Before I get started, a quick note from me! I’m SO glad I wrote up several draft posts like this recently and got organised as I’ve found out I’ve got repetitive strain injury in my right wrist which is aggravating that old nerve damage from my gallbladder surgery (ouch!) so I’m having to take a few days to rest it – typing with left hand only is NO fun! But luckily, I was prepped with a few posts (like yesterday’s), so on with them!
Funny title there for this one! I’ve actually got this post and another planned for this day (my birthday!), so I thought splitting it into thirds works, right?! The day was quite split as we set off from Padstow in the morning after breakfast at Rick Stein’s, headed from Cornwall across Devon via Exeter (where we briefly stopped then continued our journey), slightly into Dorset, before going back up into Somerset to Montacute- a lot of counties in one day!
Our Airbnb for the night was booked in the village of Montacute and I was looking forward to this one, but more on the Airbnb in the next post (that’s why I’ve got a whole separate one!). We arrived in Montacute in the early afternoon and headed straight to Montacute House which was a National Trust property we’d planned to spend the afternoon at before going to our accommodation. As we parked up, I took the opportunity to swap into my Levis as I didn’t want to explore the gardens in a skirt. Luckily it was a lovely sunny day considering it was the end of the September (not quite as nice as my 21st birthday) so I didn’t need anything over the top of my sheer white blouse. Montacute House was the filming location for the BBC’s Wolf Hall and the 1995 version Sense & Sensibility, one of the Jane Austen film adaptations we watched many times at school (by choice, not in lessons or anything!), and it was just as “cute” as the name suggests.
The grounds of the house were gorgeous, especially with the sun shining down on us, and we spent a good couple of hours wandering the gardens, even though they weren’t that large. There were various sections to explore, including a vegetable patch (which we may or may not supposed to have been in…) and the Wibbly Wobbly hedges which we saw being maintained by several gardeners – hard work, I’d imagine! There was a rather grand avenue up to the house, a few fountains, an orangery (which was closed for maintenance, but we could see inside) and a large area of woodland and parkland around it, which we didn’t wander too much.
We also did a self-guided tour of the house, but were given loads of information by the room attendants within the house – it was pretty impressive, built in 1598. It was a lot of showing off from the original owners, with large spacious rooms! And there was a small embroidery exhibition too which I found fascinating – Ben not so much!
Time for some fun photos and an outtake? I think so!
We visited the cafe before leaving too and had another cream tea with scones – you can’t not do that at a National Trust property! All in all, a pretty lovely way to spend a birthday afternoon in my opinion.
Lovely photos! I love Montacute House. I grew up in a village about 10 minutes away, and when I was a child we used to go every year when my great aunt came to stay because she was friends with the family who lived there and used to play there as a child in the 1920s, so we had to take the trip down memory lane with her every single year (with the same stories too!). I haven’t been as an adult, I really should. I hope you took the chance to pop up to Ham Hill as well – gorgeous views over South Somerset!
x
Gorgeous photos, it looks gorgeous there, I hope your wrist speedily recovers