Sunday, 24 December 2023

Christmas at Attingham

Hi there everyone 😀

For my last post before Christmas I thought I’d leave you with a bit of a festive feel from our visit to Attingham Park and their ‘All that Glitters’ event in the mansion house. 

Attingham is a National Trust property, which we pretty much pass on our way to our lodge in North Wales. We’d never visited before so thought this might be a good opportunity to check it out on a pre New Year visit across the border to check all was well. 

We’d booked a two hour time slot for our visit and also managed to book a mobility scooter for Martin … though in the end we could have managed without it as we were only really looking at the house … and the buggy service offered a door to door service. Whilst there are plenty of gardens and parkland to explore these were not on our agenda for this visit. 

It was a lovely crisp winter’s day for our visit, with plenty of blue sky and sunshine …
As Martin had used his mobility scooter to get to the mansion, and I’d had to wait for the buggy, we met back up at the front door …
The mansion was crammed full of Christmas trees. They were all decorated to reflect the theme of the room they were in and there were information board giving more detail. Unfortunately it was pretty busy so we didn’t really read the boards but the trees were all pretty spectacular … starting with this one in the entrance hall …
I did take rather a lot of photos as the trees were so pretty so apologies for the festive overload but here we go …
For a lot of the trees it was hard to capture the detail of the decorations when taking a photo of the whole tree … though some did lend themselves well to a full frontal …
Some were better as close ups …
There were trees in every room. In the dining room the display showed the aftermath of an after dinner altercation with one tree laying trashed on the floor. We did wonder if it had fallen over by accident until realised the intention …
The library …
This may have been the lady of the house’s dressing room …
I think this was the butler’s pantry …
… then the kitchen …
I’m guessing this must have been something to do with clocks or time …
… and this must have been the music room …
This must have been where all of the dressmaking, mending and needlework happened …
… and this was the last tree on the way out of the back door …
There were a couple pretty outdoor trees too …
Having had our fill of trees we stopped for lunch in the very busy cafe before having a quick look round the shop and the very festive looking stables …
Our last stop was the bookshop and whilst we didn’t buy anything I have to say it was probably the nicest National Trust bookshop we’ve been in with shelves and shelves full of books … and its very own Christmas tree …
It was great to finally get to visit Attingham and tick another National Trust property off our list. I can see us stopping off again another time to hopefully get to have a look at more of the gardens but for now it was a case of … next stop … North Wales 🎄🎄🎄

Merry Christmas everyone. Thanks for following our adventures this year. We shall see you with more tales of our travels in 2024 😂

🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳

Wednesday, 20 December 2023

A Birthday Weekend in North Wales

Hi there everyone 😀

This year my birthday fell on the middle weekend of a two week November break at our lodge in North Wales. 

We’d spent our first week just generally chilling out with a little bit of bimbling around but we had plenty on the cards for the weekend … with our good friends Jackie and Phil joining us for a few days. 

They arrived on the Thursday evening after a bit of a hairy journey through the mountains in the dark and the rain … but we were soon settled in with a slow cooker dinner, which had been bubbling away all day. 

The weather forecast for the weekend wasn’t brilliant but over the last year or so we have learned not to take too much notice and once again we were pleasantly surprised. 

On Friday we opted for a day in the mountains with a drive to Llanberis, where we started with a short walk through the woods to visit the lonesome tree …
Our next stop was our second visit for this year to the Slate Museum, where this time we got to see the introductory video about the history of the Dinorwic Quarry and some slate splitting in action …
After another good look round and a pit stop for lunch we were off again … this time to Dolbadarn Castle, where we trudged through the mud and gingerly made our way up the hill for some of the most beautiful views in all directions …
It was also a pretty good spot for an autumnal selfie or two …
Our last stop for the day was the Ceunant Mawr waterfall. This time we decided to drive up the very rough and narrow lane to the top of the falls, rather than do our usual walk along the river to the bottom. It was definitely worth the look from a different perspective …
There were some great views of the railway from up there too …
By now we were all shattered and ready for home … where an evening of pizza, chat and quizzing awaited. 

We’d managed to dodge the few showers that materialised and had a really lovely day. There really is so much to see and do in Llanberis. It’s definitely one of our favourite spots when we fancy a day out a bit further afield 😀

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