Exploring the South East #8 ... Homeward Bound and Cliveden

Hi there everyone 😀

It has certainly been a strange couple of weeks over here in the UK. We are holed up in our holiday lodge in Wales, where we have been glued to the TV watching history unfold following the passing of our Queen. 

Whilst I prepared a stack of blog posts before I came away it’s not really felt appropriate to release them until now … as the country has been in its official mourning period. 

It kind of feels like it’s time to start to get back to normal so here we go … finally … the final post from our trip to the South East, where many National Trust properties and gardens were definitely the order of the day ... I don't think we've ever packed as many visits in during a one week period.  

It was Saturday and time to head for home ... but not without squeezing in one final National Trust visit. 

Having watched films and a recent drama series about 'The Profumo Affair' I was really keen to visit Cliveden, which featured in the series.

We had tried to visit once before, when on our way to Windsor, but had found the estate closed as a result of a fallen tree across the entrance driveway, this time there was no such hindrance, so I managed to tick another place I'd wanted to visit for ages off the list.

Cliveden is a huge estate and, as we were stopping off on the way home, we had to be a bit choosy about how much of it we wanted to explore.

We started off in the water garden, which is fairly close to the car park ...

From here we decided that we couldn't leave without at least seeing the house, though we couldn't see inside, as it is now used as a luxury hotel and can only be visited on certain days of the week ...

We walked around the front of the house to the South Terrace ... for views across the Parterre and the wider estate ...

We did walk down to the bottom of the Parterre for great views across the Thames and back up to the house ...

Whilst it was all very impressive I couldn't help but be a little disappointed with the planting. It had gone over a bit but, compared to the surroundings, it just felt a bit 'underwhelming' ... especially when compared to some of the other gardens we'd visited. I guess it was just a bit more formal.

We headed back up past the house to the rose garden, which was lovely and so very fragrant ...

We did pass a more of an informal border on our way back to the Grand Avenue ...

... where a good while was spent trying to get pictures of the Fountain of Love, with no other visitors in the shot ... which was no mean feat ...

So that was it ... time to head for home. We'd had a fabulous week exploring Kent and East Sussex and we'd really packed in lots of lovely places. I think we needed to go home for a bit of a rest 😉

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