some really lovely days out. We've met up in Gloucester a few times, where we've explored the city centre, the cathedral and the dock area; we've been to the Nature in Art Museum & Gallery, which was just fabulous; we've been to a couple of National Trust properties ... Hidcote and Snowshill, where we also got to have a wander round the beautiful village of Broadway in the heart of the Cotswolds. We've also had a full day out in the capital, exploring the Inns of Court, which was a real treat.

This time we were heading back to Hidcote, hoping to see plenty of spring colour and then aiming to call in at another garden, Kiftsgate, which is just down the road from Hidcote, to see what it had to offer, as neither of us had ever visited before.

As usual we met up in the cafe for a cuppa and a good old catch up, where our talk of work has now shifted to the antics of two year olds and the idiosyncrasies of husbands, which is far more interesting.

Refreshed and wrapped up well against the cold we headed out round the back of the cafe, where we'd sat and had lunch in the sunshine the last time we'd visited ...
Whilst it was definitely on the chilly side, we were lucky with the weather and got to see plenty of sunshine and some blue skies ...
It did look totally different to how it had on our last summer visit ...
Whilst we did get to see some spring colour we seemed to be in that 'in between' period, where the daffs have all pretty much gone over and the tulips are just starting to put in an appearance ...
We explored all of the 'garden rooms' first, always eager to see what we were going to find as each area was revealed ...

There were some visitors who had made themselves right at home in the Bathing Pool garden ...
 
We then made our way down through the central stream garden, passing plenty of 'skunk' cabbages on the way, their vibrant yellows really standing out among the greenery ...
We then made our way round to the stilt garden, which was looking very clipped and tidy ...

It was then over to the other side of the garden, past the lily pool to the plant house ...
We finished off with a walk round the kitchen garden and the rose walk, both of which were looking very sparse, compared to our last visit.

It was time to head back into Winthrop's cafe for lunch, where we thawed out and enjoyed a very warming lunch. We decided to leave the cake for our next stop.

There was just time to have a quick wander round the gift shop and plant sales area, which is always a treat at Hidcote, before heading down the road to Kiftsgate, which opened at 2pm. I will let you know more about what we found there in another post 😀

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