Out and About

The last 2 weekends we've been out and about, Easter Monday out for the day near Yeovil, Somerset, just an hour's drive away. This last weekend we had a couple of days near Hastings, where we had a wine tasting experience that was bought for us as a Christmas present. Quite a lot of photos taken so may be more than one post.

Near Yeovil there are a couple of National Trust properties close to each other the first we visited was Montecute House then onto Barrington Court.  It was a really sunny warm day and unsurprisingly was very busy.

Montecute House had some really lovely gardens and around the back of the entrance was a bed of lovely tulips in the cut flower garden, though the high hedge behind cast quite a shadow.

The gates looking to a long drive

Montecute House

The Orangery with ferns, wallflowers

Ooh, more tulips

Just a few more!

After a tour around the house, it was deciding whether to lunch there or to go onto Barrington Court, just a few miles away and we decided on the latter.

As a lot of people were making the most of the warm sunny Bank Holiday weather it was really busy, but we managed to get parked.  As well as house, gardens, nice lunch and sunny weather it had some artist studios and incredibly a patchwork shop!  I was very restrained and to David's surprise I didn't buy anything, but just had a good look around!

Another bit of quilty inspiration came in the form of the brick pathway that lead to the house. Please excuse my shadow taking photos, perhaps I should have turned the other way!

Aren't those patterns fab?

Here's the house

A tudor building that was one of the first owned by the National Trust and was renovated at the turn of the last century by Colonel Tate, grandson of Abram Tate, of Tate and Lyle fame. 

 

 

The gardens were just lovely, considering it was April it was full of colour

And of course we take photos of each other, just to prove we've been there!