Wimpole Hall and Home Farm

It had been far too long since we'd had a lengthy family day out so last Saturday we went on a road trip to Wimpole Hall & Home Farm in Cambridgeshire. It had been at least 4 years since our last visit and I'd been keen to return before our National Trust membership runs out later this month.

We got up bright and early and broke the journey up by having breakfast on the way. We haven't had many long car journeys with the children and I didn't know how they'd be but they were all really well behaved. Harry asked for the LazyTown CD so we were all singing along to that for most of the journey. It certainly helped pass the time!

We arrived too early for the opening of the hall so we wandered around the perimeter of the property to see if we could find some bugs for Harry.

Wimpole Church

Under some tree trunks we found lots of little creatures and Harry was in his element trying to catch them and look close through his insect pot.

Despite protestation from the boys about going into the hall they were soon engrossed in the free trail and had lots to look out for. They even had some questions for the room stewards.

Afterwards we had a walk around the parterre, something I'd never been allowed to do on previous visits as the boys usually stayed outside waiting with their Dad and moaning about being bored so I felt under pressure to rush.

The gardens were full of signs of Spring and Molly took some great photos of the flowers for me.

The folly is a 25 minute walk from the hall and you have to cross a Chinese bridge over the lake (not seen from the house) to get there. We didn't feel up to walking there this visit....hopefully one day we will.

Such a poser!

Harry took this photo of one of the tree because he loved its shape.

After wandering through the gardens we carried on past the walled garden to the working Home Farm. One of our last visits to Home Farm was as VIP guests when Molly won a competition with Shaun The Sheep in conjunction with NT MyFarm. We were looking forward to seeing how much has changed. You can read about our trip here: Wimpole Hall & MyFarm

This sign made us chuckle. Let's hope she survives another!

Peekaboo!

The children love interactive displays and they really got stuck in in the Victorian Dairy. Harry thought that this was a flat cheese grater.

Meet the new dairy maid.

The children found the beehives fascinating and stood for a while watching the bees flying in and out of their access tunnel to the hive. This wasps nest creeped them out though for some reason.

One memory that stuck from our last trip was the noise in the piggery at feed time and this visit was no different. There's so much noise from so many pigs squealing and a lot of the larger pigs were banging on the gates. Florence even popped up to say hello, complete with lots of drool!

There were a number of tiny piglets and Molly would have quite happily taken one or two home as pets. Admittedly they were adorable, but I wouldn't fancy trying to look after them when they're full size.

After lunch it started raining a little and became quite chilly so we went on the tractor & trailer which took us back towards the entrance and then we went back into the gardens for a short walk to the walled garden (one of my favourite parts of stately home estates). It's a little too early to see much but it's a beautiful place when everything is growing. We were able to walk around the outside perimeter of the wall, which I don't recall being able to do before, and came across the gardener's cottage.

The boys took charge of the camera for a while and took a couple of selfies....and very little else!

We spent a while looking around the secondhand bookstore and then treated ourselves to some delicious clotted cream fudge before returning to the car for our long journey home. 

As much as they all moan when I say we're going to a National Trust property we all have a great day out and there's always plenty to see and do, especially with the farm for the children.