Tuesday 2 April 2013

Easter Family Fun: National Trust Egg Hunt at Sizergh Castle

Country Kids from Coombe Mill Family Farm Holidays Cornwall


As a family we have been doing the National Trust Easter Egg Trail for about 4 years firstly at Bodiam Castle and now at Sizergh Castle. I like the fact the trails take you all over the property hunting for clues and the children love the egg at the end! This is one of the earliest Easter's we have done the trail (no chance of the eggs melting like they did in 2011!). We did the trail with my parents, my brother and his wife and my nephew. Having more adults than children meant I had a lot more time to take photographs..

The trail is different every year to try and take you to different bits of the grounds or solve mysteries. This time we started in the courtyard:



Clue 2 took us into the fabulous gardens which are full of useful information boards and most of the trees and plants are labelled:



A combination of garden remodelling and a late Spring meant that the gardens were a lot barer than on previous visits but there were still lots of things to catch the eye such as this mossed covered tree:



Several clues were in the kitchen gardens and it required adult help for my 2 to solve all of them:


The gardens are protected by this fabulous looking scarecrow:


Next we had to search out the beehives and then the resident chickens. This is the cockerel that is in charge of a bevy of exotic looking hens:


With this being Cumbria we had a clue involving Wordsworth and daffodils. This bank is covered in traditional native daffodils which are known as Wordsworth daffodils. My 6 year old reckoned they were so named as Wordsworth wrote a poem about daisies!



The trail ended in the rock garden. Here they had to count Acers and try to see how many frogs, toads, tadpoles and frogspawn they could find. This managed to take up a lot of time as the rock garden has a lot of paths and pools to explore:





So it was a well deserved Easter egg by the time we finished (and they did let us grown ups have a little bit!):


We managed to find a lovely sheltered sunny picnic bench to eat our sandwiches at surrounded by daffodils and wind chimes:



Afterwards there was time to watch the birds at the hide on the edge of the grounds, we saw about 7 species between us all:


We all still had enough energy left to wander around the rest of the grounds to get closer to the main castle:


The boys had plenty of energy left so made the most of the open space to let off steam:


Our visit was rounded off with a genteel game of croquet as they had left out garden games at various points in the grounds. The family won't be competing at a high level just yet but it was a nice end to the trip:


So now we just have to wait until next Easter to do it all again. Who knows what the weather will bring next time...




9 comments:

  1. Great pictures - looked like you had a great time!

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  2. that scarecrow is a little freaky looking it would scare me let alone the birds lol! i am still waiting to do this at our local NT property hoping to do it over the weekend. great photos - you enjoyed a great day and the grounds are lovely arent they? x

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  3. I love them, these trails take you over all the place

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  4. Kirsty Hornblow6 April 2013 at 14:52

    Looks like a great place to visit, I've never heard of Sizergh Castle so I'll definitely look it up next time we are your way.

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  5. NT properties are fabulous places to visit, you have some wonderful pictures from your visit and the children must have had a great time on the egg hunt whilst exploring the grounds. What a lovely idea to leave some games for the public to enjoy, how thoughtful. Thanks again for linking up to Country Kids.

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  6. That looks great, we love the National Trust. xx

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  7. I think we will have to go to a National Trust Egg Hunt next year. They look so much fun and a great way to get the children out and about and enjoying the historical houses etc Love your photos :)

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  8. I love national trust buildings, i love the photos and the one of the birds feeding is beautiful x

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